Alien: Out of the Shadows
Genre: Sci-Fi/Horror
Director: Rupert Wayatt
Writer: Carl Flimmer
Based on the Alien series
Cast: Claire Foy, Luke Evans, Karl Urban, Jai Courtney, Aubrey Plaza, Jon Bernthal, Glenn Howerton, Sylvia Hoeks, Connie Nielsen, Chris Messina, Adam Beach, Keke Palmer
Plot: The film starts after the events of the first "Alien" and we see Ellen Ripley (Claire Foy) with the cat "Jones" in the "Narcissus" shuttle while she is recording a sweet message for her daughter Amanda. Later she records another quick message in the logbook saying that all members of the USS Nostromo are dead and that the cargo has been destroyed. Then she enters the cryogenic state of hypersleep after saying goodbye to the cat.
The story moves to another place. The set-up is a ship known as the Marion; a deep-ore vessel operated by the Kelland Mining Company, which is an offshoot of San Rei, which is an apparent subsidiary of Weyland-Yutani. The ship has a crew roster of 50 and is in orbit over LV-178 which is a sand-blasted, storm-ridden inhospitable barren rock. However, it is home to large deposits of a compound called trimonite which is apparently the strongest material known to man and worth a fortune. Thus Kelland have set up a mining complex down on the surface of the planet which runs nine levels underground. The first 4 levels have been completely mined out and are currently excavating level 9 at the very bottom.There are two mining crews each comprised of 20 people who take turns to have 50 consecutive days planetside working the mine. There is an additional crew to handle the day to day running of the Marion who remain onboard at all times. The story picks up during a shift change shortly after a dropship containing the mining crew has gone down to the surface to deliver the next team and relieve the others to make their way back on another dropship, but all contact has been lost with both them and the mining complex. The 10 people left on board are mildly concerned but they blame the severe magnetic storms that hit the planet.
The Marion is led by Captain Lucy Jordan (Connie Nielsen) who manages the turns of the lifeboats Samson and Dalilah that miners use to move between the mines of the planet and space. As long as he tries to recover contacts with Delilah and Samson lost the previous day, the pilot Lachance (Karl Urban) collects the fragments of a message rather disturbed by the space coming from a spaceship called Nostromo (that of Ellen Ripley). Next to him is Baxter (Jai Courtney), the communications officer, who claims that he had read somewhere that the Nostromo was a merchant ship that had disappeared many years earlier in a rather mysterious way. He concludes by saying that the author of the message will probably be dead after all those years. Chief engineer Hooper (Luke Evans) surnamed "Hoop" is with Lucy and is trying to solve some technical problems on the dock. The two argue about the bad condition of some equipment and that the place is falling apart. Lucy claims that she has tickled her bosses several times but without much success. Hoop and Lucy seem to get along very well. After solving the problems, they go back and find Powell (Glenn Howerton) and Wellford (Jon Bernthal) complaining about the delay of the shuttles, the bad condition of the "Marion" and other various issues. With the diplomacy that sets her apart, Lucy calms them down while Hoop enjoys watching the situation. As the two head for the relaxation room they meet the visibly drunk security officer Cooley (Chris Messina), as usual. Lucy begins to scold him until she receives a message from the control room. Lachance warns the captain that he has reestablished contact with "Samson", but that there is also a big problem and invites her to join him immediately in the control room. Lucy stops in the infirmary for a moment and asks the on-board doctor Cora Kasyanov (Sylvia Hoeks) and the normal doctor Sara Garcia (Aubrey Plaza) to follow her because there may be people injured in the arriving ship and prepare everything necessary. The two women leave halfway through the chess game they were conducting and follow their captain chuckling that Garcia was beating Kasyanov. When they arrive in the control room, Lachance invites the Samson pilot to repeat to the captain what he had previously told him. With disturbed communication, pilot "Samson" Vic Jones (Adam Beach) says he needs help and was attacked by creatures but managed to block them before the communication was suddenly interrupted again. Inside the control room there is also Sneddon (Emily VanCamp), the scientific officer who listened to Vic's story about these creatures very interested.
