Some would say the worst movie in the series. This third installment tries to re-capture the mood of the first Alien (1979) movie and ends up being slow moving and pretentious at times. Ripley (played for the third time by Sigourney Weaver) is the only one from Aliens (1986) who has survived suspended animation and crash lands on a lice-invested penalty planet whose inmates consist of rapists and murderers who are also members of a weird cult. An alien has also obviously come with Ripley and she herself is infected by one. Obviously the last in the series!
Dark and brooding, the film throws up both religious and moral issues. The scene during which one of the prisoners gives a funeral oratory claiming that life comes from death while the alien is bursting from the chest of a dog is a powerful scene that stays in the mind. Ripley has to choose between altruism (dying along with the alien) or self-interest (letting the sinister Company remove the alien and use it as a weapon). Director David Fincher (who later directed the horror classic Seven) weaves a stark and beautiful kind of horror that lingers in the mind long after the movie has been seen. A movie which warrants a viewing.
Review by James O'Ehley from The Sci-Fi Movie Page. |
