Alien: Specimen

Something's amiss in a remote extraterrestrial greenhouse staffed by a woman and her dog.

This short movie is def worth the watch. Sure, it's obviously a low budget piece, but if you set the drawbacks of that aside, it's a fun, well written and well acted 10 minutes window into the Alien universe.

My only more serious gripe is that the music the heroine listens to for a while doesn't really suit the tone of the setting and is a bit immersion-breaking. I understand it's supposed to create contrast, but it's a little too out of place. They should've went for something like the radio songs in Alien: Isolation (check that on YouTube, search for "alien isolation radio", listen to a few songs.) YMMV, though, obviously. And despite this, this short gets an 8 out of 10 from me.

What else can I ask for?

What weirded me out was that I was convinced the whole thing was CGI/Animated with really good motion capture. Don't know why, something they did to the images made them look artificial. Not a bad thing, just a thing.

Found it on Youtube and watched this since I am an Alien fan.

From decent to great acting. Well shot. Good short story. I would watch it again. It definitely left you wanting to know more.

There are a lot of short films directed at the Alien Trilogy movies. Being a fan of all the Alien films I feel that " The Specimen" and Harvest are the best and I feel they would make great full movies if ever made. I am from the era of the very first Alien movie ever made and have been hooked ever since. Ripley really made the movies interesting and the Alien vs Preditor movies were ok but I prefer to keep the story line the same. They should really think about turning these into full length movies I would definitely watch them.

Specimen to most seems to be the best short of the bunch. Though I would disagree, it certainly isn't bad. Acting was good and the twist at the end was unexpected but very much appreciated.

The entire short itself is basically that one scene in Aliens where Ripley and Newt are stuck in a room with Facehuggers. As such, the highlight of the short was making the Facehugger scary again. Being trapped in a dark lab, being only able to hear it scuttling around with its bony legs truly is a terrifying thought, and its played out remarkably well here. Unfortunately, the effect wears off the moment our main character whacks the thing with a shovel like a cartoon. A couple more gripes would be the CGI of the creature when in full view being a little flat, and the music Julie listens to being kind of 'un-Alien', but these are just nitpicks.

Beyond that, the short did an absolutely fantastic job at building tension, but the payoff was not quite as strong as I would have wanted. Still a great short and worth a watch. If not solely for its originality in NOT featuring a Xenomorph as the main threat.