While trying to understand how to proceed inside the control room, Baxter, with a decidedly worried face, says there is a big problem, he says that the signal reveals that the two shuttles are heading towards them to a high speed. Lachance also manages to make contact with Delilah, who provides only short fragments of communications in which practically nothing is clear. The situation is starting to be chaotic and confusing. At some point Baxter and Lachance manage to regain contact with Vic. He says four creatures attacked some miners' faces and then a disaster happened, some died, he said you survived the ship. While Sneddon tries to ask for clarification, Lucy also asks about Delilah. Vic says Delilah left the planet with them simultaneously, but hell broke out on that ship. Given the hustle and bustle, Powell and Wellford also arrive in the control room together with security chief Cooley who already had beer in hand. But he hides it immediately following a glance from his captain. Lucy asks Cooley to follow her to go to the docking area and they order Kasyanov and Garcia to prepare the infirmary and Baxter to open docking doors 1 and 3. Hoop had tried to convince Lucy to go with them but she says which is more useful there and which would have taken its place in case things went wrong for some reason. Shortly thereafter, Baxter and Lachance notice on the monitor that Delilah is changing direction. Lachance says it's a strange thing, says that the pilot Gemma Kitts is young but she is very good. Lachance states that Gemma had been educated by him and was the best of the pilot course in which he had taught himself. Baxter manages to access communications and also manages to access the monitor in Delilah's control room. They manage to speak to Gemma Kitts (KEKE PALMER), the Delilah pilot, who looks terrified and explains what's going on. The girl screams and has tears in her eyes and continues to look around. He says there is an adult monster in the ship and he is killing everyone. Suddenly Gemma begins to cough stronger and stronger until she begins to lose blood from her mouth. Shortly thereafter the girl begins to scream in pain and something comes out of her sternum. All the members present in the control room of the "Marion" remain speechless and look amazed trying to understand what is going on. Lachance tries to warn the captain of the latest developments and escape from there because Delilah is totally out of control. Lucy answers the call just as she sees the two ships coming in the distance. Sanson is almost close to the docking area while Delilah is totally out of control and about to crash. Cooley and Lucy see Delilah approaching them at full speed and try to escape quickly. A few seconds later the accident occurs, the violent explosion of which hits Jordan and Cooley. The impact is enormous and has caused serious damage to the entire space station. At the same time, Sanson is successfully docking. After the accident, Marion members get up from the ground asking each other if they were okay and count the damage and are big enough. Lachance claims to have lost the lateral shocks, the thrusters are out of order and that the impact sent them into the descending orbit and are without thrusters. In addition, the long-range antenna was destroyed, leaving survivors unable to transmit anything other than a local distress call. Meanwhile, Hoop takes command given his rank and immediately decides to go to the docking area to find out what to do together with Baxter. The Sanson has successfully anchored thanks to autopilot. Additionally, Hoop still has the hope of finding Captain Jordan alive.
