Yes, 6 out of 10. Loud, fast creature fear, with a squad of marines in the middle of it.
🐱THE SCARE SIGNAL
SCARE SCORE
6 /10
🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱
DREAD LEVEL
Medium
Expect a night of looking at the ceiling.
DOG
Dog: fine
fine, no dog dies.
Ruling: Fine for most adults and tougher teenagers who don't mind constant gunfire.
Aliens runs two hours and seventeen minutes. Ellen Ripley is rescued after 57 years in stasis, told nobody believes her story about alien eggs, and then asked to go back to the exact place she warned everyone about.
The premise, briefly
Fifty-seven years after the Nostromo, Ripley is talked into returning to the moon where the creatures were found, this time with a squad of Colonial Marines.
How much do you want to know?
🐱
The verdict above is spoiler-free. Everything below, including the ending, stays hidden until you pick a depth.
🐱CUT TO THE CHASE
How it ends
Ripley burns the queen's eggs and escapes the colony before it explodes. The queen follows them onto the Sulaco, where Ripley shoves it out an airlock. Ripley, Newt, Hicks and the damaged Bishop go into hypersleep.
The scene you're dreading
In the nest, after the marines land, they find cocooned colonists serving as hosts for alien embryos. A newborn alien bursts through a colonist's chest, and the noise brings several adult aliens, who ambush the squad. The fight that follows is the loud part of the movie.
The dog
No dog dies in Aliens.
It is a loud action-horror movie with jump scares, where the fear comes from creatures attacking in groups.
THE SHORT VERSION IS HIDDEN
How it ends, the scene you're dreading, what happens to the dog, and the bottom line. About twenty seconds to read.
What actually happens
A debriefing nobody believes
A deep-space salvage crew finds an escape shuttle with Ellen Ripley inside, still in stasis after 57 years. To kill an alien creature that slaughtered her crew, she had blown up her ship, the Nostromo. Her employers at the Weyland-Yutani Corporation question her about it and do not believe her story about alien eggs on the exomoon LV-426, which now has a terraforming colony. After contact with the colony is lost, company representative Carter Burke and Colonial Marine Lieutenant Gorman ask Ripley to come along and investigate. She agrees only if they promise to exterminate the creatures. On the spaceship Sulaco she meets the Colonial Marines and the android Bishop. She distrusts Bishop, because the Nostromo's android, Ash, turned on the crew under company orders to protect the creature.
A dropship lands the group on LV-426, where the colony is badly damaged and two live facehuggers sit in containment tanks. The only colonist they find is a traumatized girl nicknamed Newt. The marines follow the colonists' signals to the atmosphere processing station and go down through corridors covered in alien secretions. This is the scene to brace for, and it comes soon after the landing. At the center of the station they find opened eggs, dead facehuggers and colonists cocooned to serve as hosts. A newborn alien bursts through a colonist's chest and the marines kill it. The noise wakes several adult aliens, who ambush the squad and kill or capture many of them. Gorman panics, so Ripley takes over and drives the armored carrier straight into the nest to pull out Hicks, Hudson and Vasquez. A stowaway alien kills the dropship's pilots and the ship crashes into the station, which leaves the survivors with little ammunition and a barricaded building.
Burke's business plan
Ripley finds out that Burke sent the colonists to investigate the derelict ship in the first place, hoping to profit by taking the eggs back for weapons research. Before she can tell anyone, Bishop reports that the crash broke the cooling system of the power plant, which means the whole colony is about to explode. Bishop volunteers to remotely fly the remaining dropship to the surface. Ripley and Newt wake in the medical lab with two freed facehuggers, and Ripley sets off the fire alarm so the marines can rescue them. She accuses Burke of releasing the facehuggers so they could smuggle embryos past quarantine inside her and Newt. The power cuts out and aliens attack through the ceiling. Burke is killed, Hudson is subdued, Hicks is injured, and Gorman and Vasquez sacrifice themselves rather than be captured. Newt is taken.
A rescue with a rather large mother
Ripley gets Hicks to the dropship, then arms herself and goes back down into the hive alone to find Newt. She does, and the two run into the alien queen in the middle of dozens of eggs. When one begins to open, Ripley burns the eggs and destroys the queen's ovipositor. The queen, now furious, chases them to the dropship. Ripley and Newt get aboard with Bishop and an unconscious Hicks seconds before the station explodes in a nuclear blast and takes the colony with it.
The ending, explained
The queen has stowed away in the dropship's landing gear and attacks once everyone is aboard the Sulaco. She rips Bishop in half and moves toward Newt. Ripley fights the queen from inside a cargo loader exosuit, pushes her into an airlock and expels her into space, while the damaged Bishop shields Newt. Ripley, Newt, Hicks and Bishop all enter hypersleep for the trip back to Earth. Burke, Gorman and Vasquez are dead, and the colony is gone.
The post-credits ruling
There is no post-credits scene. You can leave when the credits start.
✓ Spoiled safelyDog status: fine, no dog dies.
Questions people ask at 1am
Is Aliens scary?
Aliens is a 6 out of 10 with medium dread. The fear is fast and loud, with jump scares in the nest and aliens that attack through the ceiling once the survivors have barricaded themselves in.
How does Aliens end?
Ripley destroys the nest, escapes the colony before it explodes, and ejects the queen into space from the Sulaco. She, Newt, Hicks and the damaged Bishop go into hypersleep for Earth.
Does the dog die in Aliens?
No dog dies in Aliens.
Is there a post-credits scene in Aliens?
No. Aliens has no post-credits scene, so you can leave when the credits start.
Why does Ripley distrust Bishop in Aliens?
On Ripley's first trip, the Nostromo's android, Ash, sided with the creature against the crew because the company told it to. That is why she distrusts Bishop when she meets him aboard the Sulaco. By the end he volunteers to fly the last dropship to the surface and shields Newt from the queen.
BLURRED FOR YOUR PROTECTION
The whole plot of Aliens is hidden, ending included. It stays that way until you ask.
You do not have to sit through two hours of Aliens to know who gets back on the Sulaco. Install Scaredy Cat and it will blur the rest of the internet's horror for you.
