Alien Covenant review: Dir. Ridley Scott (2017)

Alien Covenant review: Has Ridley Scott delivered the best Alien film for over 30 years?

Alien Covenant review

Five years on from Prometheus, director Ridley Scott and 20th Century Fox deliver the sequel, Alien: Covenant, a pre-curser to his 1970s masterpiece Alien. The Covenant is a vessel heading for the far side of the galaxy on a seven-year mission, 2000-plus colonials on board as well as an adult crew made up of couples, including characters played by Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup, Danny McBride, Demián Bichir, and a returning Michael Fassbender as Walter, a synthetic very similar to David, who was seen in the previous movie.

We join the Covenant shortly into its mission where the crew are awoken by an issue on board which leads to the death of one of their own. Following the incident Christopher Oram (Crudup), the first mate on board the ship, hears a faint human voice from a distant planet which may or may not be a cry for help. Oram makes the decision to investigate and Tennessee (McBride), the chief pilot of the Covenant directs the ship towards the planet. Upon landing, the group find an uncharted paradise full of waterfalls and green lands as well as that all-important breathable oxygen. Of course, this isn’t the ideal paradise that it first seems as this is the world visited by the doomed Prometheus, and soon the crew find themselves up against a hidden threat and indeed a very familiar face.

Alien: Covenant is a very different film from Prometheus, which may or may not be a good thing depending on your stance of that first movie. Scott’s first revisit to the world that he created in the late 1970s was always going to be very different, but the legendary British director was obviously attempting to slowly build a foundation to the series and was never going to be able to deliver a film that would please all fans. I found Prometheus to a be a little uneven, even a little uneventful, but after watching Covenant, I think the experience of Prometheus is very much improved. You must think of these first two movies as chapters, instalments drawing a much bigger picture, and although Covenant is as visually stunning and as well crafted as Prometheus, this is a very different film. How so? Well, there’s a ton more action from pretty early on in the movie and Scott has managed to include the element which made these films so exciting, at least for the first two movies – horror. There are various points in the film where you can see the director pushing genre boundaries and yes, Covenant is definitely a lot more intense than Prometheus.

Of course, we do have a superb, strong female lead in Katherine Waterston, and obvious comparisons to Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley will be drawn, but each character in the picture is given a decent amount of screen time so we are able to feel the pain that is inflicted upon each of them. Billy Crudup in particular is superb as Oram, as too is McBride who shows a very different side to his acting skills, though he does bring a certain amount of humour to the role of Tennessee though none of it is over-the-top or cartoon-like. Make no mistake though, this is very much Michael Fassbender’s film, the actor taking on two very different roles as new synthetic Walter and the returning, slightly sinister David. Fassbender had quite the task in delivering two very different, very prominent key characters in Covenant, and he succeeds splendidly.

Scott and his screenwriters John Logan and Dante Harper manage to balance bringing a stand-alone, worthwhile feature to the screen with giving fans what they’d expect to see in an Alien film too. They avoid rehashing the earlier Alien movies by not giving us a carbon copy and it is evident that this very much still sits with the tone of Prometheus rather than the all-out warfare of Aliens or its two sequels. Of course, there are scenes which do replicate some of the stuff we’ve seen before, but the filmmakers add a twist to proceedings so it never feels forced into the narrative.

Choosing to bring a motion-captured Xenomorph to screens may grate with some and it did feel a little Alien Vs Predator in places in terms of the execution of the set pieces, particularly when it comes to the effects work. It’s true that the film seems a little CGI-heavy in places, particularly in executing H.R. Giger’s greatest and most iconic screen creation, but it works so very well when practical effects are employed, which thankfully is quite a bit throughout.

Alien: Covenant is quite possibly the best Alien film since James Cameron’s ground-breaking 1986 sequel, which some haters may suggest isn’t that difficult. It has all the elements you’d expect from an Alien movie as well as further depth from a story quite obviously planning to continue into at least one more feature. Ridley Scott continues to build upon the foundations he laid with Prometheus while giving the audience something to feast upon in terms of the horror so expertly delivered in the movies that preceded it.

Gloriously intense and in places absolutely terrifying, Alien: Covenant is the Alien movie you’d been waiting for and absolutely one of the stand-outs of the year so far.

Alien Covenant review by Paul Heath, The Hollywood News, May 2017.

Alien: Covenant will be released in UK cinemas on 12th May 2017.