When they arrive they find only one major disaster and serious damage to the ramps and no sign of life for the captain and Cooley. Baxter finds a charred body but decides not to say anything to Hoop, given his friendship with the captain. Meanwhile, some members speculate on the type of monsters the miners had encountered. Sneddon suggests that it is probably a breed of an unknown parasite. Lachance warns everyone that he has managed to retrieve the images from "Sanson" again. Everyone approaches the monitor, even Hoop and Baxter who had returned to the control room. The images show four dark-colored creatures who crouch near various corpses and appear to be waiting there motionless. The only survivor is Vic, who is terrified and is still sitting in his driving seat. Hoop and the others decide to seal the docking door to avoid the escape of unwanted guests by deciding not to say anything to the poor pilot. At the same time, Lachanche sends a distress signal in the hope that someone will listen to him (but they don't know that the antenna has been damaged and the signal cannot go very far). Shortly thereafter, they pick up the faint signal of a spaceship heading towards them and all the survivors rejoice. They later find out that it's not about the rescue but Ellen Ripley's spaceship. When she arrives, she is awakened from deep sleep and is convinced that she has arrived on earth, but unfortunately this is not the case. Then she is brought by Hoop to the medical area by Kasyanov and Garcia. Instead, the cat Jones remains closed in the shuttle with food and water. Ripley is quite confused and very weak and is helped by the medical staff to recover energy. Ripley asks the two women where he is and Garcia says he is on Marion, a mining station that has suffered serious damage and is waiting for help. However, the woman does not tell the details. Meanwhile Lachance discovers another problem, according to his calculations, they have only a few days before Marion hits the planet's atmosphere and it is impossible for anyone to get to help them. Meanwhile, Ripley discovers that she has slept for 37 years and is quite upset by this and that she will probably never be able to see her daughter again. He also discovers, following a conversation between Garcia and Kasyanov, that he will have to face the aliens again and is later sedated because he reacts badly. Meanwhile, Sneddon suggests the only possible idea to the captain. His idea is to use the Narcissus, Ripley's shuttle, which is still in good condition. You say that you could calibrate the path to a place and spend the next few years of travel enclosed in a confined space dividing in turn the only cryogenic sleeping capsule available. After a short sleep, Ripley is persuaded by Hoop to go to the Narcissus to check the situation and find out that he only has 10% energy. Also, Ripley discovers a bewildering thing, the shuttle is under Ash's control, who, prior to his destruction on the boatswain, managed to load his AI consciousness onto the shuttle systems. When he opened the aliens to the Marion, Ash hijacked the shuttle to meet the mine ship, still trying to fulfill the special order of 937 and retrieve one of the creatures.
When the two return from the rest of the group and report the situation, Powell reports that there are adequate reserves of energy that may be fine for Narcissus in the mines of the planet. Obviously the only way to reach the planet is to use Sanson. The whole group is obviously terrified of the idea of fighting those monsters and some try to oppose the idea. Meanwhile, in Sanson, monsters have killed Vic Jones. Meanwhile, Ripley nervously reports the information he knows about the aliens, such as acidic blood, to the whole group and later tells everyone that she would return to the Narcissus and leave. Sneddon stops her and tells her to stop and be kinder to other people. He also says that he does not totally trust her and that he cannot go around the ship as he wishes. Ripley, however, moves the woman and goes away saying that Marion cannot break more than that. Then Hoop tells Powell and Wellford to recover anything that can serve as a weapon and tells Baxter to resume video contact with Samson to understand what the situation is like. In the meantime, they agree on how to organize for the next morning. Baxter and the pilot Lachance will remain on the Marion bridge to take care of the cameras, the communication channel and various systems while the others will try to stop the monsters, each with a specific task. There are not many weapons on the Marion (plasma torches and other extraction tools more than the powerful steel nets). The goal is to capture and expel them into space. It would have been very risky to kill them since the acid could have seriously damaged Sanson. The next morning people are in pre-arranged places.
Garcia and Sneddon will have to stay behind and will have the task of closing the doors in case the creatures manage to escape. The two were however in two different sections of the ship. Powell and Wellford slowly begin to open the sealed panel as Kasyanov and Ripley think about where to hoist the wire mesh. Unlike Hoop, Ripley is quite pessimistic about the outcome of the plan. Baxter claims that it has failed to restore video images from Sanson. Powell and Wellford are on the front line and are completing their work while behind them is the network with Ripley, Hoop and Kasyanov. While Powell and Wellford continue their work slowly trying to make as little noise as possible. Ripley states that rather than being in that situation she would rather be adrift in space unaware of all that is going on. Suddenly the panel opens by itself and the aliens launch themselves on the two men. The three manage to trap the aliens in the network. Although the creatures were initially contained in the web, they manage to free themselves almost immediately. Welford is killed when the alien's severed net hits him like a whip and steel cables cut off his head. Then the alien tries to attack Hoop. The man instinctively shoots with the plasma torch that hits the alien which immediately catches fire. Powell was killed in the ensuing melee when the burning Xenomorph, set ablaze by Hoop's plasma torch, ran aground, killing him with a bite that pierced his belly. The situation is chaotic, during the fight an alien loses blood that begins to pierce the hull of the ship. This later caused explosive decompression. The aliens and bodies of Powell and Wellford are sucked up and ejected into space.
