Directed and co-written by Fede Álvarez, Alien: Romulus goes boldly where many of the Alien sequels should’ve gone before. Hard.
While the Alien franchise contains more misses than hits, it’s easy to appreciate the varying directors’ willingness to try different things over the years, while (typically) maintaining horror as its favored subgenre. But just a reminder: the original Alien from Ridley Scott is a horror masterwork, a category-defining fusion of Dark Star and Jaws that deftly combined the inherent fear of the primordial unknowns of space with the relentless randomness of nature carried by a likable, blue-collar-aesthetic cast contending with dystopic corporate overlords, complete with the film’s inspired, multi-faceted monster lore playing upon the gender-swapped fears of impregnation. In case you forgot.
But since that movie’s release 45 years ago (good lord), the series has largely evolved/devolved with every subsequently more bombastic and backstory-obsessed entry. James Cameron’s Aliens found a satisfying angle as more of an action romp and Scott’s prequel epic Prometheus has fans who cherish the film’s mythic existentialism, but other more recent entries such as Alien: Covenant attempt to do both without fully succeeding at either (a film I mostly enjoyed at release but have since wavered on).
This time, however…
Alien: Romulus doesn’t just say it’s “going back to the roots of the franchise” in the marketing, it actually does it. Fede Álvarez — who cut his bloody teeth on the horror remake Evil Dead and his original reverse-home-invasion thriller Don’t Breathe — returns with somewhat of a reboot sequel of the first Alien, essentially doing the Jurassic World and The Force Awakens thing, but not always terribly. Just occasionally terribly.
The film, co-produced by Scott, takes place in between Alien and Aliens, so it’s more interquel than sequel. It centers around a down-on-her-luck mining colonist named Rain (Cailee Spaeny) who reluctantly joins her fellow colonists in a desperate burglary of a mysteriously abandoned space station orbiting their ringed planet. Because of the risks, Rain is mostly there to look after her “brother,” Andy (David Jonsson), a malfunctioning synthetic who has the clearance to facilitate the break-in. Their plan goes awry, of course, when it turns out the station was abandoned for a pretty good reason.
All these movies tend to have at least one critical flaw…
So let’s just get this one out of the way. The unfortunate truth is that Alien: Romulus suffers greatly from its own self-imposed fan service fatigue, mostly stuffing an otherwise stellar space horror thriller worthy of the Alien name with all the winks and nods it ironically doesn’t need in order to live up to the Alien name and in fact only hinders the film.
But unlike many an Alien sequel or prequel or RedBox-destined spinoff (RIP) that more or less retcons what was so fascinating about the first film — namely all the mystery and coincidence of the Xenomorph and its existence — Alien: Romulus merely builds upon the basics and moves far away from the “what makes us human” of it all in favor of outlandish, heart-pounding, full-throated mayhem that builds slowly and then launches into the stratosphere by the film’s final moments.
Álvarez manages to make these movies viscerally appealing again…
Especially when it comes to the convincing haunted-house production design and traumatic set pieces. Like in Don’t Breathe, we’re treated to increasingly creative and tense spectacle, where you can tell Álvarez and his co-writer Rodo Sayagues set out to top themselves with every subsequent scene. To the point where you can almost forgive the mumbo jumbo “breather” moments in between for being embarrassingly beholden to tedious franchise fodder because at least it’s something of a respite for whatever wild weirdness comes next.
So in that sense, Alien: Romulus is more of a roller coaster that starts out as a dark ride vibe than it is a cerebral, operatic sci-fi, so pretty much the opposite of how Denis Villeneuve expounded upon Scott’s Blade Runner with Blade Runner 2049. Yes, the film has some obligatory commentary about the Weyland-Yutani corporation being corrupt as per usual, but it doesn’t really say anything new or surprising about this world or how it works. The originality mostly lurks in the frenetic execution, not the world building or plot. In some ways it scales back, in other ways it breaks the scale entirely.
The bottom line.
Alien: Romulus is an expanded redux of the first film with updated practical effects, a likable heroine who puts non-humans before herself, and a victory lap that wants you to revel in the meta narrative of it all now that a new director is at the helm. I already mentioned The Force Awakens for a reason, you see. But to be fair, these comparisons also apply to the entire Alien franchise. These movies always have the same bones to them: a crew of misfits anchored by a short-haired female protagonist lands on a strange planet, Xenomorphs wreak havoc, everyone shares a single brain cell, someone among them is a traitor, the epilogue becomes a second climax, and so on and so on.
But that’s not a criticism, it’s more of an expectation. People show up to Alien movies wanting the same thing done a little differently, and Álvarez successfully pushes the dials up on just about everything, proving you really can remix the first film’s old-school horror beats without building a messy, pretentious cinematic saga out of the whole thing. For example, there’s no sinful syntethic played by Michael Fassbender here, a sign that Álvarez decided to course correct on what was probably intended to be a trilogy capper to Prometheus and Alien: Covenant in the wake of Disney buying Fox. Sorry, David fans. That was probably for the best.
Extra Credits:
- No end-credits stinger, but you might need the extra time to sit and process that last scene, anyway.
- Wonderful throwback with the atmospheric opening credits in this one that I fully appreciated. Loved getting a hint at the cast as someone who screened this without watching any trailers or knowing much about the movie at all (including its place in the timeline).
- Speaking of the timeline, a lot of the exposition in this movie is weirdly incomprehensible. I forgave most of it because I was busy enjoying the scenery and honestly, the character cues told me everything I needed to know. Simple, basic, true-to-formula.
- Dialogue issues weren’t due to sound issues. I watched this on true IMAX (75×97 feet at the AMC Metreon in San Francisco) and the movie devoured that real estate.
- There’s a particular scene in here that feels like such an obvious, welcome nod to Don’t Breathe.
- The entire cast is decent-to-good in this, but Jonsson is the true standout as the synthetic with a heart of gold. Loved that they avoided making him another David and tied him to Rain with actual personal stakes that make sense within the context of this dreary world/universe.
- Isabela Merced is also in this, which I was happy to see since she needed a quick win after Madame Web, but let’s just say I’m conflicted on how this character turns out. Prepare for discourse!
- Fun fact I can’t believe I almost forgot. This movie was originally supposed to come out on Hulu, but they switched to theatrical right before they finished filming. If only they’d done that with Prey…
