User Reviews

"Alien: Night Shift" is an American live action short film from 2019 that runs for slightly over 9 minutes and the title already tells you that this is another one of these high-profile short films made this year on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the alien franchise. The director and writer is Aidan Brezonick and he was mostly known (if at all) for his music video works previously, worked with Norah Jones among others, gotta mention her as she is a personal favorite of mine. But back to this one here. Well I don't really know what to say. The awards season these days is partially dominated by films starring predominantly Black actors like Black Panther, BlakKklansmen or Moonlight recently, so it is not too surprising I suppose that the Alien franchise also gets this approach here with this little spinoff that includes mostly African American actors, such as the female protagonist of course. It's not a problem by any means, but the real problem here is that the story surrounding these characters also adds very little to the franchise at all. And I suppose only the very biggest Alien film fans will appreciate the watch here. I personally did not like it too much either. The final confrontation scene at the very end is not the worst aspect of this film, but also not exactly overwhelming and it sure does not make up for all the mediocrity in the 7.5 minutes before that. So my suggestion is to skip the watch here. I cannot even say watch it if you like any of the actors as they are really unknown. Then again, all the other actors in these little tribute short films are as well. According to the rating, this is perhaps the weakest from the bunch. Watch something else instead.

The acting was all good, but the terror of the creature is not so much. I prefer instant death when an alien burst out from your body, because it's been like that for 40 years since Alien.... and why the alien is more of a belly burster than a chestburster. I can understand about Aliens Vs. Predator - Requiem when it comes to belly bursters because the Predalien was impregnating more than one "egg" in a host, which the chest cannot fit all in, so the Predalien insert them in the stomach. But in this film, there was only one chestburster, so it should burst out from the chest with enormous gore.... and once again, I don't the a chestburster would fight back, they will run, hide and only come out when they're fully grown.