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New Alien 40th anniversary short arrives to reignite your chestburster fears
As tonight's impending slaughter in Game of Thrones' Season 8 premiere thunders ever closer, a different brand of horror is crawling aboard a space mining operation in the latest Alien 40th anniversary short, Night Shift.
Released by IGN on Friday, this is the third of six Alien short films created in a partnership between 20th Century Fox and the crowdsourcing community, Tongal, to help launch the 40th anniversary of Ridley Scott's terrifying sci-fi horror anthology. The first entry, Containment, appeared back on Mar. 29.
Night Shift was written and directed by Aidan Brezonick and its plot centers around a missing space trucker at the High Lonesome Mining Colony who's discovered confused and nursing a nasty hangover. A helpful colleague suggests a quick nightcap to cure his condition and assists him back to the main complex. As closing time at the colony supply depot arrives, they're reluctantly allowed back inside where the disoriented man's ailment settles. His strange symptoms worsen when a vicious xenomorph rudely explodes from his chest leaving a brave female supply worker to take matters into her own hands as the situation becomes a nightmare.
The initial four shorts screened last month at Seattle's Emerald City Comic Con, with the final two presented at Anaheim's WonderCon two weeks ago. IGN will drop one short per week for the next three weeks as a primer for the iconic movie's official 40th birthday on May 25. The remaining trio of shorts are titled Alien: Alone, Alien: Harvest, and Alien: Ore, and all six will be available on the @AlienAnthology and AlienUniverse.com social channels starting May 3.
"Our partners at 20th Century Fox took an iconic franchise and handed it over to a new generation of storytellers to make its mark," Tongal Co-Founder James DeJulio told SYFY WIRE a few weeks ago. "And we were all blown away by the results. At Tongal, we're all about connecting up-and-coming filmmakers to opportunity, and they worked passionately to bring this one to life. But I can't say we were surprised because, after all, fans are the ultimate storytellers."
What do you think of this latest Alien anniversary short and what are your plans to celebrate the frightening franchise's big 40th birthday?
