Alien: Covenant is easily the third best movie in the rocky Alien franchise (which definitely includes Prometheus and arguably contains the Alien vs. Predator movies). Saying it’s third best is kind of damning with faint praise given that the only legit good movies in the series are Alien and Aliens with the rest being varying levels of mediocre to bad. But Covenant is not only a GOOD third place, it’s a pretty great movie too. Kind of a surprise, that.
Covenant is a legit return to form as a good, tension-filled skin-crawling Alien film (with a combination of Alien suspense and Aliens action). It’s both a legit sequel to Prometheus and a definite prequel to Alien. This has to be said because the marketing seems to be distancing itself from Prometheus. Now, I think Prometheus is a deeply stupid and very mediocre movie but it still made a lot of money. I’m happy the next film in the franchise isn’t ignoring it.
While I disliked Prometheus, at least it had some Big Idea. Covenant carries over some of those Big Ideas, enough to be a sequel, but it doesn’t go whole hog. Some will argue it’s a bad Prometheus sequel because it’s more an Alien movie and others will say it’s a bad Alien movie because it’s got too much Prometheus in it. And they would both be right… so it kind of depends on if you thing the disparate parts mesh enough… and I did.
Anyhow, I won’t go into how this is a prequel or a sequel… there’s a surprising amount the trailers did not ruin. I will say that the basic setup is a colony ship stops off at a planet and, as you might expect, things go wrong. Aliens appear. Aliens pop out of bodies. There is much screaming and yelling.
What makes all the screaming and yelling work is Ridley Scott, his actors, his cinematographer, and a studio who actually cared enough to salvage the franchise. It’s nice to see a great director working at the top of his game again – taking routine genre horror tropes and actually making them work. It also helps the script is good – or at least not full of plot holes and stupid people.
Now, don’t get me wrong, these are still people in an Alien movie. If they were much smarter, they’d take off and nuke the planet from orbit (it’s the only way to be sure). Some of the characters are dumb and, yeah, they investigate the mysterious planet without space suits but they don’t, for example, get overly familiar with a clearly hostile snake monster.
Michael Fassbender, who is barely in the trailers, is great playing another model of the David android from Prometheus. Danny McBride is, inexplicably, really good because he’s acting and not playing the Danny McBride character. Katherine Waterston plays the new female lead very well, managing to ignore her slight frame and show real strength. All the actors who get enough of a part to not just be Red Shirts do solid work (which doesn’t mean there aren’t Red Shirts lurking in the back of many scenes).
So, yeah, color me surprised. Following Prometheus… heck following Alien 3, Alien: Resurrection, and two Alien vs. Predator movies… I wasn’t expecting much. But this is a legitimately good, very creepy, somewhat thoughtful, and just overall well done movie. And, yeah, it trails Alien and Aliens by a decent margin but it’s still a much better movie than this franchise has gotten in years (even with Prometheus trying as hard as it did). It adds to what came before and informs the mythos presented in the later Alien movies in a satisfying way. Those who don’t like scary flicks or body horror/gore may want to stay away but otherwise it’s a really worthwhile movie.
Score: 85