Maaarxie

This is the first so far out of the eleven films before this that the murder happened outside of Aurora's home court and I am thankful for that. We needed a new and fresh location for a mystery, it was getting weird how bodies are just piling up in Lawrenceton and people are just hihi haha about it.

The last three movies despite having the same formula I noticed have been written well, better, compared to the earlier films. The final showdown with the killers as well has been longer which I really enjoyed. I do hope it can and will only get better from here.

The case in this one was pretty interesting and managed to keep my attention for most of the film. I thought I already am familiar with the story beats of the series when it comes to the killers but this this time my first and only suspect was not a match. I'm glad that it's now written more mysteriously despite signs of the character only appearing halfway but still it was a good mystery.

This movie is confused, so much more confused than the people the conversion therapy camp is trying to convert.

The movie is marketed as a slasher but honestly there is rarely any slashing done for most of the film. It stumbles and reaches for something by the end but does nothing really impactful. If the people behind this movie wanted to make a horror film about the terrible things going on a conversion camp they should have done that. If they wanted to make a revenge slasher they should have sticked to that. If they wanted a heartfelt found family and community story they should have made that. Instead they wanted to mix all these ideas together yet didn't have the skill nor capacity to make it work so we are left with this disappointing mess.

The writing and direction for the dialogue and character was very grating as well. There were lines in there that I was trying so hard not to physically cringe to. By the end of the movie it's hard to relate or sympathize with anyone because there was no proper build-up of characters.

We are taking it back to the original trilogy with this one. Well the first and second movies at least, we don't talk about 3rd here.

You can tell that Fede Alvarez was either a huge fan of the original movies or just really did his homework because of the amount of homage and references this movie has from the original films. Also I don't know but it felt like the film is heavily inspired by the Alien: Isolation game or Dead Space because the vibes as well as the hybrid alien at the end is very similar to the Necromorphs from Dead Space, at least in terms of design.

It's also nice to see Rook back even if he's still a little messy, they did good with the CGI maintaining how he looked during the first Alien movie. Also with wayward teens/young adults as the main cast I found it more believable that they would make constant human errors and mistakes, unlike the previous movies who are adult professionals and still make the most not so smart decisions.

Like the first films the gore in the movie is also very minimal, there isn't really that much body horror aside from the more modern chest explosion scene.

With all that said it's not a perfect film, there are still questionable parts and even lore plot holes but it's not really a major problem for the movie overall.

I wonder if they make the next Aliens movie if they plan on offing the survivor here again which they seem to do. I know Ripley can never be replaced as the ultimate final girl in the Alien franchise but it's just bothersome how we go through this journey with a main lead, survive the everything, only for that survivor to just be unalived in the next movie.