Horribly good!
GREAT NEW SCAREFEST
PROMETHEUS bamboozled us with mythology but there are simpler pleasures in this second Alien prequel.
Nothing here matches John Hurt’s exploding stomach or Noomi Rapace’s DIY caesarean.
But director Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant keeps its promise to horror fans.
It is scary, gruesome, stylish, suspenseful and clever. There are no long philosophical speeches but Scott finds a nifty way to link the plots of his movies.
The year is 2104, 10 years after creepy android David (Michael Fassbender), Rapace’s archaeologist and an alien stowaway set a course for the home planet of the mysterious “Engineers”.
Now we are on a new ship with a new crew of expendables. Updated “synthetic” Walter (Fassbender, again) is at the controls of a huge ship, The Covenant.
Its destination is the planet Origae-6 with a cargo of 2,000 hibernating colonists, a few drawers filled with dry ice and embryos, plus the ship’s crew.
When an “ion storm” hits the ship, Walter is forced to wake the crew seven years too early.
The captain (a briefly glimpsed James Franco) doesn’t make it, so it falls to his second-in-command to take charge.
From the off, it’s clear that nervy and indecisive Christopher Oram (Billy Crudup) is not up to the job. So it is no surprise when he takes a tumble.
By now, every spaceship captain should know to ignore any garbled message from an alien world.
But when Danny McBride’s pilot picks up a voice singing John Denver (a nice twist on the usual distress signal), Oram decides to trace it. The source is a previously unknown planet that ticks every box for sustaining human life.
“It’s too good to be true,” warns his second-in-command Daniels (Katherine Waterston).
Oram is having none of it, and assembles a team to have a root around. From here on, it’s guess who’ll survive as the crew face a raft of nasties.
Fans of the 1979 original will be pleased to be re-acquainted with the chest-burster himself.
But it’s a new creation that creates the most shivers – the pasty, eyeless Neomorph.
The climactic action scene feels a little too familiar. But stunning effects, suspense and another great Fassbender performance make this a thoroughly satisfying addition to the franchise.