The last surviving xenomorph, albeit wounded, manages to escape past Ripley and Kasyanov who cling to avoid being sucked into the hole in the hull. At the same time Hoop tried to close the hatch, succeeding shortly after. However, the three realize that a xenomorph has managed to pass. The alien runs and takes the path that leads to the hatch that is protecting Garcia. The woman sees the alien heading towards her at great speed, growling. She sees that the alien is quickly heading towards her. Garcia tries to close the doors and keep the monster on the other side. However, the hatch seems to have a fault and is closing rather slowly. Unfortunately the monster comes at full speed and kills her by gutting her chest before the doors close. The woman falls to the ground dead and her body is trapped in the hatch leading to Marion. Meanwhile Sneddon hears the screams on the radio and rushes there but arrives too late and finds Garcia horribly mutilated and is quite traumatized by the sight. The group of survivors tries to contact the control room, but without success, so they decide to go there together, staying united. Hoop asks Ripley for advice on what to do now and she replies to move around close by, watch out for any noise and pray. Meanwhile, the surviving xenomorph hides deep within the ship in a hold, blending into the environment. Ash closes the doors to that hold. Meanwhile in the control room, Lachance and Baxter try to figure out what happened after the line went out. The last thing they realized was that the hatch had opened by itself, for no reason. The two hope the monsters aren't free in the Marion. Baxter manages to get video images of the docking deck and they notice blood and confusion. Then scrolling through the cameras they notice Garcia's corpse, while Hoop, Sneddon, Kasyanov and Ripley advance through the ship disturbed by the constant noises that make them flinch. Suddenly Hoop's radio turns on and Baxter's voice is heard trying to connect to them. Unfortunately, however, they don't hear each other. Sneddon and Kasyanov state that at least now they know that they are fine in the control room even though Ripley reminds everyone that xenomorphs are smart and can also move in the air ducts as happened in the Nostromo. The four also find a drool-like secretion dripping from the ceiling and Ripley explains what it is and invites everyone to keep on being very careful. Shortly after in the control room, Baxter begins to hear noises and invites Lachance to get some weapons. Fortunately, he realizes that the four survivors are on their way there. After recounting what happened, Ripley concludes that Ash has managed to infiltrate the ship's computer and must have opened the hatch for some reason. Shortly after After a brief moment of remembrance and prayer for deceased friends, the survivors prepare to go to the planet to recover their fuel reserves. Before leaving, they had recovered weapons from the warehouse including prototypes of two guns with acid that would be used by the miners to recover the trimonite from the mines more quickly. Ripley offers to enter Sanson first. There is a lot of blood and some remains of the miners. She also finds a beginning of a nest inside the bathroom, but without eggs. They head to the planet's surface in Lachance's Sanson after fixing the technical problems inside the Sanson caused by the previous hole in the hull. All survivors are tense and exchanging mostly frightened glances. Ripley notices the mood of the team and decides to stand up and give everyone a pep talk. After landing, they enter the mine and everything seems quiet and they plan to take the elevator up to level 4 of the mine, where the cells with the spare fuel are located. Along the way they notice confusion and blood. People had tried to make barricades with stocks and bins but without success. The group also begins to make assumptions that there is no body. The group heads to the elevator and enters.
