MEMORY: THE ORIGINS OF ALIEN (2019)

Cast

Plot

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)