cw: detailed sexual assault talk

Somehow the seventh film in a 45 year spanning series managed to be rapier than any of the other entries in the series by far. Like don't get me wrong, I know rape is an integral part of the whole entire concept. The monster's design is built around its phallic imagery and the whole purpose of facehuggers is to be these forced entry little shits.

All of that has always been a thing, but I can't for the life of me see any of the preceding six entries to the series to be more "relishing" in the way they create rapey imagery. This one draws out the facehuggers phallic insertion shots. The moments where a xenomorph is slowly approaching Cailee's character really stretches the moment of tension, leaning into how fearful Cailee's character is. As a result the shots don't feel like they're simply creating tension, they feel like they're enjoying the fear the character is expressing. Then finally we have the girl who's pregnant, who unsurprisingly ends up carrying and giving birth to a human-xenomorph hybrid, which is easily the most disgusting and repulsive thing created in the franchise by far.

This is a weird movie because do you have some strong strengths with the film doing this decent, actually pretty good thrill ride. There are a lot of great suspense and actions scenes and one thing I really liked was how much the film deals with "awe" when it comes to space. Then you got David Jonsson who's delivering one of the series best performances. The entire ensemble of the first film feels like a joint effort, so after them Andy is probably my favorite character and David Jonsson kills it playing him. It's too bad he also has to spend a lot of time with the deepfake resurrected Ian Holm, because the film totally couldn't have just done a second new android in the same movie.

You got a solid foundation going on in the film, but then the fan service drags an otherwise decent film down, but it's really Alvarez' worst impulses that were already there in Don't Breathe, which make me want to never bother with this film again.