However, Ash (who has now also infected Marion's computers and mine systems) sabotages the elevator which ends at level 9 and crashes violently to the ground, fortunately causing only minor injuries to all. But when Baxter tries to get up, he feels severe pain in his ankle and falls back to the ground in pain. Dr. Kasyanov approaches and manages to heal the wound as best he can, but Baxter would still need painkillers to control the pain. The elevator is now irremediably destroyed but from the maps it turns out that there is an identical one on the other side of the mine that will bring them back to the surface. Unfortunately, the shortest path is interrupted by a large nest, which appears to be abandoned. At this point, they have to take the long way. They just have to go through the tunnels they suspect the aliens are from. They soon begin to see signs that the aliens are close to them. In fact, they hear scary growls and noises. They also see the shadows of the aliens moving in the darkness but the creatures, for some reason, have not launched any attacks towards them. Ripley warns everyone to be careful because their behavior is weird and they definitely haven't attacked for some reason. Eventually they find a crack in the walls and emerge into a huge room. There is a giant, primitive looking alien ship. The alien ship probably submerged many years earlier due to the planet's bad atmospheric conditions and settled. The whole group begins to patrol despite Ripley trying to keep everyone close. Fascinated Sneddon begins taking notes. Suddenly Baxter, limping a lot, trips and falls to the ground accidentally turning on his plasma flashlight hitting a wall. The blow causes a cascade of molten rock that injures Hoop. Lachance sprang into action when a piece of rock hit Hoop in the leg, picking up the hot material with the knife and saving him more serious injuries. Suddenly the xenomorphs make their presence felt nearby by pushing the group further into the spaceship, encircling the people and leaving only the escape route inside the spaceship. The group continues inside the spaceship and finds evidence of ancient buildings and statues. These are not normal xenomorphs, but appear to be four-legged "alien dogs". Among other things, the material from which the ship is built is an unknown material. Kasyanov notices an alien following them. She shoots the plasma gun and hits him. This creates a strange effect with the material of the walls and the monster practically sticks to the walls except the head. Everyone can thus see a xenomorph up close. Hoop approaches as Ripley tells him to watch out for the second head coming out of his mouth. Sneddon suggests that the man try the gun with acid to see what happens. The man shoots in the head, which slowly begins to melt. The group is relieved to know that these monsters, albeit acid-made are weak to it. Further on they find human corpses attached to the walls by the secretion of the aliens. Kasyanov suggests that they have been there for about ten days from the state of decomposition. The bodies have a gash on the chest. Ripley quickly thinks about her friend E.Kane inside the Nostromo. Ripley points out that there are no eggs nearby. Then she explains in detail what happens when an egg opens and the parasite attaches itself to the host's face. They later reach another section of the ship, a section full of eggs. Meanwhile, from some cracks in the walls the xenomorphs were observing the scene and behaved almost excitedly when they noticed that someone was approaching the eggs. This suggests that the xenomorphs following the group of people through the tunnels were slowly sending them to the ancient ship because it was full of eggs. In the wall there are the remains of some cynomorphs, the old owners of the spaceship. The group notes that the eggs are very old and all hatched. Lachance kicks one of them into powder. The group continues to walk, a strange smell begins to be felt in the air. Ripley warns everyone to be careful. Other eggs in front of them and these are not fossils. Ripley warns everyone to be careful as Sneddon begins to document and describe what they are finding. The group approaches the walls staying as far away from the eggs as possible. Kasyanov notices something strange and warns Sneddon, slightly delayed. The egg near Sneddon is in fact foaming and opening. Sneddon is instantly attacked by the Facehugger. Hoop tries to intervene but fails to free her. Kasyanov in anger begins to burn all the eggs that in the meantime are all starting to hatch. A facehugger was leaping towards her but Ripley is about to hit him just in time. The splash of acid hits the doctor's arm causing her to scream in pain. The doctor, however, remains lucid and orders the other components what to do to treat it and in the end the burn, although quite serious, seems to be treatable. The group decides to take Sneddon with them despite Ripley's initial disagreement. Hoop and Lachance carry the girl on their shoulders. They find a stasis field containing slightly different eggs which contain the queen. Ripley and the crew kill a young queen in one of the tunnels by dumping a lot of the ammunition they had towards her. Eventually, they exit and return to level 4 where they retrieve a fuel cell. The group is attacked by other aliens but they manage to get into the elevator just in time but Baxter is captured when the elevator starts to go up. Ripley and the others try to hold him back until he hits a support beam and breaks in half, his legs and lower torso fall to the elevator car floor as his upper body falls with the Xenomorph holding him. Meanwhile in the Marion, Ash, who had trapped the alien in one of the holds, opened the door where he was trapped. Her goal is to take Sneddon and her embryo into Narcissus to return to Earth and she believes the alien will leave her unharmed.
