Intensity 🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Written and Directed by Fede Alvarez
I’m not the first to write this, and I won’t be the last. Alien: Romulus plays like a greatest hits album… in space. It is a return to form, for those pining for the feels of the first two movies. At times, it can feel a bit fan-service heavy, but Fede Alvarez knows a thing or two about how to craft a scary horror film. We are graced with two of the best new characters to be added to the franchise: River and Andy, who you lock into from their first moments on the screen.
Introducing a new story into a venerable horror franchise can be difficult. Aliens was a near-miracle sequel. Even Ridley Scott himself stumbled around a bit with the beautiful but severely flawed films Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. Fede Alvarez has proved to be a true student of what makes this franchise tick. He consulted Scott and James Cameron and impressed them both. (Note: Scott is a producer for this film.)
Alien Romulus has a truly compelling foundational story about young people growing up on a terraforming planet, doomed to suffer the fate of their parents who have died mining for the mega-corp Weyland Yutani. Alvarez populates this film with familiar callbacks, subtle Easter Eggs, and a few ham-fisted fan service moments. If a movie can feel both immense and tightly claustrophobic at the same time, Alien: Romulus managed to pull off that feat.
The Cast:
- Cailee Spaeny plays Rain Carradine, a young orphaned woman who has just accumulated enough credits to get off of the colony planet and travel to the idyllic planet Yvaga.
- David Jonsson plays Andy, a slightly damaged synthetic who Rain’s father salvaged from the scrap heap. Andy is programmed to do whatever is best for Rain. The two are like siblings.
- Archie Renaux plays Tyler, who discovered a ship that has entered the orbit of their planet. He has masterminded a plan to get off-world to a better place.
- Isabella Merced plays Kay, Tyler’s pregnant sister.
- Spike Fearn plays Bjorn, Tyler’s hot-headed cousin, whose mother died in a mining accident. A synthetic sacrificed their lives to save several other miners.
- Aileen Wu plays Navarro, Bjorn’s girlfriend, and the pilot of the mining cargo transport Corbelan.
A BRIEF SYNOPSIS OF ALIEN ROMULUS
We begin the film observing a salvage operation at the wreckage of the Nostromo and its cargo. A fossilized object is hauled onto a ship. The ship returns to a research facility where a team of scientists cut the object open, revealing the remains of the xenomorph that Ripley ejected from the shuttle in Alien. Cut to credits!
Rain and Andy are preparing to cash in Rain’s credits to get off of the desolate terraforming planet. Her parents both died mining this planet. Remaining on Jackson’s Star would spell a certain death sentence. Rain is rebuffed by the company officer, who informs her that her contract has been renewed for another five years. She denies her passage. While Rain was trying to arrange passage, a gang of toughs assaults Andy, who despite being a synthetic has a sweet disposition and would rather tell dad-jokes than fight. Rain rescues Andy, and then receives a message from Tyler who has a big idea.
Tyler has just identified a drifting ship entering orbit around Jackson’s Star. It could be their ticket to get to Yvaga, because they were able to identify cryogenic sleep pods necessary for long interstellar flight that could be salvaged from this derelict vessel. They just need Andy. His android interface capabilities with the Weyland Yutani interface could gain them access to the salvage on this ship. They determine that they have only a very short window of time to pull this salvage off. If they don’t move quickly, someone else may beat them to it.
The young crew finds that the wayward ship is actually a drifting space station. This is The Renaissance, an outpost built from two structures: Romulus and Remus. (Historically, the mythical twins who created Rome.) The station is cycling through gravity purges and appears abandoned and internally damaged. The good news is that the cryo-pods are still intact. Unfortunately, the pods are low on cryogenic fuel, so Tyler, Andy, and Bjorn search the station for fuel. They find a room that indicates a large course of the needed fuel. As they start to salvage the fuel, they fail to recognize that the chamber is housing face-huggers in stasis. They just woke up the sleeping monsters.
