Alien: Covenant
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation | Release Date: May 19, 2017 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
65
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 52 Critic Reviews
Positive:
32
Mixed:
18
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzMay 16, 2017
This is one of Scott’s best-directed movies and one of his most entertaining overall, partly because he’s working in a genre, the science fiction spectacle, that he does better than anyone since Stanley Kubrick, but also because he seems to be approaching it almost entirely in terms of visceral impact and emotion—as symphony of fire and blood, poetry and schlock. Read full review
100
The TelegraphRobbie CollinMay 15, 2017
Scott’s Alien: Covenant is a mad scientist film – arguably, one of the maddest. It’s grandiose, exhilarating, vertiginously cynical and symphonically perverse. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyMay 6, 2017
The drama flows gorgeously and, unlike in many other franchises in which entries keep getting longer every time out, this one is served up without an ounce of fat. It provides all the tension and action the mainstream audience could want, along with a good deal more. Read full review
88
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonMay 18, 2017
Reportedly, at least two more “Alien” prequels are planned. If they’re half as good as this one, prepare to tremble. Read full review
83
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallMay 17, 2017
Alien: Covenant is smarter than the average horror flick with a healthy dose of gross. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyMay 15, 2017
This is Alien gone gothic. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyKevin P. SullivanMay 6, 2017
Gross-outs and gotchas are fun, but they wouldn’t amount to much if Covenant wasn’t so thoroughly well-crafted. Read full review
80
CineVueMartyn ConterioMay 10, 2017
As a return to the dark, primal and transgressive terrors of the original movie, Alien: Covenant is a success. Read full review
80
New York Daily NewsEdward DouglasMay 6, 2017
Further proving his mastery of creating tension and thrills, Scott has effectively created a satisfying hybrid of "Alien," "Prometheus" and even James Cameron's "Aliens." Read full review
75
MTV NewsAmy NicholsonMay 22, 2017
Scott still has a talent for lovely details... He's always used awe as a tool. Scott's art direction is so precise we assume he also obsessed over the script. Surely a spectacle like this has gotta mean something. Like the intelligent-design argument, his eye is too advanced to be an accident. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliMay 18, 2017
At its best, this film echoes the creepiness and tension of "Alien." At its worst, it sinks into the pretentiousness that at times threatened to derail "Prometheus." Read full review
75
New York PostSara StewartMay 18, 2017
Clearly, the elder Scott’s aim is on the scares — and oh, what satisfying, terrifying, screams-echoing-down-a-ship’s-corridor scares they are. All the philosophical debate here belongs to the robots — which is possibly even more chilling. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeTy BurrMay 17, 2017
There are a number of reasons “Covenant” works where “Prometheus” struggled to work. The characters are more incisively drawn this time, and their relationships inherently more dramatic. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleMay 17, 2017
Its cinematic stylishness and its attention to modern-day anxiety raise it to something out of the ordinary. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperMay 17, 2017
At its core, “Covenant” is a glorified monster movie, with some great “gotcha!” scare moments and, yes, a number of scenes in which a number of supposedly super-smart characters do some really stupid things that get them killed dead-dead-dead. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter TraversMay 17, 2017
It's true that the film is covering old ground – the shocking originality of the first Alien is a one-time thing. No worries. I'd rank Alien: Covenant with the best of the series, right after the first two chapters. Fans are going to freak out. Join in. Read full review
75
The Film StageNick NewmanMay 16, 2017
Alien: Covenant‘s bargain is good enough: come for the Fassbenders, stay for the nihilism and grotesquerie, and emerge with at least a few questions and curiosities on your mind. Read full review
75
The Seattle TimesSoren AndersenMay 16, 2017
You come to an “Alien” movie with certain expectations: creepy thrills, impressive production design, chest busters, acid saliva. Going back to basics, Scott delivers what we’ve come to expect in “Covenant.” And how. Read full review
75
The PlaylistRodrigo PerezMay 7, 2017
Somehow, Scott manages to balance it all: meditations on being made in god’s own image, the fan service of “Alien Origins: Xenomorphs,” and feminist agency. Balance doesn’t necessarily mean execution though. There’s friction with all these ideas fighting for airtime. Read full review
73
IGNDaniel KrupaJun 1, 2017
Covenant’s framework and exciting action put enough new spins on the series’ most reliable touchstones that the cast is able to carry it through to a satisfying end. Read full review
72
The VergeBryan BishopMay 9, 2017
The scares are some of the best the entire series has to offer, and on that criteria alone it can probably be considered a success. But there’s no escaping the fact that as a standalone film, Covenant is wanting, neither truly making its own thematic points nor carving out its own unique place in the legacy of the franchise. Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternMay 18, 2017
This new “Alien” prequel is mostly a gore fest, which may be great news for gluttons of the genre. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangMay 17, 2017
This movie may be a convulsively entertaining throwback to Scott’s glory days, but to look upon Fassbender, with his icy and seductive post-human gaze, is to behold this franchise’s future. Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzMay 17, 2017
Alien: Covenant is much better than “Prometheus,” in that it has plenty of scares and an actual plot, which, if sometimes predictable — all of these movies are in some ways the ultimate game of survival — is still satisfying. Read full review
70
The New York TimesA.O. ScottMay 17, 2017
The fact that you know more or less exactly what’s coming doesn’t diminish the creepiness, or lessen the jolt when the thing you’re dreading arrives. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinMay 16, 2017
