Review: Alien Covenant

BY CASSIDY NOWOSAD

“Alien: Covenant” is a science fiction horror film about a space crew who goes off course after an accident and ends up on a strange planet inhabited by aliens.

This movie is one in a series of “Alien” movies, and as you might expect, has a predictable plot twists. Watching the beginning was getting my hopes up with some new concepts I hadn’t seen before in Alien sci-fi movies but the ending was very bland and expected.  The overall atmosphere of the movie was very tense, which was partially the reason the ending was so obvious. One of the main upsides to this movie is that you weren’t obligated to see the others in the series, unlike like most movies with a sequel.

The concept of how the aliens were formed was an interesting plot piece included, giving the audience more of a backstory rather than the typical ‘the aliens just existed here’. Other than that, the plot was quite lackluster from the beginning adding random conflict for story progression purposes. The character’s lacked a sense of importance; in the beginning of the movie you are thrown into a tragedy with no attachment to them leaving you wondering why you should really care. In the ending of the movie you develop very minimal feelings for the characters, only one really stood out and was very impactful on the audience. Acting-wise, the actors did an overall mediocre job with emotion here were some believable scenes, but you could tell they did not fully embrace their characters.

Graphics-wise I think the blood, aliens and sound effects were very well done and realistic. I generally wouldn’t recommend this movie to anyone who is sensitive to gorey content. The costumes, scenery and spaceship were fitting to the storyline, really making the atmosphere very realistic and adding small important details into everything. You could almost tell most of the movie budget went into the gadgets and spaceship used within the movie.’

I would rate this movie a 6/10 for its nice graphic and visual effects, well executed horror aspects and interesting storyline. I would recommend this for anyone 13 and up who isn’t afraid of jump scares and gore. This movie is an interesting sci-fi film that unfolds itself with reference to the past films as the story goes on.

Photo courtesy of Alien Covenant