Dustin Roberts
I will never forget the experience of watching the original Alien for the first time. My weekly trips to the local library to check out classic science fiction and monster movies with my dad meant that I was fairly familiar with the genre space that it inhabited. I lived on a steady diet of Kaiju movies, classic Hollywood sci-fi, and episodes of The Twilight Zone, so I felt like I knew what to expect. I didn’t.
What unfolded over the following two hours was one of the greatest and most powerful cinematic experiences of my life. It was terrifying in ways that I didn’t know movies could be. The claustrophobia of being stuck on a ship with an unkillable murder machine, one that you could hardly see until it was upon you, made it feel hard to breathe. Additionally, there was a strong sense of mystery the whole time. What are these creatures? What is the story of the crashed ship that housed the eggs? As the threat morphed from an egg to a strange spider creature to a small snake-looking thing to a full-on terrifying monster, the movie kept the viewer on their toes, never knowing what to expect until the very last frame.
And that’s a high that the movies in the franchise have never been able to replicate. Aliens was an entertaining enough entry with its fast-paced balls-to-the-wall military action, but it wasn’t as evocative as Alien, nor as stacked with great characters. Alien 3 was, I think, was fascinating misfire of a prison break film and a much better movie than people gave it credit for while still being wildly flawed. Scott’s own Prometheus and Alien: Covenant went in an entirely different direction: existential science fiction movies that are extremely ambitious, maybe overly so for some people. There are horror elements in them, but they aren’t even attempting to hit the same notes as the original, they were different beasts entirely.
Alien: Romulus is the first movie in the franchise to attempt to return to its roots, and as such it loses the ambitions of most of the other films in the franchise—it’s the first one that isn’t even attempting to take us anyplace new. This could be a fascinating return to form, a movie that strips back what an Alien movie is to its core concept, and as a result of narrative simplicity, it could terrify us anew. The ingredients are there: likable people stranded on a ship with a relentless and borderline unkillable predator. Unfortunately, the end result is entertaining, but hollow, with too much nostalgia farming to stand on its own. It’s a thrill ride that won’t be easy to remember, and it is easily the most forgettable movie in the franchise, while paradoxically being one of the most well-made sequels.
When Fede Alvarez was announced as the director of the next Alien movie, it felt like a perfect match. I adore his 2013 remake of Evil Dead because of its inventiveness. In it, he found ways to make a classic horror story feel fresh while bringing the franchise back to its straight-horror roots. And his filmmaking chops haven’t weakened with Alien: Romulus; this is an impeccably taut monster movie, with a thoughtful story and some endearing characters.
The movie centers on Rain Carradine (played by Cailee Spaeny) and her “brother” named Andy (played by David Jonsson), who is actually an android programmed by her father to be a sort of protector for Rain after his death. Rain has a small crew of friends who are stuck on a distant mining planet, working as indentured servants for the Weyland Yutani corporation. The planet in question is brutal: there is no sunlight so everyone lives in perpetual night, there are no protections for the workers, and no way to leave. After Rain completes her contract (a prerequisite before she can leave the planet), she is informed that her contract has been extended arbitrarily. Her future is bleak. Her parents died of lung cancer from the mines, and she and her friends are likely to find the same fate.
I love that this movie goes back to exploring the lives of working-class people who are under the thumb of the corporation; a theme that Alien explored but that has largely been dropped by the subsequent movies. Alien: Romulus feels particularly prescient right now, with its exploration of the promises and pitfalls of an increased reliance on AI, and AI that has one real goal: benefit the corporation.
Rain and her friends discover that there is a derelict ship floating just above their camp, and they hatch a plan to sneak aboard it. Their plan is to steal some cryo chambers, which will enable them to take their ship on the 9-year journey to a (hopefully) more hospitable planet. At least there will be a sun. The ship they break into, as you can imagine, isn’t quite as deserted as they think. What unfolds afterward is more or less exactly what we’ve seen in these movies before: much of the crew will be picked off one by one, until very few are left to outsmart the aliens, and while Alvarez’s skill with constructing set pieces is impressive, I never felt as invested as I did in the previous, doubtlessly more flawed, sequels.
Spaeny does an admirable job as Rain, a young woman who is in over her head, but desperately wants a better life for herself and her friends. She conveys an almost constant terror while finding reserves of courage that nobody ever expects they’ll need. Jonsson’s performance as Andy steals the show, however, with his wonderfully expressive face that oscillates between an endearing innocence and a terrifying coldness. The two of them are enough to make up for the fact that the rest of the ensemble is entirely forgettable. Utterly lacking in charisma, I constantly forgot who was who, and it didn’t help that they were mostly stereotypical character archetypes. No matter, they were largely there to be Alien fodder in excellent set pieces, but disappointing considering how strong the ensembles have been in the series’ past.
After watching Alien: Romulus, I would love to see Alvarez make an action movie. His understanding of movement and willingness to ratchet up the stakes beyond what seems possible make for thrilling moments, but very few set pieces felt very different from what we’ve seen before. This movie does very little to establish itself within the franchise as a unique experience. It’s a greatest hits album from a band you love. It’s a good time, but nothing very special on its own.
Which is a shame, because it has so many of the elements that it would need to be great. It’s sharper and more focused than any Alien movie after the first two, and it has two wonderful leads who are more than capable of carrying the audience through the action. Still, if we’re going to lose the increasing ambition of the more recent entries, then I wish that it was more inventive. As a huge fan of Alvarez’s Evil Dead, I had high hopes that he had what it took to reinvent a stagnant horror franchise, but he seemed constrained here.
Part of his constraint might have to do with the titular aliens themselves. One of the greatest creature designs of all time, the Xenomorph is iconic, and after decades of seeing them on screen, of having everything that was once surprising about them explained in almost every movie, and of seeing them dispatched in various ways, their mystery is gone, and the mystery was key to the horror of Scott’s original. I’m not saying that a talented and creative filmmaker couldn’t find plenty of ways to make a terrifying Alien movie, but I think that adding the modern-day requirement of constant nostalgia hits, of constantly reminding the viewers of other movies, hemmed this movie in ways that are unfortunate and unnecessary. This movie goes through the motions of Alien, becomes bigger and faster like Aliens, and eventually jams in references to pretty much every other movie along the way, including recreating iconic shots from previous movies and repeating famous lines (including bringing back a character famously played by a now dead actor with CGI, a choice that is morally dubious and aesthetically hideous). Many of these moments did cause some people in my screening to cheer, but I found them grating and distracting.
Still, there are flourishes of brilliance. Without giving too much away, there’s a segment during the finale where almost all of my criticisms faded away, and I scooted to the edge of my seat. I think I forgot to breathe for a moment. I’m sure this will be a controversial segment of the film, but Alvarez brilliantly reminds us that Alien was, at times, a wonderfully disturbing body horror experience. The series has remembered this from time to time in various outings, but rarely has it been as effective as the final 20 minutes or so of Alien: Romulus. I only wish that it happened sooner in the movie, I wish that Alvarez let it play out over a longer section of the runtime, I wish that he could have done more of this. As it is, it’s a thrilling reminder of what I was hoping this movie would be throughout. It is inventive, fresh, and terrifying.
I’m disappointed in Alien: Romulus because of what this movie might have been, which may be a little unfair. I don’t want to give the impression that it’s a bad movie, because it isn’t. This is an impeccably made movie that will remind viewers of how great a good Alien movie can be. I found it thrilling and exciting throughout, with excellent world-building, some charming performances, and wonderful set pieces. I just wish that they had the courage to let it stand on its own without constantly nodding to the series’ past. That’s no way to drive the series into the future.
