Aliens review

Ripley comes back for Halloween

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The approach has felled others since, but James Cameron’s scaled-up 1986 sequel to Ridley Scott’s shocker makes brilliant work of a brusque formula: preserve what works and multiply. A subtle, spooky movie with teeth becomes a subtlety-bashing war movie.

With Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley and maternal themes thrust forwards, Cameron also aces the horror, using a flashed-up ‘proximity alert’ as his inspired cue for various shockingly sudden close encounters. Factor in some ageless model work and no-flab scripting, and it’s like the man says: state of the bad-ass art.

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Kevin Harley
Freelance writer

Kevin Harley is a freelance journalist with bylines at Total Film, Radio Times, The List, and others, specializing in film and music coverage. He can most commonly be found writing movie reviews and previews at 12DOVE. 

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