Film Review - Alien: Covenant (15)

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.

1979 gave us a horror film hard to match in terms of sheer naked dread. Alien, with its floating house of horrors the spaceship Nostromo, introduced cinema-goers to a new brand of claustrophobic terror. The sequels had their pleasures (Aliens stands out as a superb action film), but never yet have they matched the cold-sweat intensity of the original. So does Alien: Covenant come close? Answer - at points. But in truth this prequel is attempting to do more than scare its audience silly.

The film acts as a bridge between 2012's Prometheus and Alien, as director Ridley Scott expands the storytelling universe he helped create. Prometheus told the story of archaeologists delving into space for the origins of human life and discovering threats on which they hadn't bargained. Alien: Covenant manages to take that story further, reintroducing the nasty critters of the 1979 film and splicing it all into a larger whole. 

The 'Covenant' is a spaceship carrying two thousand deep-sleeping Earth passengers to the planet they hope to colonise. The fifteen-strong crew are awoken by a planetary distress call - yes, the same one that will interrupt the sleep of the Nostromo crew years later - and so they descend to a world recognisable by fans of the franchise. Of particular interest are second-in-command Daniels (Katherine Waterson), wrestling with a very personal grief, and 'synthetic human' Walter (Michael Fassbender as an upgrade of the android character he played in Prometheus). The numerous surprises they encounter on the planet surface prove fascinating and deadly in equal measure.

Covenant is, on many levels, a refreshing Alien addition, managing to be more than a stalk-and-slaughter reprise. It tells a fresh story, one that advances Prometheus' themes of life's origins and the relationship between creator and creation. When the horror elements do kick in, they're thrilling and revolting in equal measure, resulting in much clutching of cinema armrests.

Waterson is very much in the Alien tradition of capable female leads (we last saw her helping Eddie Redmayne with his Fantastic Beasts and she probably wishes she was back wrangling nifflers), while Fassbender lends all his charisma to the enigmatic Walter. Fassbender fans  - trust me, you will not be short-changed here. Add to all that the bleak-but-beautiful aesthetic that Scott brings to his science fiction films and there are pleasures aplenty. 

Shame about the script then. The ideas are intriguing, as is the universe building and accompanying literary allusions - but the dialogue is often second-rate and, aside from our leading two, no characters get adequately sketched. The plotting needs work too - I'm no health-and-safety fascist, but the number of basic protocols this bunch ignore is absurd. Logic gets sacrificed in the name of story advancement a few times too many, and that's harder to stomach than all the body horror on display. Cliched scripting is always a shame - but never more so than in a film of genuine ambition and scope, which this most certainly is.

Alien: Covenant does much to compliment Prometheus, while establishing a broader context for the original Alien. For those reasons alone it's worth a viewing. Add some decent writing and this would truly have been worthy of the Nostromo's ill-fated crew. Note - when your script borrows quotations from Shelley, the rest of it should really try and match up! 

Ed's Verdict: A welcome expansion of the visually splendid Alien universe - but call in the screenplay doctor please!