Review of Alien Resurrection (1997) by Meritcoba — 30 Oct 2015

This is a pretty weird movie and the term "a cast of thousands" springs to my mind because of the bloated cast. The only other two Alien movies I even saw where the first two, both of them with a rather small cast, which allowed for more screen-time for each death, I suppose. But now, with so many people dying, it was just another death among the many. Perhaps I should stop watching movies like these before I get too numb to care.

The story hovers somewhere between the funny and the scary, a sentiment that is strengthened by the fact that I watched it on commercial television, which meant that every fifteen minutes the pacing was broken by the same beer commercial: I am still pondering if the advertisement detracted from the fun or not.

The cast does a decent job really, with Weaver acting out her weird human/alien breed attitude, Perlman being sufficient gruff and rude, and the small Ryder being nasty and vulnerable at the same time. The rest of them are just meat for the grinder. Dourif acts the mad scientist, a role he later reprises as Wormtongue in the Lord of the Rings. His comical over the top role is probably one of the reasons this movie isn't as scary as it could be, which is especially important when he comments on a key scene in the movie: the birth of the new alien/human hybrid, which is witnessed by Weaver at the same time and turns the whole event into a comical farce.

The biggest problem with the movie is the abysmal script coupled with the bad directing. The script is run-of-the-mill: evil organization wants to breed homicidal aliens on a space station, the aliens escape and go on a killing spree, while a group of survivors makes a break for the spaceship that is located at the other end of the spacestation before the spacestation crashes onto earth while being thinned by the ravenous aliens.

The director, who made a debut with excellent movie Delicatessen, isn't fit to direct movies like this: a big budget action horror movie. It is just not his cup of tea. The camera shots are just boring, the music is dull and the art is a weak redo of the Giger art, lacking his touch of brilliance. Which is especially noticeable when the new breed of Aliens pops up, despite Giger's praises for it: it just looks bad.

The movie might have done better with a smaller cast and less aliens, especially in full view of the camera. Weaver's mixed human/alien features should have allowed for more duplicity and infights in the group, just as Ryder's secret should have. Can they be trusted? Will they turn against the group?

It is here where the movie noticeably fails and could have shined by spending more time to develop a tension that leads to disaster. But nothing comes of it.

The movie ought to be watched with pretzels and beer. Perhaps the beer advertisement wasn't so far of the mark.

(Note: I do not like a scoring mechanism that runs from 0 to 10 and therefore I devised my own value system, which works as follows: 1 for bad, 5 for mwah, 9 for good. 10 for superb.