The reviews are now in for FX’s new eight-episode “Alien: Earth” series, and the result is quite high with some of the better reviews of the year.
With 39 reviews counted, it’s at a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes and with 19 counted, it’s at 84/100 on Metacritic.
The latter score is on par with the first seasons of HBO’s “The Last of Us” and Peacock’s “Poker Face” as well as the second season of “Slow Horses”. It’s also one point ahead of the first season of “Severance” (83) and one point behind “Shogun” (85).
Here’s a sampling of review quotes:
“A devoted fan’s dream come true, staying faithful to the franchise’s lore while expanding it in horrifyingly inventive ways.” – Nick Schager, The Daily Beast
“As he did with Fargo, turning a classic and beloved movie into a long-running, award-winning anthology series, Hawley has taken a concept that has no business working for television and shaped it into something thrilling, strange, and surprising.” – Alan Sepinwall, Rolling Stone
“Hawley and cinematographer David Franco create finely lacquered pictures that ominously cross-fade into one another; the show has the unnerving cadence of a dream curdling into a nightmare.” – Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair
“A heady, sprawling, occasionally unwieldy but eventually thrilling epic about personhood, hubris and, of course, the primal pleasure of watching people get absolutely rocked by space monsters.” – Angie Han, THR
““Alien: Earth” doesn’t always keep its footing (at least, not as surely as “Fargo” tends to), but it’s a fascinating and frightening extension of an oft-confined space.” – Ben Travers, Indiewire
“Unsettling, bizarro, and contemplative in equal measures, Alien: Earth proves an exciting new entry in the franchise. Come for the Xenomorph, but stay for all the exquisite nightmares Hawley is cooking up.” – Belen Edwards, Mashable
“The result is an imperfect series, but arguably the franchise’s strongest outing since James Cameron’s Aliens. Seriously — at its best, it really is that good.” – Will Solomon, GamesRadar
“Characters are frustratingly opaque to the point that Alien: Earth more frequently recalls Hawley’s failed directorial effort, Lucy in the Sky. And its lofty ideas about transhumanism are abandoned in favor of a few more (admittedly incredible) massacres.” – Hoai-Tran Bui, Inverse
The series begins when the mysterious deep space research vessel USCSS Maginot crash-lands on Earth. Wendy (Sydney Chandler) and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers are members of the crash recovery crew searching for survivors in the wreckage.
They soon discover mysterious, predatory life forms more terrifying than they could have ever imagined, creatures that threaten the existence of the planet. Alex Lawther, Essie Davis, Timothy Olyphant, Kit Young, Adarsh Gourav, David Rysdahl, Babou Ceesay, Lily Newmark, Adrian Edmondson, Sandra Yi Sencindiver and Moe Bar-El co-star in the series which is set two years before the events of “Alien”.
“Alien: Earth” launches on FX on August 12th.
