Alien: Resurrection (1997)

Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet [Other horror films: N/A]

I didn’t think the third Alien was anywhere near as good as Alien or Aliens, but it was still serviceable. Alien Resurrection, though, strikes me as somewhat a disgrace.

There’s a lot of faces and names here I know, which makes it even more disappointing. I’ve never been a big fan of Ron Perlman, so it didn’t surprise me I wouldn’t take to his character, but with Brad Dourif, Raymond Cruz, and Winona Ryder, they couldn’t have come up with a better movie?

Winona Ryder was pretty solid here, and her character is probably one of the more interesting ones. Dourif doesn’t appear that much, but I definitely thought he should have been smart enough to realize that the blood of the aliens are acidic. And Raymond Cruz? It took me a few scenes to realize it was him, and I didn’t really know until after he finds out about an android, in which he excitedly speaks about it, in the exact same way Tuco would in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Seeing a younger Cruz here was fun, and I hope he had more appearances in the genre.

The story here is somewhat pitiful. After the events of the third movie, I would have been happy with Ripley never coming back. I liked her story arc there, and the fact they just bring her back by making a clone of her (that has super strength, agility, and other positive clone attributes) really, really rubbed me the wrong way. And the ultra alien queen? Yeah, no, count me out.

Honestly, there’s not a lot about the story I did like aside from the characters involved. The last act in particular was really difficult to care about, despite Dourif’s character popping back up. It just felt so off, and that’s really what can be said for the movie. The third one was more generic than anything, but this one is just bad.

If there are two scenes worth watching, I’d recommend the underwater sequence, which was decently suspenseful, and the scene in which they run into previous attempts to clone Ripley, which was quite a grotesque and troubling sequence. Otherwise, I don’t really think Alien Resurrection has much to offer. I know it has it’s fans, but I’m not one of them.

5/10