The original Alien has proven quite untouchable – even from Ridley Scott himself after the so-so Alien: Covenant and Prometheus, but certainly taking Alien: Resurrection and Alien 3 into account. The second best film in the series – Aliens – very smartly didn't try too hard to be an Alien film, James Cameron taking only certain creative cues from the original and making it completely his own.

I expected pretty great things from Fede Alvarez with this film because he's never made a bad movie. Don't Breathe was as effective and tightly wound a thriller as you'd ever care to watch, and he even aced what must have been the most thankless job in Hollywood when he remade hallowed ground like Evil Dead .

So I was pleasantly surprised to see he's come the closest to the untouchable aesthetic with this flick since James Cameron. It's more than just dank, dripping corridors full of organic structures and clanking spaceships more like semi trailers than the flying hotels of the Star Trek universe, but whatever it is, Alvarez has captured it beautifully.

There was only one element that missed the mark, and that was a tendency to be showy, like in the floating alien blood sequence. The original film didn't need attention-grabbing set pieces like it to be horrifying, and while Scott did a lot of creatively innovative things in that film, he was never showy.

It's some time down the track in the alien-verse when we meet Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and the android she considers a brother, Andy (David Johnson), living and working at an unkempt Weyland Yutani mining operation on a planet in perpetual darkness, little more than indentured slaves to the company.

Rain is preparing to take Andy to the faraway planet Yvaga where they'll live a much nicer life in peace, but the company summarily extends her contract, trapping her there for God only knows how many years.

But a motley collection of fellow company rats have a plan – a derelict space station in orbit contains the cryostasis chambers they need for the whole gang to escape to Yvaga, and they need Rain because Andy – as a company asset – will be their only way into the ship.

They get their hands on a craft to fly there, not knowing that the cargo is a consignment of cloned alien facehuggers, developed from technology and material sourced from the wreckage of the Nostromo years earlier.

Extracting the cryostasis chamber inadvertently wakes up and unleashes the facehuggers, and what was supposed to be a smash and grab becomes a nightmare reminiscent of the original film as the facehuggers – and their more terrifying progeny – stalk and dispatch the kids one at a time in increasingly horrific circumstances.

All the cool ideas from the lore are here and the script makes great use of them, from the infamous reproductive process to the acid blood. Like she was in Civil War, Spaeny gives as good a performance as the material demands but her looking eternally like a 12 year old girl detracts from it somewhat.

But if you'd given up on the franchise after Aliens, this is the film for you. Alvarez in't only a great filmmaker, he's an educated and passionate Alien fan, which gives you the best of both worlds.