The plot doesn't fully make sense, there was a lack of suspense, the acting was not spectacular and the big finale was barely a finale at all.<br /><br />Sad to see John Carpenter having to revert to the the technique in which sudden appearance of off screen subjects/objects that is plainly visible to the character on screen in order to give us a scare. Although I do admit that I did jump out of my chair a bit in the scene where one of the Martian Police jumped out from around the corner while the other Officer was walking toward it, but that was such a cheap shot.<br /><br />The only scene where there was any slight amount of suspense was when we see the door off to the side slowly opening up, but that just lead to another cheap shocker instead of building up on it.<br /><br />The flashback didn't work because it was a big letdown as to how Natasha Henstridge ended up being the only survivor on the train coming back from the miner community. I guess it wasn't heading toward the way ALIEN was going to turn out.<br /><br />The rest of the early scenes were pretty banal, John Carpenter's version of character building, leading up to the second half of the movie where it was basically a action slasher.<br /><br />I guess it might have worked as a action movie, but then you would have to sit or sleep through the first half of the film.<br /><br />