Review: Dead Space Downfall

Well, I started playing Dead Space today and figured I'd give the companion animated DVD a spin, since it's supposed to fill in the backstory... and it's pretty entertaining. You might wanna give it a look.

And by entertaining, I don't mean it's entirely entertaining in and of itself. It's more like, entertaining because it's amusing to spot how much stuff they lifted from Alien and The Thing, and I hear also Event Horizon, but I never saw Event Horizon, so I can only really think of Alien and The Thing. Like, they utilized pretty much every sort of sci-fi horror cliche in the book.

Right off the top of my head, I can list... well, the central character is a security officer on board this ship who's pretty much Ripley but a redhead. And of course, she closes off the movie with a narrative that just screams "This is Ellen Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off." Though she doesn't go to cryo sleep with a cat, sad to say.

And they make every effort to make the ship as vulnerable as possible. The security team for this huge ship is apparently 6 people, half of whom freak out at the first sign of trouble. Oh, and they of course are only armed with these pistols that don't do much damage and require frequent reloads, since weapon technology never keeps pace with... ya know, interstellar travel. Annnnnnd they only seem to have a tank top, cargo pants, and these ugly leather jackets for protection.

It goes without saying that the ship's interior resembles the Nostromo, and the aliens quickly cover it in some mutant membrane, just like in Aliens.

Oh, but of course, these are only somewhat alien, since they're actually mutated crewmembers that get stuck in the head and injected by a flying alien, just like the brain bug in Starship Troopers.

And this whole accident started because these colonists on a planet discovered a giant alien "artifact," and you can't help but think of the alien crashed ship from Alien.

Of course, the Captain of the ship wants to bring the dreaded artifact back to Earth, which the doctor reasons is a somewhat dangerous endeavor, so he ends up killing the captain and trying to scuttle the ship, to prevent the aliens from infecting Earth. Just the same ol "Protect the rest of humanity" cliche we've seen time and time again.

Oh, and the final climax of the movie has the security officer using the emergency airlock to blow a bunch of the things out into space, a la the Alien/Aliens ending.

Have I impressed upon you the magnitude of the "flattery" this animated film engages in?

I almost forgot to mention, but this is probably the goriest bloodiest animated film I've ever seen. One poor lady gets completely chainsawed in half and you get to see her skeleton cross section...

Oh yea! Another cliche I just remembered... they meet this one Indian mystic who joins the survivors and holds off a wave of aliens before being butchered, a la Billy from Predator. And later, another character sacrifices himself by closing the door on the main character after saying "It's been an honor serving with you."

This is ridiculous, I ought to put together a friggin list.