OK… anything else from this point forward will be spoiler-heavy. From this point forward it plays just like you would expect an Alien franchise film… but the ending features an homage that I completely did not expect.
EVALUATION OF ALIEN ROMULUS
WHAT WORKED WELL:
This is a well-crafted Alien franchise film. The sets, effects, costumes, lighting, and sound are all technical marvels. It has a rock-solid premise, and for the most part, the characters avoid doing foolish things that have doomed previous crews in the franchise. (Alien Covenant! AHEM! Cough Cough Alien3! Cough Cough!) This movie is very intense. I rarely get sweaty palms, but my hands got flop sweat. I think I also said “OH NO!” aloud twice in the movie. Good job Fede. You got my heart racing.
The cast this time is the right size. You don’t have some random victim who you just meet get offed. I am a firm believer that terror comes when you have a rooting interest in the protagonists and you don’t want bad things to happen to them. Box checked. These are kids, not hardened mercenaries or soldiers. They have dreams and ambitions, and you can empathize. You ROOT for them in a way that we haven’t been able to in quite a while.
Cailee Spaney and David Jonsson just became stars. They are SO GOOD in these roles. Their chemistry and empathy radiate from the screen. River is tough, but not RIPLEY TOUGH. Yes, she slings the pulse rifle and does have her Ripley moment, but for the most part, she is brains and grit. Andy is the best of the synthetics. Hands down. Better than Bishop, Ash, and David. It’s also great to see Andy served two different ways, and that, not surprisingly, synthetics can be upgraded.
SOME QUIBBLES:
This movie fills in the blank of what happens between the chest-burster and the adult form of the xenomorph! I always wondered about that pupae stage. Having said that, the xenomorphs mature much too quickly in this film. Each film seems to have a different pace to the life cycles of the xenomorph. Some even change the delivery method. (And we get a new one here too…) There is a running clock timer in this movie, so I understand the need to have the creatures evolve fast, but I would have preferred a more measured pace. Biology doesn’t work this way… even alien biology.
Some of the homages are too blatantly obvious. There are some line-for-line dialogue cuts from other movies. Famous lines. So, be ready for them. This is not a Schwarzenegger movie, so it was a bit jarring to have these Easter Eggs. Also, there is a notable returning character in this film, and the uncanny valley is a bit too strong. I get it, but I don’t think they needed to go this way.
There is enough familiarity with the key components that fan service isn’t really necessary.
THE DEBATABLE:
The tricky thing for a movie in a franchise like Alien is finding ways to make the xenomorphs scary again. We have become so accustomed to them, we know what they can do. Part of that is a draw, but it also takes a lot of the mystery out of the horror. Fede Alvarez has managed to put some new twists in, including the big finale. The final act seems to be an Alien Resurrection reference, which I did not expect. Whether you like this direction is debatable. I saw this with my good friend Amy, another ride-or-die Alien fan, and she vehemently disliked the final scene (but enjoyed the resto of the movie), whereas I found it deeply disturbing but enjoyable. As always, your mileage may vary.
CONCLUSION:
The Alien franchise, should it remain with Fede Alvarez, is in good hands. He respects the source material (maybe a bit too much!) and he knows how to craft a horror movie. By comparison, Ridley Scott, for all his talent and craft, isn’t a natural horror director. Alvarez is a horror savant. In many ways, this movie is like Don’t Breathe, with the separation of young people looking for that one big score.
I want to see where he would take this franchise going forward. It’s not necessary to track THESE characters. They could treat this like the Predator franchise, and do another one-off from another perspective. It’s a big sandbox. And now, he’s gotten the fan-boy material out of his system.
Alien Romulus is showing in wide release and is primed for a long stay at the box office. The MPAA gave this an R rating for violence, gore, and language. This will be strong material for non-horror fans who want to check out a scary movie (This is a potential gateway film for a lot of people), but for experienced teen horror fans, this should be fine.
Review by Eric Li
TRAILER NOTE: THIS CONTAINS SPOILERS. BUT, IT’S GOOD. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
