USA, R, 109 m, 1997
Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Stars Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder, Ron Perlman, et al.

Alien Resurrection, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s eccentric and often penetrating addition to the popular Alien franchise, may be one of the most dissident follow-ups since Gremlins 2: The New Batch. The witty script by Joss Whedon has the appreciated daring to break loose from the prequels’ expended formula, and this seems to frustrate audiences searching for more routine spills and chills. I'm afraid the teeny-bopper set weaned on mundane horror shows like I Know What You Did Last Summer will not know what to make of this film's insubordinate manner. (And its oddball ruminations on such topics as maternity are bound to shoot right over their little mush-filled skulls.) There are enough exhilarating ideas in Alien Resurrection for a dozen good movies, and it’s darkly seductive in a way the previous outings in the quadrilogy were not. The laboratory occupied by the many bungled attempts to clone Lt. Ripley is something Lynch or Cronenberg might conjure up on a good day, but Jeunet (co-author of the peerlessly inventive City of Lost Children) is more of a fantasist—he can find the poetry in even the most vinegary of passages. Several other moments haunt the mind: alien lab rats ripping apart one of their own so they can use its corrosive gore to blaze an escape route; the agonizing howls of Ripley’s hybrid offspring as its towering, skeletal frame is slowly sucked through a tiny hole in a spaceship’s window; the eerily lissome movement of the aliens as they pursue Ripley and her company underwater. Alien Resurrection is a psychologically ruffling experience, but it has plenty of humor, too. This is a stunning piece of work.

© Copyright 2007 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.