Alien: Covenant (2017)

There's a scene in Alien: Covenant where Michael Fassbender's android plays off another version of himself, and for a few minutes, the film crackles with the kind of unsettling intelligence you were hoping for all along. Then it passes. And you're back to watching characters you barely care about make decisions that make no sense, and you remember exactly what kind of film you're actually watching.

Which is to say: an average one. Not offensively bad. Not boldly good. Just... average.

Ridley Scott seems to have been caught between two impulses here and couldn't commit to either. On one hand, there's a clear desire to continue the philosophical, mythology-heavy direction he started with Prometheus. On the other, there's an obvious nervousness about straying too far from the chest-bursting, corridor-running horror of the original 1979 film Scott directed. The result is a film that tries to be both and ends up being neither. A muddled middle-ground that satisfies neither craving.

The horror sequences feel recycled rather than reinvented. There's nothing here that genuinely gets under your skin the way the franchise's best moments do. The tension feels manufactured, the jump scares telegraphed, and the creature work, while visually solid enough, carries none of the dread it once did. When you're watching an alien do its thing and you're not frightened, just mildly interested, that's a problem.

The bigger problem, though, is the crew. These are paper-thin characters making bewildering choices, and it's hard to invest in their survival when you've barely had time to learn their names before they're being picked off. A film like this lives or dies on whether you care about the people in peril. Here, I didn't. Not really. By the time the final act rolled around, I'll be honest, I'd mentally clocked out.

And then there's the mythology. The Prometheus threads that get picked up here are genuinely interesting in concept, and I was curious where Scott was going with all of it. But it gets overcooked. Layered on too thick, too quickly, in a way that feels more like throat-clearing for a future sequel than storytelling that earns its weight in the present film.

Fassbender, though. Credit where it's due. He's doing something genuinely compelling in this film, particularly in those scenes where he's sharing the screen with himself. There's a cold, eerie intelligence to his performance that makes you wish the rest of the film had matched his energy. He's working on a different level to everyone else, and you feel it every time he's not on screen.

Visually, there are moments of real quality here. Scott still knows how to frame a shot, and the production design has scale and ambition. But pretty pictures can only carry you so far when the story underneath them isn't pulling its weight.

Two and a half stars. Not the worst the franchise has offered, and Fassbender alone makes it watchable enough. But this is a long way from the film it could have been, a long way from the heights Scott has shown he's capable of. It just about scrapes a pass mark. Just.

Rating: ★★½  | Year: 2017  | Watched: 2025-04-10

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Ridley Scott: Black Hawk Down (2001) · Gladiator (2000) · Prometheus (2012) · Alien (1979)
More with Michael Fassbender: Assassin's Creed (2016) · X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) · X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) · X-Men: First Class (2011)
More from the 2010s: Wonder (2017) · Beautiful Boy (2018) · The Witch (2015) · What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
More horror: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Viy (1967) · Nightmare City (1980) · Angst (1983)
More science fiction: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Fantastic Planet (1973) · Nightmare City (1980) · The Long Walk (2025)