The “Alien” franchise didn’t have a new movie in the chamber to mark its 40th anniversary in 2019, but it did gift fans with several short films; all are on YouTube. They are part of a trend – which perhaps has its roots in George Lucas’ support of “Star Wars” fan films about 20 years ago – wherein major franchises allow up-and-coming artists to play in their sandbox.
Playing in ‘Alien’ sandbox
The collection includes six live-action shorts of 9-12 minutes each, and also sometimes grouped with these films is “Alien: Isolation — The Digital Series,” a seven-part animated series of about 11 minutes per episode – so it’s the length of a short movie.
The creators were left to their own devices, not comparing notes with each other, so there’s more similarity among them than would be ideal.
They take the core traits of an “Alien” story – blue-collar workers, synthetic androids, spaceships, scanning devices that the user doesn’t know how to read, the Company, and the xenomorph itself – and put the puzzle together in ways that differ only superficially.
The most creative one is writer-director Noah Miller’s “Alone,” because of its darkly funny concept: A synthetic on an otherwise empty spaceship takes in a facehugger as a pet. Actress Taylor Lyons narrates it all in a matter-of-fact way.
The most intense is “Harvest” (no relation to the comic book of the same name), directed by Benjamin Howdeshell and written by Craig Dewey, wherein four harried survivors work their way toward an escape pod. It includes a great shot of a synthetic (Agnes Albright) smiling as an alien comes up behind her, also “smiling.”
(These films all have one money shot, which is usually featured in the frame grab, pushing your expectations higher than they should be.)
Xenomorphs all over
A fun twist or pure style are what sell in these shorts, as there’s not enough time to build characters or the level of tension found in a standard film. Chris Reading’s “Containment” examines the way people react to an infected person (kill him or try to save him?) based on whether they know what these aliens can do.
Kelsey Taylor’s “Specimen” tries to be a scare piece, with a facehugger rustling through a greenhouse, and adds the twist of a synthetic dog.
Aidan Breznick’s “Night Shift” shows spaceport denizens breaking apart amid an attack, whereas Kaley and Sam Spear’s “Ore” shows miners coming together as a team.
Watching these six films, the big takeaway is that xenomorphs invade hapless ships all over and the Company is always on hand to sell out their workers and secure the creatures. Readers of the comics and novels will be accustomed to the creatures’ ubiquity, but wider audiences might find the narrative repeats lazy.
A direct sequel
Speaking of narrative repeats, “Isolation” is what a direct sequel to “Alien” would be if it was one of those lazy sequels that tells the same basic story as the original and aims for goodwill by regularly referencing the original.
Directed by Fabien Dubois and written by Jeff Juhasz (working from the video game’s story), “Isolation” plays like animated storyboards for a live-action film. The “Clone Wars” Legacy episodes also come to mind. This could’ve been a darn good style piece as a live-actioner, but in its present form, it’s a middling curiosity.
Set in 2137, 15 years after the events of “Alien,” “Isolation” has a framing device that taps into a common fear: Amanda Ripley (Kezia Burrows’ likeness and mo-cap, Andrea Deck’s voice), daughter of Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen, floats through space untethered.
As she tries to nudge one last gasp of propulsion out of her suit, she recounts the events on the now-exploded space station that put her in this position.
Would’ve been great in live-action
Animated films can’t really be scary, but this could’ve been if it had been done in live-action. The structure emphasizes tension and action. To be fair, the nature of Amanda’s relationship with her mom is peppered in (she blames her mom for regularly putting her job first), and the Nostromo’s flight recorder is a decent maguffin.
If this had come out before “Aliens” (wherein Ripley learns her daughter died of old age while she was cryo-sleeping), we might look forward to a family reunion, but we know that’s not gonna happen here.
Since 2017, what we’ve we really wanted to see is a film that links up “Covenant” with “Alien,” and there’s nothing among the 2019 “Alien” films that teases the next cinematic release. None of these films are narratively fulfilling or necessary; they are snacks that respectfully mark the 40th anniversary.