Scary Movies: Alien: Covenant

Alien: Covenant takes place ten years after the events in Prometheus, and operates almost as the second half of that first movie, although it is truly a horror film. It opens with David, the android from Prometheus, waking up for the first time after his creation. His creator, a young Peter Weyland, founder of the Weyland Corporation, asks David to walk, play the piano, and a few other tests, before a philosophical conversation in which David reveals his arrogance and feeling of superiority over humans right from the beginning.

We zoom to the present, where a huge spaceship called the Covenant carries 2,000 colonists in long-term cryosleep, 1,400 human embryos, and a crew of fourteen, also asleep. While the crew and colonists sleep, an android named Walter, who looks almost exactly like David, runs the ship. Unexpectedly, a burst of energy from a nearby exploding supernova hits the ship, damaging several ship systems and killing a number of colonists. Walter wakes the crew up early to address the situation, but the life-support pod holding the captain malfunctions and kills him.

Deputy mission commander Chris Oram takes over as captain, but his halting initial speech and stubborn insistence on not taking a moment to honor the old captain robs the crew of confidence in him. While they’re repairing the ship, they receive a transmission from a relatively nearby system that is broken up but clearly human in origin. A scan of the system reveals that the planet from which the message originated is a better candidate for colonization than the planet the Covenant was previously heading to. Captain Oram decides to re-route the ship against the advice of his now second-in-command, and widow of the former captain, Daniels.

Captain Oram leads some of the crew on a landing ship to the planet’s surface, tracking the source of the message to a crashed alien ship. The landscape looks very promising for colonization, but a couple crew members unknowingly inhale spores from alien plants. A magnetic storm moves in overhead, hindering and then cutting off contact with the main colonization ship. The ship’s pilot, Tennessee, is concerned about his wife, Maggie, on the landing crew and risks the integrity of the main ship to get closer to the planet despite the storm, trying to re-establish a connection.

Meanwhile, the spores quickly grow inside the two infected crew members, turning into horrible creatures somewhat similar to the Xenomorphs we know from other movies who claw their way out of the victims in blood-drenched gore. After bursting forth, the altered Xenomorphs return later that night and attack the crew again, killing Maggie. A mysterious figure in a robe appears and lights a flare, scaring the creatures off and ushering the crew to safety in a nearby cave complex that turns out to be a long-abandoned temple belonging to the ancient race that inhabited the planet, and whose dead bodies still litter the premises.

The mysterious figure turns out to be David, the android from the first movie. He explains that he crash-landed ten years before with Elizabeth Shaw (the only surviving human from Prometheus) but that when they landed, their crashed ship released the deadly spores. The spores infect any animal that breathes them in and will either kill its host outright or use it to incubate Xenomorphs. However, David claims they are safe in the temple. Under his breath so no one else can hear, he greets the other android, Walter, as “brother.”

Later, David shows Walter a holographic movie showing that when the ship crash-landed, he intentionally released the spores to kill the planet’s inhabitants. Meanwhile, a crew member who is bathing in a relaxing, plant-hung balcony at the edge of the temple is attacked by a mutated Xenomorph with only a mouth for its face. Captain Oram finds the Xenomorph after its killed his crew member and shoots, enraging the just-arrived David. David explains that he’s been experimenting with the spore creatures to mutate them in interesting ways. He asks Captain Oram to inspect a pulsing egg sac, only for a facehugger to spring out and kill the Captain.

Far above the planet, Tennessee decides to use a cargo lander to descend to the planet’s surface, find out what’s going on, and rescue his wife. Once below the level of the magnetic storm, he is able to make contact with the ground team and steers the lander to pick them up. In another area of the temple complex, Walter comes across Elizabeth Shaw’s preserved body, which shows the wounds of an alien bursting out, rather than her dying in the crash as David had claimed. Walter confronts David, who declares humanity unworthy and believes humans will be replaced by his own creations. Walter attacks him and they fight. Other team members, trying to make it outside to board the lander, encounter a full-grown Xenomorph.

Will the remaining ground crew make it to the cargo lander in time? Will Walter win his fight with David before David can undermine their rescue? Will Tennessee be able to pilot the lander when he finds out Maggie has died? And if everybody even makes it to the ship, will the grown Xenomorph be able to get on board and kill them all?

Alien: Covenant (2017)
Story/Plot/Characters— Exceedingly well-acted, with Michael Fassbinder, Billy Crudup, Danny McBride, and others, and the large cast of characters is well-sketched, in the tradition of the first two movies, with a few key lines or mannerisms establishing entire personalities. The movie is expertly directed by Ridley Scott (diretor of the original Alien back in 1979), and the plot is interesting, with lots of unexpected twists. (3.5 points)
Special Effects— Beautiful science fiction spacescapes and imagined alien worlds–massive spaceships hovering above the clouds of a world while other planets rise on the horizon behind them, huge mountainous landscapes with a mix of earthly and alien vegetation, weird Xenomorph variations with all sorts of awful but incredible features. (2 points)
Scariness— Too science fiction-y to be really scary, but certainly more scares and thrills than Prometheus. (1 point)
Atmosphere/Freakiness— Hmm. Lots of atmosphere–only it’s science fiction atmosphere rather than horror atmosphere, if that makes sense. For instance, the first two movies in the franchise have a real claustrophobic dankness in their settings that this one just doesn’t. (1 point)
Total=7.5 points (Excellent)

A truly worthy installment in the Alien franchise and a satisfying end to the two-part story begun in Prometheus. Alien: Covenant acts as a bridge between that purely science fiction prequel and the science fiction horror of the rest of the series.