Alien Ressurection A day at Sungai Wang 23 November 1997 Watch out! I write a looong Review and at the same time, I give so much spoilers! The Movie…eugwch! Initial viewer response: That's one great Ripley! What a horrible monster! What an ugly…I'm think I'm going to be sick. The Story Ripley is ressurected from blood samples taken from Fiori, the prison colony where she died. Along for the fun ride is a mercenary group that would serve as food/bait/weapon - depends on how you look at it. However, at the climax, you're not sure who's the real enemy here. This movie leaves you horrified and saddened than joyful as the inevitable death of the Alien happens. Do I smell a sequel? Heck, I want one! The Review Now, Ripley is back. One way or another its going to be a very good comeback or a very bad one. We see the icky tissue parts in the opening scenes, then zap, we have a child in a tube, who metamorphoses to an adult Ripley. It's 200 years after her death, and Ripley is cloned, only there's something really wrong..a person can sense it without knowing about the show beforehand. There's a sense of claustrophobia, of helplessness as those surgeons took the baby alien out of her sleeping body. "Should we let her live?" to them, she's just a 'host' - a slab of meat. You know somehow, that although they let her live, everything is not right. She's dead…but she's not. Anyway, next we see her being examined by a surgeon. There's something not right about her expression. A nonchalance, a wildness that the other Ripley does not have. And we're proven right when she attacks the man, without even a grimace. I mean, there she was, holding the man between her manacled hands, an expression of serenity on her face. You feel a chill run down your spine as you gaze at her- That's not the Ripley we knew. Turns out that she's a mutant - a hybrid; The result: a predatory version of Ripley. Flash to a mercenary ship. This ship is carrying illegal cargo - stolen cyrogenic tubes full of humans to be used as 'hosts' for the hatching aliens'. Among them is the android Call, the cripple (can't remember his name) and other tough mecenaries, including the tough mercenary played by the guy who played in the Beast in the TV soap opera Beauty and the Beast. As the aliens hatch, we see a deadly version of the earlier Alien. This mutated alien is smarter -thanks to Ripley's human genes. We see them kill one of their own in order to escape - great scene! Shows how bloody and lethal they can be! We swim through great scenes of human beings being eaten alive. Quite predictable; the great part is how they're being hunted. There's a great scene where they had to dive underwater to escape amphibious Aliens who, by the way, are better Olympic swimmers . When they approach a treshold; a filmy texture prevents their escape. Although our brave heroes are dying for air, we know that hey, don’t go in there! On the other side are a couple of nice eggs hatching. Scenes like this pepper the movie its excellent and suspenseful. But what makes Aliens 4 stand out is not these scenes, but the morality that underlies it. Ripley has been turned into a hybrid, so has the Queen. In one of the final scenes, we see the Queen…giving birth! Nothing can be more horrifying than the sight of a hand clawing its way out of the membrane sac; the head that turned around in it, and the shoulders…part of me hoped that that wasn't what I thought it was, but hey, the director ignored me. It was the Ultimate Hybrid. An abomination. A one U.G.L.Y. sucker. Ugly because it was an abomination. To see the human skull and the human eyes in that horrifying body could floor anyone. The worst is to come however. As Mom cooes to the new born, the 'baby' alien turns, and then slashes the face away. Whack! There goes. A good way to handle a loose end, if you tell me. Now all Ripley has to do is handle that 10 foot human/Alien dude. Just as I braced myself for Ripley to hurl out her guns and shoot - we hear one of the prisoners entangled in some Alien goo saying, "It thinks you're his mother!". The prisoner was one of the docs that operated on her. And sure enough, the baby cooed in an obscenely human way, and attempted to snuggle up to her. But Ripley, horrified, escapes. The broken look on the Hybrid's look took me by surprise. I felt its pain, and I didn't exactly want Ripley to run away. As she runs and escapes to the ship, we know that more is to come - we just didn't know how it'll be resolved. The Hybrid somehow follows her to the hatch of the ship. Ripley sense its presence and goes to the hatch. Call, the android had been conered by the Hybrid . As she was about to be turned into a toaster oven, Ripley appears. The next scene is probably the most Horrifying/Heart Rendering scene I've ever seen. Ripley knows her power over the Hybrid. Caressing it like a child, she coos to it, assuring it of her love. The Hybrid almost smiles, and we didn't know what to feel. We see then that the Hybrid has red blood. So does Ripley. She just looks at it, and flings it to the window. The blood burns through. The Hybrid reacts, a horrified look rippling through its grotesque features…and then, gets hurled to the window as a hole appeared . This scene kept us rooted to our seats. It also made me so disturbed and sad; As the Hybrid cries out in pain, we see a part of its exposed flash torn out to space - and then. It screamed. When it screamed, a definate hush fell over the theatre, for it wasn't a cry of rage, it was a cry of terror. Worse - it was a human scream. Ripley's scream! The hybrid sounded like Ripley! Horrified, we watched as Ripley witnessed the killing of her child. She cries as the Hybrid screams, and at the eleventh hour, I could've sworn that the Hybrid had screamed: "Let me go!". The remnants of the Hybrid is flushed to space. I could only say that I'm thankful it didn't live long - it didn't deserve to. Now that's a good movie!! Instead of hating and cheering for the Alien's demise as in Alien, Aliens and Aliens 3, this show actually showed the real culprit: Humans. They are the real demons here. Several gem of a moment pepers the movie. The scene where Ripley, who is actually officially called number 8 finds her predecessors : 1 to 7. All horribly disfigured, all abominations. We see a human with a gaping alien maw, a human with floating hair, another with a tortured expression. And then…number 7!! Lying on the table, it begged Ripley, in her voice -- to kill her. What Ripley must feel, I don't know. But I she lost her 'cool' Alien predatory attitude then. This is the truth that confronted her. Number 7 is an abomination. She is an abomination. Rating ????? 5 diamonds out of 5 Call: "How can you bear being what you are?" Ripley: I have no choice.