True, it doesn't have that sitting on the edge, waiting for the beasty to jump out bit, but that's been done with the first Alien film (and to a degree with the later ones). If you tried to do that again, you would just be validly accused of repetition. It's hard to see how to do that, which hasn't been done better a dozen times since (in a variety of monster and horror films). There's little you can do with that now, which isn't horribly unoriginal.
I think with this film they tried to have slightly more plot than just a nasty beasty out to eat the characters (which is largely what Alien is). It was original insofar as the beasty was particularly nasty and efficient, and was set in space, which hadn't been done as well at that time.
Should they make a sequel, there's more room for the storyline, although it would risk being a bit predictable, so they possibly have to try and go off at a tangent from the way we may think that they would go, insofar as whether the Engineers still exist, and what their current intentions are towards the Earth (regardless of the opinions of the chap in this film, who may have been a bit behind the times). I'd be interested to see where they go with it, although it could be a bit of a let down, if they got it wrong.