Abandon hope all ye who enter here…

For a film that’s often dismissed as the unloved child of the Alien franchise, Alien³ is actually the misunderstood brooding artist in a family of action heroes— misinterpreted, introspective, and definitely not here to make you comfortable. Released in 1992, this third instalment in the Alien saga marked a significant departure from its predecessors, both in terms of narrative tone and production complexity. Directed by the then-unknown David Fincher, Alien³ remains a study in contrasts: a film that is visually striking yet narratively disjointed, existentially profound yet commercially compromised. It’s a dark meditation on mortality, faith, and identity wrapped in the guise of a sci-fi horror, daring to ask the darkest question of the saga: “What if the universe doesn’t care about you at all?”

Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) finds herself stranded, marooned amidst the garbage of Fiorina “Fury” 161, a planetary junkyard foundry and maximum-security prison that makes LV-426 seem like a five-star vacation resort. It’s a place where hope goes to die, and faith puts down roots like a pernicious weed in a wasteland, offering the benediction of something better in another life, if only you’ll accept the situation as it stands now. Ripley’s arrival is accompanied by the only creative choice I wholeheartedly disagree with in this misanthropic monster-mash – the offscreen offing of Hicks and Newt. It’s the film’s greatest sin, an emotional betrayal of the end of Aliens and, given Ripley’s crash-lands in an escape pod, not strictly necessary. The void left by their absence hangs heavy over the narrative, a spectre at Ripley’s meagre feast. Alien³ has little interest in retreading any of Ripley’s suffering from her previous escapes, though, it has fresh horrors to torment her with, starting with being the only woman surrounded by a cabal of bald, penitential men with only Charles Dance as the enigmatic prison doctor Clemens and Charles S Dutton as the fire and brimstone preacher Dillon, who keeps the prisoners, all of whom have a genetic predisposition for “antisocial behaviour”, under control. As well as disrupting the smooth running of the institution, much to the chagrin of Prison Warden Andrews (Brian Glover), her arrival also brings with it the threat of another xenomorph, and the stage is set for a bloody and barbaric showdown.

It’s well known and well documented that the film’s production was plagued with chaos and conflict, with a revolving door of scripts and directors, leaving Fincher to piece together a vision amidst the debris of discarded ideas and constant studio interference. And yet, despite working in an environment almost as inhospitable as that on Fury 161, Fincher’s genius and directorial promise flickers like a distant candleflame in the darkness. He paints the screen with a palette as grim and oppressive as the story it tells and the cinematography is stark and unyielding, capturing the desolation of Fury 161 with a beauty that borders on the grotesque. Alien³’s atmosphere is suffocating, a claustrophobic embrace that grips the audience as tightly as a face hugger. We’re immersed in the bleakness of this backwater world, we’re there when Ripley confronts her darkest fears and by her side when she has a chilling epiphany about her own body that ties her fate inexorably to a creature she has long fought to destroy.

Yet, for all its atmospheric prowess, Alien³ can’t quite overcome its troubled genesis. Whether you’re watching the theatrical or Assembly Cut, the film remains a surgical Frankenstein’s monster, stitched and bleeding at the edges, its narrative sinews struggling to coalesce into cohesive storytelling muscle while some of the special effects, particularly the CGI alien, show their age, a victim of the paradox of 1990s cinema that the more cutting edge your effect were, the quicker their lustre would fade. To dwell on these flaws, though, is to surrender to the hopelessness that pervades every frame and ignore the desolate beauty of the movie itself. Sigourney Weaver delivers a performance of raw intensity, her Ripley a warrior stripped to her very essence, facing an inescapable destiny with a mix of bitter resignation and incandescent defiance. The supporting cast, too, imbue the film with deep, dark shadows, picking out the film’s moral ambiguity in inky shades of grey.

Alien³ will always suffer in comparison to the films that came before it. Ridley Scott’s Alien was a masterclass in atmospheric horror, a slow-burning nightmare that left audiences breathless with its masterful use of suspense; James Cameron’s Aliens was a rollercoaster ride of adrenaline, an action-packed spectacle that thrilled and exhilarated. In contrast, Fincher’s Alien³ is a deeper, more philosophical affair, a film that ruminates on themes of death, faith, and redemption. Taken in isolation, it’s is a fascinatingly dark nightmare. As a sequel, it’s an astonishingly bold piece of filmmaking that dared to discard every single one of the familiar tropes of its predecessors to gnaw on the bare bones of existential dread.