The dialogue of Alien: Covenant is often clunky and its plot repetitious. (As usual these days, there are too many climaxes.) But it’s scary and splatterful, which is all it really needs to be. It holds you. Read full review
70
ScreenCrushMatt SingerMay 11, 2017
The reason to look past the movie’s issues is Fassbender. Read full review
67
IndieWireEric KohnMay 6, 2017
Just as this series focuses on survival instincts, it seems that Scott has found a way to exercise his own, keeping the “Alien” series relevant by resurrecting the same old scares. Read full review
63
ObserverThelma AdamsMay 22, 2017
Peel away the big budget genre film’s veneer of Western Civ citations—embodied by references to artist and inventor Michelangelo, composer Richard Wagner and the romantic poets Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, among others—and what you have is rather conventional Lego blocks of sci-fi horror. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsMay 18, 2017
It's a maddeningly uneven picture, with an action climax staged and executed with the air of a contractual agreement. Read full review
63
USA TodayBrian TruittMay 17, 2017
When it comes to memorable personalities, humans and aliens alike take a backseat to Fassbender, who is magnificent in his dual robotic roles. Read full review
62
TheWrapAlonso DuraldeMay 6, 2017
On a gutbucket genre-film level, Alien Covenant delivers when it delivers. As with so many of its monster-movie peers, however, there’s just not much to it when the creature isn’t preening for its close-up. Read full review
60
TimeStephanie ZacharekMay 18, 2017
Alien: Covenant is reasonably entertaining. But it slips off course after that opening section, and the problem is caused by the very creatures we presumably came to see. Read full review
60
EmpireIan FreerMay 8, 2017
An upgrade from Prometheus, Alien: Covenant amps up the thrills but doesn't deliver a memorable crew member or the full-on onslaught of the series at its height. Read full review
60
Total FilmJordan FarleyMay 7, 2017
Sharper, meaner, and meatier than Prometheus, Covenant's weak narrative drive stalls its brutal good intentions. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 6, 2017
The film is very capably made, with forceful, potent performances from Waterston and Fassbender. That franchise title is, however, looking increasingly wrong. It is a bit familiar. Read full review
60
VarietyPeter DebrugeMay 6, 2017
As acts of creation go, Scott has made an “Alien” movie for that segment of the audience that has always rooted for the monster. Read full review
60
Village VoiceBilge EbiriMay 6, 2017
If in the end it doesn’t quite work — if its many fascinating pieces and ideas and odds and ends don’t ever cohere into a whole — lament not what might have been. Instead, be grateful that Ridley Scott has lost none of his ability to provoke, captivate and infuriate. Read full review
60
Time Out LondonCath ClarkeMay 6, 2017
Really, this is David/Walter’s show. For reasons too spoilery to give away, Fassbender is electric, giving a spectacularly skin-crawling performance. Read full review
60
We Got This CoveredMatt DonatoMay 6, 2017
Scott’s latest is a thrill-ride that blasts through celestial carnage, while building a bigger Alien world that might not be 100% necessary. Out of all the films in the franchise, Alien: Covenant has the least stand-alone potential – but dammit if it’s not a wild, warp-speed-killing-machine adventure. Read full review
50
VoxAlissa WilkinsonMay 24, 2017
Alien: Covenant would probably be a better movie if it had calmed down and narrowed its scope. And yet you have to respect Scott’s ambition, even if you don’t like his movie. Read full review
50
The New YorkerAnthony LaneMay 22, 2017
This film is at once sumptuous with thrills and surplus to requirements. Let sleeping aliens lie. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzMay 20, 2017
The new film is intended to act as several things, none of them particularly admirable. It is a sequel to the underperforming and largely confusing "Prometheus"; it is a prequel to Scott’s own 1979 classic "Alien." Read full review
50
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerMay 19, 2017
We’re still essentially in the Land of Retread: An outer space voyage turns grisly-ghastly as gloppy, befanged creatures invade the crew’s innards and pop out – gotcha! – right on cue. Read full review
50
SlateSam AdamsMay 15, 2017
The relationship between these two Fassbenders is at the heart of Alien: Covenant, and it’s one of the few things that really entertain on a level beyond the technical. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineJake ColeMay 14, 2017
The only saving grace of the film's mostly recycled horrors is how they deepen Michael Fassbender's android David. Read full review
50
Screen DailyFionnuala HalliganMay 6, 2017
It’s a long, flat, no-frills journey which struggles to engage despite its many bloody shocks. Read full review
43
Paste MagazineAndrew CrumpJun 1, 2017
The first third of Alien: Covenant is suitably gripping. The final third is wreathed in tension reminiscent of the film’s 1979 progenitor, Alien. The second third sandwiched in between these bookends is equally interminable and dumb, a garbage-level studio-prompted exercise in origin narrative, built to demystify intellectual property where mystification is a key factor in its success. Read full review
42
ConsequenceMichael RoffmanMay 11, 2017
In one corner, you have Scott, fighting to tell an existential thriller about gods, creators, and evolution, and in the other, you have this obvious insistence to pay an ungodly amount of fan service to the past. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleJosh KupeckiMay 17, 2017
Rarely do I comment on characters’ hairstyles in movies, but the decision to give Waterston a hybrid bowl-cut/Prince Valiant bob is one of the most ill-advised things this film does. And in a film that treats its audience like morons, that is saying something. Read full review
38
Movie NationRoger MooreMay 11, 2017
When “Covenant” is not head-slappingly obvious and perfunctory, it’s just laugh-out-loud ludicrous. Read full review
37
Washington PostAnn HornadayMay 18, 2017
Presumably, Scott is giving the audience what it wants, but purists may wonder whether simply re-watching “Alien” would have provided scarier, more genuine jolts. Read full review
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