space-marine

As previously mentioned I avoid horror where people do terrible things to each other, because that could happen, and probably does, and I don’t care for jump scares in my old age. This gets through on my sci-fi horror technicality: none of this could happen—I hope at least—so I was free to enjoy the shapeshifting gore from a more… scientific point of view. That thing has organs.

Because the effects are physically there, they hold up better than most CGI (the defibrillator scene especially). Only the odd jerky transition gives their age away. The Morricone score has dated worse than the rubber: that early-80s synth tone sounds way older than it should. The ending hangs brilliantly.

Horror is very much not my thing, but sci-fi horror—even better, space horror—somehow is? Sure, it’s unoriginal and unsubtle, but I’ve always liked it. The mooted director’s cut (that can’t be completed due to the poor condition of the materials) sounds like it would have been quite the experience.

I don’t understand how James Cameron undid so much of what was great about the first film, added a load of stupid new stuff, and it still came out as brilliantly as it did.

Seismic. Sigourney does so much with her facial expressions in the last act. Hadn’t seen it for a few years and it was fun analysing everything Ash says and does.