Fox Releases Alien: Covenant VR Experience
Today, 4-26, is Alien Day, the unofficial holiday declared by 20th Century Fox to promote its upcoming Alien movie. And how are they celebrating? With this new virtual reality film that anyone with an Oculus can experience.
You might be expecting a jump-scare piece where you’re in a dark corridor and the Alien jumps out of nowhere, but this wasn’t the approach Fox went with. This time YOU’RE the Alien, specifically the Neomorph — the new breed briefly glimpsed at the end of Prometheus who will play a role in Covenant. And what will you be doing?
Um….finding out what being born is like. The VR experience is called “Alien Covenant In Utero” and it’s described as “a 360-degree virtual reality journey into a living nightmare [that] offers a terrifyingly close and personal encounter as an alien neomorph at the time of its birth…reliving the very first memories of the neomorph in an immersive environment.” Now that’s bizarre.
But if you’ve got an Oculus, what else are you going to do with the thing? Might as well pretend to be a parasite hatching out of someone’s stomach.
Other events this Alien Day include a special theatrical re-release of the original 1979 film, but only in specific areas, some hard to reach. If you manage to be lucky enough to go, let me know what it was like.