Neill Blomkamp is off RoboCop to direct a horror/thriller. Interesting timing.
Also...A potential end. Forgive me. I'm bored lol.
Spoiler
David recalls the location of LV-426 from ship data on Planet 4. He wants another source of the black goo. As he navigates above the planet, prior damage forces an emergency landing on the planet. A support beam rams through his face during the opening credits. Only a few of the colonists survive. Their cryotubes respond to a directive concerning the crash and cycle open.
The facehuggers escape David's guts and hide out to finish growing. Our reluctant female lead searches for Daniels, but her cryotube is also destroyed. She discovers David, and hooks up a data pad to his leads. His AI has survived. Now he is stuck in an iPad 79X, the first model to return the 3.5mm headphone jack in generations. David still desires to get to the black goo, and hopes to upload himself to the Derelicts systems, and begins to manipulate the survivors toward this goal, with the promise of posting the ship back to Earth. A lava flow that is slowly covering the Covenant expedites this process. Unfortunately, the facehuggers subdue two survivors. Now David's triumph becomes his greatest threat, an ironic twists that he realizes mirrors his own turn on humanity. His creations may be his demise.
Eventually the aliens start picking off the crew. The survivors gather supplies, don spacesuits, and begin to traverse the harsh terrain of LV-426. One by one, they are picked off in the maelstrom. Finally, a few of them reach the derelict and enter. David discovers that the long dead pilot is in fact a superior species to the Engineers. He remarks the engineers may worship the Space Jockeys and modeled their craft and equipment (ie suits) after them. He only had navigation and ship data available to him, not the history of the species. He notices the chestburster hole. Panic sets in. He starts to bleat about his symphony, his work. It's his creation. No one could be as smart as him.
David tries to get hooked to the ship's computer, but our heroes wants to investigate the hole, desperate for a weapon to stop the creatures. David implores her to hook him up first, but she can't trust him fter his emotional outburst. He created these monsters chasing them and he brought them to this hellish world. With no way to go down into the hole, she and the other survivor explore the ship.
As they explore, they come across long dead xenos scattered about a long dormant hive entrance. Our hero remarks they look more advanced than David's primitive beasts. His anger and mania intensifies. He must crush this lowly human.
In the hold, one of David's xenos examines the eggs, it's not so primitive brain working out the basic connection, accessing it's genetic memory.
The trio find an armory, but only one weapon has any charge left. One of the xenos corners them. They fire a shot. It strikes a canister, exploding it. The xeno ruptures, acid spraying and killing the other survivor. The blood melts through the deck, disabling the engine. Only the female and David/Ipad79 remain. The weapon is useless. Now she is willing to plug David in, hoping the cryopod can seal her away from the creature. As David uploads she has second thoughts and yanks the datapad out. Too late.
David immediately access everything stored on the vessel about the xeno. It's displayed on a hologram. Our survivor laughs at David and mocks his failure. She points out that he merely worked within the parameters of someone else's genius, like a child fingerpainting on a still wet Picasso. Now he has trapped them there to die and his own arrogance led to this moment. That is the proof that he is his as human as anyone else, the final insult. He materializes into hologram form, rage twisting his features as he reaches for her neck. She laughs in his face. He is powerless to harm her. She tells him the power will run out and he can wallow in his misery alone for the next few hundred years.
The xeno, with a new objective, moves slower, stealthily. No hissing, no growling, just methodical. David doesn't say a word. It pounces on her from behind. She doesn't bother to resist. It drags her in into the hole, a look of victorious defiance on her face as she locks eyes with David. He will die here.
Hours later David notices something crawling from the hole. Biomechanical perfection stands before him. It has fresh acid blood from the other beast on its carapace. David marvels at it. His narcissism can't accept he was wrong. He can improve on this. He just needs material. Michaelangelo didn't create the stone used to craft his namesake afterall. Going back into the computer, David opens the communication array. It's damaged. An emergency beacon is still functional though. Sadly, it can only broadcast a warning to engineer vessels. "Oh well. Curiosity killed the cat.". The beacon powers on.
Roll credits. David destroyed by his arrogance, left in solitude to die, a bridge to Alien achieved by activation of the beacon. Derelict age restored, Alien origins still possibly ancient. Xeno starves to death in the bowels of the Derelict.
