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The plot of Alien Resurrection is this: Two hundred years after the events of Alien 3, a bunch of scientists have decided to retrieve samples of Ripley's DNA in an attempt to "resurrect" her and the alien that she has been carrying. After been surgically removed, the alien then grows and breeds, and its number of offspring soon enough manage to escape their confinements and begin to wreck havoc with the human inmates on the ship.

It's not that it's horrible for being predictable; Alien Resurrection is just horrible for pretty much everything else.
Beginning with the script, Resurrection is one of those awful sci-fi/horror movies where pretty much everything appears illogical and incredibly corny. We're never given a real reason as to why the scientists want to breed a bunch of deadly Xenomorphs; potential victims like to wander down unattended corridors in pitch blackness (guess what happens to them?); and the dialogue seems to have been taken straight from the douchebag dictionary ("My authorization code is EAT ME," says one character).

Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet has also created a film that is just so immensely grotesque that it is highly sickening and quite difficult to watch in most places. Jeunet's desire to have the aliens kill/be killed in new and gorier ways seems to be the obvious priority here. Admittedly, I love a bit of gore, but the explicitly of some of it here just seems to overrule everything else (I still haven't gotten over the disturbing ending involving the "Newborn" character and the ship's punctured window).

My main gripe, though, is with the characters, who are by far the lamest of the franchise. It is important to note that Resurrection does not star the original Ripley: Presented here is "Ripley #8", a cold, heartless clone at the forefront of the film, who is a disappointing far cry from the female action hero who we grew to love in the first three films. She's become a clichéd version of her former self, and comes across very annoying at times.

There's also a group of wannabe-badass marines that neither strike any emotional chords or come close to the crew from Aliens that they aspire to be. In particular, Ron Perlman, who gets more annoying by the minute, and Brad Dourif as the handicapped one of the bunch, who just seems to be there for PC value. Worst of all, Winona Ryder is even along for the ride, and is so utterly unconvincing and tentative in her attempt at creating a lesbian bond with Weaver in space that I spent my time wishing the aliens would rip a hole in her chest just to justify the time I had invested in watching her. Why she's even in this movie is beyond me.

Resurrection gets a slight nod of appreciation for the underwater escape scene -- the only exhilarating part of the whole film -- aside from that, though, the scariest thing is the amount of interspecies eroticism that has been injected into the franchise here. I may be obsessed with Xenomorphs, but there's something terribly wrong about the way Ripley caresses her alien newborn for the first time, and alien-human porn is a little too much for my liking.

Seriously, the film's not only bad, it's incredibly disturbing in a very bad way. As a dedicated and passionate follower of the franchise, I felt cheated and, in truth, rather depressed about what I had just witnessed in front of me at the first time of watching. Resurrection gets uglier by the minute, and by the time the credits rolled I just wished the producers at 20th Century Fox would've left the franchise well alone.

(C) Andy Carrington, 2012.