Alien: Covenant

There are plenty of reasons to shut your eyes and cross your legs while watching this film, but is that the same as being scared?

This desire for procreation and preservation of the self - human, alien or artificial - is what motivates every being in the Alien universe, and in Covenant, Scott sets up a thrilling thunderdome in which we can watch this bloody battle unfold.

If this is your idea of a good time, you can tick away the film's two-plus hours guessing which crew members will get offed, and in what order.

Peel away the big budget genre film's veneer of Western Civ for Dummies (Michelangelo, Wagner, Byron and Shelley) and what you have is rather conventional Lego blocks of sci-fi horror.

The new film is intended to act as several things, none of them particularly admirable.

The first "Alien" had better special effects. Watch it instead.

takes enough risks in embedding its genre thrills in a muscular philosophical core that it is hard to begrudge its existence and Scott's willingness to return to the franchise that made him famous and take it in a new(ish) direction

Although the performances and effects are very well achieved, the mystery no longer exists as in the original films. [Full review in Spanish]

(Ridley Scott) adroitly balances lofty ideas rooted in Prometheus and what can be described as covers of alien kills. A mind scramble here, a gut punch there. It works.

It's not a complete failure, but there's something sadly inevitable about Alien: Covenant. It feels more like an exercise than it does a movie.

Sadly,Alien: Covenantfeels like warmed over gruel. The ending (as expected, you'll find more than one) won't provide much closure.

Ridley Scott continues his splattering sci-fi franchise with another slithery creature-feature.