Alien Earth (Season 1)

Alien Earth Details

Episodes: 8

Genre: Sci-fi / Horror

Cast: Sydney Chandler, Timothy Olyphant, Lily Newmarket, Alex Lawther, Samuel Benkin

Synopsis:

When a mysterious ship crash lands on earth, two billion dollar corporations begin a tug of war for some of the universes most deadly organisms.

My Review

Creator Noah Hawley’s Alien Earth marks a bold new direction for the Alien franchise, exploring new ground that has the potential to revolutionise the IP moving forward. The show provides an interesting insight into what was going on down on Earth preceding the events of the original film and how the greed of billion dollar corporations can put the entire world in danger. Now, not all of the innovative ideas worked and if I am being honest, it did feel like the show bit off a little more than it could chew, diluting some of the sub plots to the point that they lacked substance and it felt like we were a world away from a real satisfactory conclusion. That being said, on the whole, I still had a lot of fun with it! The special effects and set designs were still such a high quality, with no notable drop off from the films and the introduction of new deadly organisms helped provide something fresh for audiences to fear. So despite the storyline / writing having some pretty large flaws, the entertainment value is still high!

I thought the acting from the entire cast was one of the biggest strengths of the show! Timothy Olyphant was my standout, playing a character that gave nothing away, yet provided a physicality that spoke a thousand words. But it’s also worth noting how convincing the actors were, who played the children inside of adult synthetics! There is a lot that goes into executing a performance like that and I thought they all performed brilliantly. Will we get a season 2? I hope so because TV shows used to be afforded the privilege of improving season upon season and there are still a lot of unanswered questions that I would love to dive into. But, they will need to tighten up their writing, slim down the different plot points and really focus on the important narratives. I’d also like to see them really lean into the horror side of the franchise, which they didn’t do enough in season 1. Utilise the techniques employed by the films and really build these creatures up to be the horrifying monsters they have the potential to be. The pet xenomorph sub plot really took the fear out of the iconic creature in my opinion.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

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Film Review Club