I completely understand that, for a horror movie to work, the characters in it cannot make good decisions. It’s the suspension of disbelief that lets us accept that a girl being chased by a masked killer will go upstairs instead of going out the door or that some dude won’t check to make sure that the monster is really dead before letting down his guard. I accept it… it has to happen because, after all, if you populated a horror movie with nothing but smart people, a movie like Alien: Covenant would be over in fifteen minutes.
What’s that? There’s a strange radio signal coming from this unknown alien world with hurricanes in the atmosphere? Screw that! We’ve got thousands of colonists we shouldn’t risk.
But no, they have to be a little reckless and a little thick. I’ve got no problem with that.
What I do have a problem with is when a movie makes a character so dumb that his or her actions to further the plot border on parody… almost like you’re watching a scene from a Scary Movie movie. Without giving too much away… although, if you’ve seen an Alien movie, you know the scene in question: Someone is standing in front of an open alien egg and the conversation essentially goes like this:
Is it supposed to open like that?
Yeah, it’s fine. Look at it.
I don’t know… you’ve been awfully suspicious this whole time and you’ve lied to us and it’s led to the death of at least one person on my crew.
Don’t worry about it. Just put your face closer to the moving insides of that alien egg.
Well, okay… it’s not going to hurt me, is it?
Nah, you’re fine. Come on, don’t be a chicken. Get your face good and in there, okay.
All right. By the way, have I mentioned how proud I am that Trump is the president?
I’m sure you are.
You may think I’m exaggerating, but I’m really not. The scene in question is so stupid that you will probably be slapping your forehead or at least the cheek of the person who insisted you come along and watch this movie.
Alien: Covenant is a dumpster fire. A long, tedious, uninteresting and completely scareless movie that takes what should be simple survival horror and mixes it with psychological double-talk that is supposed to elevate it to philosophy, but really does nothing more than shove the movie’s head up its own rectum so that it can sniff its own farts and convince itself that it’s some sort of designer perfume. Coming from, apparently, one of the three people in the world who liked Prometheus, I hated this movie. I hated almost every single stupid wasted moment.
Alien: Covenant doesn’t have enough alien in it… the creature is relegated to maybe the last 30 minutes of the movie (maybe) and, even then, it’s way too little and way too late. Even when the alien starts causing havoc for our crew of personality-free idiots, the kills are telegraphed before they happen — you know, to spare us any suspense or surprise — and all mysteriousness of the creature is washed away with glaring CGI.
Being a long time Alien fan, I’m starting to realize that this creature will never be terrifying again.
This movie is just bad… so much so that the standout performance in the entire film is Danny McBride… the same guy who did Your Highness is the one and only character you’re actually going to give a quivering loogie about and I don’t mean that as an insult to McBride who comes into this role with talent I didn’t know he possessed. I’m just saying… Danny McBride who, just a year or two ago, delivered a monologue in a movie about raping Channing Tatum is the standout performance in Alien: Covenant.
Let that sink in for a moment.
The moment this movie opened with the science fiction equivalent of watching someone work on a car battery for the longest 15 minutes of my life, I knew we were in trouble. Alien: Covenant is directed as well as you imagine it can be with Ridley Scott behind the camera, but the story is dumb, the characters are forgettable, and the movie is a drab and boring mess.
Jason Gaston 