Alien: Ore

Amazing like it's so good. 10/10 I would recommend

It's always great to watch short films connected to the Alien saga. In this one, the encounter with the xenomorph takes place at a remote mining colony. And of course, it's the Weyland-Yutani Corporation behind the mining operations, once again more concerned with securing the alien organism than with protecting its expendable employees.

This time, however, the miners are there with their families - including children and grandchildren. Once they realize what they've encountered, they decide to take matters into their own hands and confront the infamous "space dragon." I appreciated the bravery and willingness to sacrifice that the crew demonstrates in the face of the unknown threat.

For a ten-minute short film, this is quite decent, and I enjoyed it a lot. It carries the atmosphere of Alien 3 in terms of its isolated, bleak setting, while the mining crew feels more like the close-knit teams from Alien or even Aliens, showing strong bonds and friendship. We also have a synthetic onboard - this time a woman - but whether she's more like Ash or Bishop is unclear. To me, her reactions most closely resembled those of Lieutenant Gorman from Aliens.

To encapsulate the essence of the original, in such a short space of time and make it interesting and exciting without being a direct copy, is a pretty great achievement.

There's a decent scare, decent characterization and plenty of homage to the first ALIEN film, including the technology. It doesn't feel rushed, yet you would like to see it extended out. Having said that, I enjoyed the way it ended.

Congrats to the team involved. A worthy tribute and an excellent idea. I hope more studios do this sort of thing. In this day of endless remakes and sequels, we do owe so much to those first original films.