Alien: Resurrection (1997)★★★☆☆

I first saw this movie with the whole family on Thanksgiving Day of 1997 (the day after its release). I hadn’t seen it since, mostly because I remembered being really disappointed by it. That’s about all I could remember about it though. Well, that and the twist. So really, I remembered the one piece of information that makes the first half of this movie interesting because it’s a twist, and I remembered being disappointed by it. I’ll admit I wasn’t really setting tonight’s movie up for success.

One thing I definitely did not remember, though, was that the screenplay was written by Joss Whedon. I’m not sure I knew him by name at all in 1997. So I was hoping maybe I was disappointed because I was too young for some of the jokes or because of peer pressure (is it really peer pressure if it’s parent pressure?). And there are a couple of exchanges that are very clearly Whedon’s work, so there was some entertainment value in listening for those moments.

Sadly I still found myself really disappointed by this one. It was boring – halfway through I checked the time because I was sure I’d been watching for at least two hours already (but no such luck). This probably stems from the combination of slow pacing and a lack of new information. Really this movie doesn’t add anything to the story at all and we’ve already seen these creatures kill a bunch of people – on three separate occasions, in fact.

It’s like this movie went for grotesque instead of…well, instead of anything else. And that’s not really what this franchise has been about. But I will say one thing – Ron Perlman (as Johner) shooting that spider has to be one of my favorite scenes in any movie ever. If you’re happy with the first three films, you can probably skip this one. Okay, I’ll say one more thing – I am interested to see what the upcoming Alien: Covenant will do for the franchise.