The survivors run fast on the Sanson to turn back. On his way back to the base ship, Sneddon wakes up but knows his fate is already sealed and sits down in a corner.
Just before landing, Ripley points out to Lachance that Ash may have infected the ship's autopilot systems. So he was forced to dock without computer assistance. Lachance successfully completed the risky maneuver, despite Marion's dangerously decaying orbit, and the survivors boarded the ship. Almost immediately they are attacked by the latest alien. Hoop pushes Ripley away before she is attacked while Lachance attempted to kill the creature with a thud in charge but lost, hitting Kasyanov instead, injuring her albeit not severely. Then the man is killed when the Alien threw him against a nearby wall and threw his inner jaw at his neck, almost cutting his head off his body. In those moments Sneddon begins to feel a stabbing pain inside her but manages to get closer to the xenomorph staggering and with the blood starting to come out of his mouth. The girl pulls an explosive charge from her pocket and detonates herself as her Chestburster emerges from her chest. The last xenomorph dies like this, hit by the explosion. Ripley, Kasyanov and Hoop make their way to the ship's Medpod (it was a piece of medical equipment that performed bypass surgery developed by Weyland Corp) to heal their wounds. Ripley decides she wants to forget and asks someone to take the nightmares away. In addition to healing his wounds, Kasyanov programs the pod to selectively erase parts of his memories. Kasyanov also enters the medical capsule to heal his wounds, but shortly afterwards something strange seems to happen. The laser begins to heal his wounds until at some point the machine no longer seems to respond to commands, Ash has in fact taken control of his medpod. The woman bangs her fists on the glass of the medicine capsule yelling at Hoop to get her out of there soon as Hoop goes to great lengths to try and get her out of there. Meanwhile, the surgical laser is damaging Kasyanov almost everywhere as the woman screams and tries with all her might to open her pod. Hoop struggles to fit into the hand controls as he sees the laser approaching the woman's face. Hoop manages to deactivate the Medpod a moment after the laser cuts the poor woman's throat and bleeds her to death. Hoop begins to destroy the entire infirmary in anger. It appears that Ash wanted Ripley to live after Sneddon's death.
Ripley, now semi-conscious, is brought to Hoop and put into stasis with the cat Jones on Narcissus. He then uses a computer virus to eliminate Ash from his computer and prepares to leave with her. However, in his final act before his cancellation, Ash sabotages the auto-release clamp controls, which means that Hoop must leave the Narcissus and activate them on Marion, which means he cannot leave with Ripley. He does so and looks at her with a sad half smile as he sees her go, knowing she won't even remember him when he wakes up.
A few hours later, just before the Marion falls into LV178's atmosphere, Hoop decides to flee to Sanson. But with no stagnation pod and no long-distance travel options, it looks doomed. Hoop helps himself to drink a bottle of bourbon and records a distress call, declaring himself the last survivor of the spaceship Marion.
