Science Fiction moive
One of my favorites, a bit slow, but a good movie. Lots of suspence.

SPOILER ALERT - A Good Movie that could have been much better

Alien Cargo was a good movie. Yes it was like Barbie and Ken in outer space madly chasing each other around with bits of blood and gore thrown in to keep this flicks painfully few embers of excitement burning. Don't get me wrong Alien Cargo is NOT a yawn fest but, neither does it come close to the excitement of any of the Aliens movies its Title hopes to evoke. The plot of this movie could be summarized on the back of a match book. There are no hooks, sudden plot twists or real surprises. This movie could more aptly be titled "Alien Cargo: AIR-HEADS IN SPACE". The movie is never scary just dark in a foreboding way.

Alien Cargo is hardly the always upbeat star trek idealism. Alien Cargo drinks liberally from the tired old exploitation where a sinister profits over people corporation mentality becomes once again the obvious way over used obligatory scapegoat that caused all the problems. Had only the corporate bean counters just not commented out those vital lines of computer code to save a few bucks the crew would have been awakened earlier and things would have worked out far better. Alien Cargo a good movie there is just nothing new in it, the same old tired corporate greed in outer space causing everything to go wrong.

All the characters in the movie are played with such over the top card board Divatude that even the men seem as if they all got up on the wrong side of the sleep chamber. The sets are pretty what little you can see of them given the lighting and color choices. The ship models are inspired but do look a little like plastic models but for a low budget flick they are fine.

This movie grows on you. After a while you begin to actually like the Vacuous and Vapid acting style these two screen titans bring to their roles as a weird chemistry forms between them. Compared to the totally cardboard acting of the crew from the Rescue ship the main characters acting skills shine like the light from a nearby supernova throughout the picture.

Be warned this movie ends on a real downer, as the only people you really give a darn about after you invested all that time watching the painfully slow character development get left in the ship presumably to die. I hate anti-climatic movies. The end of this movie is so unnerving because, it just drops you leaving you with nothing to think about. Even the cheapest horror sci-fi movies take that last dig at you that leaves you shocked or makes you wonder this movie did neither it just laid there a petered out as the ending credits commenced to roll.

In defense of this movie the special effects are kind of good, but nothing spectacular. This is strictly low budget sci-fi with a dark edge to it. The story line was cool but way under developed. I saw it on the Sci-Fi channel so I did not feel cheated. I'd buy this movie but as the other reviewer said rent it or see it on Sci-Fi first before buying it. If it was available in DVD format I'd buy Alien Cargo. I found after watching Alien Cargo a few times it gets sort of funny in a Mystery Science Theater 3000 kind of way.

I would not bother buying Alien Cargo on VHS format unless you just like VHS and you think DVD's are the devils work. Wait for the DVD version to come out. Who knows maybe they will find a few deleted mad chase scenes or better still reconfigure the ending so it is not so like "Totally Depressing". Alien Cargo is hardly Alien at all because, anyone who likes sci-fi space movies has seen everything in Alien Cargo many times before and often times done a LOT better!

tepid film; bland kewpie doll astronauts chase each other around, resulting in little gore
Twenty years after ALIEN, they're still recycling the formula. But as demonstrated by ALIEN CARGO, the forumla has lost a lot of steam over the decades.

As with ALIEN, ALIEN CARGO features what are supposed to be gritty, jaded, cynical astronauts hauling cargo for a sleazy mining company.

But ALIEN CARGO's astronauts lack the necessary grit. There are ten of them, but two die early, and six spend most of the film in hybernation. The two remaining astronauts look barely 20 years old. I know this was meant to create "youth appeal" for the market, but I just didn't buy that these were real astronauts. They were more like whiny coeds.

(Yes, I know the film offers a rationale; these astronauts are older than they look, since they spend much time in hybernation, but they still lack the requisite maturity or gravitas.)

ALIEN CARGO is really low budget, and it shows. I assume this is a direct-to-video movie. Just two actors with any real screen time. The rescue ship also has only two astronauts, spouting really bad dialogue. One's obviously a villain, the other obviously compassionate; really lame good cop/bad cop stuff, resulting in some phony-sounding "conflict."

Worse, ALIEN CARGO has no alien. Apparently, some space germ has infiltrated the ship, causing the astronauts to go crazy and kill each other. But since most of the screen time is just the two young astronauts, and they're too cute to kill off (they're in love!), nothing much happens. They chase each other around, and wield shivs, and smash equipment, but nothing more dramatic than that. (At least not until the end, but by then I didn't care; I was only glad the film was over.)

So really, with no alien, ALIEN CARGO is more of a "killer astronaut" film, an offshot of ALIEN's killer alien subgenre.

Even so, I've seen made-for-cable "killer astronaut" movies with more suspense than ALIEN CARGO. For instance, TRAPPED IN SPACE, starring Kay Lenz.

Of course, if you like killer astronaut films, the best was shot nearly 20 years before ALIEN CARGO, namely HORROR PLANET (aka, INSEMINOID). HORROR PLANET's astronauts wield chainsaws, there's blood and gore, and there's even a carnivorous alien at the end.

I love horror/sci-fi films, but there are many gorier and more suspenseful ones than ALIEN CARGO. Try the ALIEN series (if you haven't seen it already -- the first and fourth are the best), then check out HORROR PLANET, FORBIDDEN WORLD (not to be confused with the 1950s non-horror FORBIDDEN PLANET), and GALAXY OF TERROR. Even TRAPPED IN SPACE is better.

ALIEN CARGO is okay, but only for highly forgiving, hardcore fans of ALIEN knockoffs.

Surprisingly Good Movie
This movie is a sleeper "classic" sci fi movie. The movie
builds quite a bit of suspense and drama and has a real aura
of mystery - plus it has a very "hopeful" and "promising"
ending.

The lead characters are honorable and much more believable
than the classic hollywood fare.

Alien Cargo
The crew of a transport spacecraft, whose route takes them between Titan and Mars, spends most of their trip in hibernation with only two crewmembers awake at any one time. It's not a fun job, but Chris (Jason London) and Theta (Missy Crider) manage to find a bit of excitement with an illicit affair that's against a strict company policy. Chris rigs the random draw that chooses shift mates so he and Theta can share a shift. When Chris and Theta awake for their stint, they find the ship is damaged, the previous shift's crew is missing, and they've been asleep far too long. In finding out what happened, they discover that they're also nearly out of fuel and life support and the previous crew brought aboard a mysterious piece of space debris. This debris is implicated in whatever happened to the ship. It becomes a race against time to save the remaining crew, while whatever happened to the missing crew begins to also affect Chris and then Theta.

To its credit, Alien Cargo's plot builds a fair bit of suspense and the acting of London and Crider is acceptable, even if nobody's going to win any awards for this effort. Most of the special effects look worse than what you'll find on a typical sci-fi television show, with the exception of the low gravity action, which does look pretty real. The ending at least partly makes up for the overall lack of excitement throughout the rest of the film. Alien Cargo also shares many, many similarities with Ridley Scott's Alien, in both plot and characters. You probably won't want to go out of your way to watch Alien Cargo, but it's enjoyable enough that a real sci-fi fan might find it worthwhile.