Alien³ (1992)★★★★☆

I know I’ve said it like every day this week, but I will be so happy when this week is over. It’s been a long sleepless week and I don’t feel like I’ve gotten much done. But what I did do is watch this movie. So at least there’s that.

I like this movie. It’s not quite as brilliant as the first one and not quite as ambitious as the second one, but H.R. Giger’s nightmare of a creature has never been more terrifying than in this movie. A David Fincher film, it’s definitely more Seven than Blade Runner or Avatar (or perhaps more closely related films by those directors). Which is to say it’s dark, it’s grim, and it’s not afraid to eschew a happy ending that might have fared better at the box office.

It’s not perfect – it drags on at times and it paints a bleak, hopeless perspective that doesn’t quite fit with the themes of its predecessors. But the cast is incredible – some of Ellen Ripley’s most badass moments are in this one, and Sigourney Weaver delivers them perfectly. It probably says something that the softest I’ve ever seen Charles Dance is here as Clemens, the medical officer of a futuristic prison spaceship. I’m not sure what it says, but it says something. And it also says something that I found myself rooting for a love story of all things, quite possibly the last thing I would have expected to root for in the third installment of this franchise.

Like I said, this movie is dark. The final reveal is incredibly interesting and oddly fitting, if a bit predictable. But perhaps that predictability is simply because of how well the reveal is set up. You sort of have this feeling, something tickling the back of your mind, but you don’t want to admit to yourself that that’s how the story is going to go…anyway, this is a pretty damn entertaining movie if you enjoyed the first two, and perhaps just a depressing and scary movie if you didn’t.