In space, no one can hear you yawn. Not that horror hack director Álvarez pays any heed to this in the seventh film of the Alien franchise, which features even more screaming and running around than ever before. It's chronologically set between the iconic first and second films, exploiting the gap in the timeline so that its young band of protagonists, boarding an abandoned space station to escape the shackles of their company contract as indentured miners on a remote colony planet, can be blissfully unaware of the existence of any alien threat and duly walk straight into mortal danger.
As also is customary these days, the reliance on sensory overbombardment by gore and CGI soon becomes a burden too, so it's interesting to note that the most interesting detail and actorly performance is that of the disembodied head of an android identical to Ash, the covert antagonist of the first film, replicating the likeness of the late actor Ian Holm with his family's blessing and, unlike the botched recent digital recreations of the appearances of key actors from the first Star Wars film, avoids taking us into the uncanny valley too, although being not quite human in the first place must help.
Scott and Cameron did both give the film their stamp of approval, but that's no surprise either, as rather than violating their works, it emphasises their quality even further.
If only the saga would end there, but not only is an Earth-bound TV series is the works, but even Scott, at 87, is unwisely contemplating one more go.
5/10
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