I'm inclined to believe him a little more this time, given the promise of a hard R rating. Yes, he did say the same thing before Prometheus came out, but anecdotally speaking there were reports of faintings and/or heart attacks during the cesarean sequence and I had a female friend who said she was on the edge of her seat during some scenes, thus Ridley did succeed in some cases, even if they represented a minority.
We need long takes, dark corridors, slow pacing, creepy cues, atmosphere and intensity by the 3rd act, if Ridley hits those notes then it'll be scary.
and again people with the lame prometheus thing, it was an alien prequel until fox decided it wasnt anymore, what do you think happens when someone who is paying you decides to change everything? even if the scary elements were toned down, and the direct alien references removed, that movie was simply awesome, on its own right, just because it ended up not being a full alien prequel everyone talks shit about it, but if this time indeed the movie indeed ends up being both a sequel to prometheus and a prequel to alien, it can possibly become a masterpiece, though on the other hand, james cameron's avatar was visually awesome and well acted and scripted but was overrated as hell, so given that the same people says prometheus was crap and avatar a masterpiece in movie history, yeah...even if the alien covenant is perfect, people will still score it as low as possible, just because they are a*****les