This has to be one of best sequels of all time, The Godfather Part 2, Dawn of the Dead, The Two Towers, etc. I’d seen the movie before, probably many times before this viewing, and probably even the Special Edition, which I think will always be the version I choose to watch in the future. But it never had me on the edge of the seat, and actually scared, as it did this time round. My jaw just kept dropping further as this movie went on.

Like Alien, Aliens succeeds in creating an incredible claustrophobic atmosphere. But then, unlike Alien, it actually does something with that atmosphere. There are some incredibly long stretches of people just walking down wet corridors in this movie, but somehow, unlike any of the other Alien movies, it works 100% of the time. This is one of the scariest movies I’ve ever seen.

The addition of the mother-”daughter” sub-plot between Ripley and Newt brings even more levels to this part of the series. Ripley’s lost her daughter, her crew; Newt, her family. I love at the very end of the movie when Newt calls Ripley, “Mommy.” Just brilliant.

And of course, this is James Cameron’s “Vietnam” movie. The way the Aliens can blend into their own surroundings so well is exploited to its fullest potential in this installment of the series – I think that’s perhaps why the simple “walking down a corridor” scenes are so scary in this one: you just never know when a pipe or something is going to, well, not be a pipe or something.

This is easily the best Alien movie by far for me. Intense as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, gung-ho as Terminator 2: Judgment Day and a thousand times more heart than Cameron’s own Titanic.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 16th, 2004 at 12:50 am in Movie Reviews, unrated. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.