Alien Cargo

Apollo Score:

Readers' Rating: 79/100

Summary

If you're going to rip off a famous film, you ought to at least make the title different – unless confusion is your goal. Ridley Scott's Alien was the famous original. Alien Cargo shares so many similarities in plot and characters that one wonders if the writer, Carla Jean Wagner, was watching Alien as she whipped out the screenplay for this one. The female crew in this made-for-television production even share Sigourney Weaver's fondness for tank tops. Alien Cargo introduces us to the crew of a transport spacecraft that plies the Titan to Mars route. They spend most of the trip in hibernation with only two crew members awake at any one time. It's not a fun job, but Chris (Jason London) and Theta (Missy Crider) manage to find a bit of excitement with an illicit affair that's against a strict company policy. Chris rigs the random draw that chooses shift mates so he and Theta can share a shift. When Chris and Theta awake for their stint, they find the ship is damaged, the previous shift's crew is missing, and they've been asleep far too long. In finding out what happened they discover that they're also nearly out of fuel and life support and the previous crew brought aboard a mysterious piece of space debris. This debris is implicated in whatever happened to the ship. It becomes a race against time to save the remaining crew, while whatever happened to the missing crew begins to also affect Chris and then Theta. There are some convenient coincidences that help them out, but wouldn't it have been more interesting (and believable) if there weren’t that easy way out? To its credit, Alien Cargo’s plot builds a fair bit of suspense and the acting of London and Crider is acceptable, even if nobody's going to win any awards for this effort. Most of the special effects look worse than what you’ll find on a typical episode of a television program like Babylon V, with the notable exception of the low gravity action, which does look pretty real. The ending at least partly makes up for the overall lack of excitement throughout the rest of the film. This isn't some happy Hollywood ending, folks. You probably won’t want to go out of your way to watch Alien Cargo, buts it's enjoyable enough that a real sci-fi fan might find it worthwhile.

Shop for the Poster

1999
USA
89 minutes
Studio/distributor: Paramount

Rated PG for sci-fi violence, and for mild language and sensuality.

[ home ] [ movies ] [ dvd ] [ search ]
-- all info on this site ©1998-2008 Apollo Communications Ltd.
Apollo Guide's Privacy Statement