• Film ID:
  • 20531
  • Availability:
  • DVD Available from Shop
  • Film cert:
  • Running time:
  • DVD=95 min.
  • Nationality(ies):
  • America.
  • Primary Language(s):
  • English.
MEMORY: THE ORIGINS OF ALIEN (2019)
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Review

Memory is hardly the first documentary to attempt to get under the obsidian, acid-bleeding skin of the Xenomorph. Practically every DVD and Blu-ray release of Ridley Scott’s influential sci-fi has come with a doc attached, even the 1987 LaserDisc. But this feature-length take from director Alexandre O. Philippe has loftier ideas than any studio-mandated featurette. It begins with a slightly bonkers pre-titles sequence in the Temple of Apollo in Athens, as three alien witches awaken from a lengthy slumber: these are the Furies, the Greek mythological goddesses of vengeance. It’s a baffling, disorientating set-up, though what follows is ultimately a fairly straightforward talking heads documentary format — but the opening gambit clearly hopes to establish one of the film’s key arguments: Alien, Phillipe argues, is the manifestation of all our myths, a nightmare born of centuries of dread found in cultural artefacts and our collective unconscious. (John Nugent, Empire Online)

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