What the Critics Are Saying

The Independent @There are plentiful scenes of equally repulsive creatures clinging to or exploding out of the bodies of the galactic explorers in Alien: Covenant.

The Guardian @It's back, with its vicious little fangs, squidgily formless body and nasty receding skull that swoops and tapers down the back of its neck.

Telegraph @‎In the same sense, Scott's Alien: Covenant is a mad scientist film – arguably, one of the maddest. It's grandiose, exhilarating, vertiginously cynical and symphonically perverse, and around a million miles from the crowd-pleasing Alien retread...

THR's Todd McCarthy was gushing in his praise for Covenant, describing it as a beautifully made film that was gripping throughout. McCarthy believed that Covenant had renewed the franchise and described the film as "the most satisfying entry in the six-films-and-counting franchise" since Scott's seminal Alien, and James Cameron's Aliens.

Entertainment Weekly's Kevin P. Sullivan welcomed Scott's decision to leave behind the existential questions and philosophy that turned people off Prometheus and return the space horror that made the director's name. "Alien: Covenant is very much a sequel to the 2012 movie, but one that knows the crowd showed up to hear the hits," said Sullivan, adding "[much] like The Force Awakens did with the first Star Wars, Covenant succeeds by recreating what it feels like to watch Alien."

Collider's Haleigh Foutch liked the movie overall, but still felt Covenant "was a messy film that is at turns, exquisite and infuriating." She added: "It won’t be your favorite Alien movie, but it’ll probably make you want to watch it again."

Todd McCarthy (Hollywood Reporter):
“Scott and the writers have achieved an outstanding balance in Alien: Covenant among numerous different elements: Intelligent speculation and textbook sci-fi presumptions, startlingly inventive action and audience-pleasing old standbys, philosophical considerations and inescapable genre conventions, intense visual splendor and gore at its most grisly. The drama flows gorgeously and, unlike in many other franchises in which entries keep getting longer every time out, this one is served up without an ounce of fat. It provides all the tension and action the mainstream audience could want, along with a good deal more.”

Peter Debruge (Variety):
“In an effort to appease Alien fans, Scott has returned the series to its horror-movie roots, unleashing a sequence of gory death scenes as four aliens body-snatch and otherwise terrorize the crew. By now, though, audiences are so familiar with how this species reproduces that there’s not much surprise between the point of infection (whether by microscopic spores or old-fashioned face hugging) and the moment that an alien embryo bursts out of the host’s chest. If anything, an impatience sets in, much as it does with zombie movies in which characters aren’t up to speed on the genre rules: In the world of Alien, humans don’t recover from these close encounters; once someone catches the virus, he or she is already a goner.”