Alien: Romulus
Mark White
In space, no one can hear you scream.
The tagline famously associated with the ALIEN franchise is just as meaningful and precise as it was all those years ago when Sigourney Weaver first embodied Ellen Ripley aboard the doomed Nostromo in Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi horror masterpiece. The idea of remote isolation in the most unforgiving and unsympathetic environments, being hunted by a nightmarish elite organism is enough to make anyone’s pulse race, and in Fede Álvarez’s ALIEN: ROMULUS, a loyal and emphatic ‘old-school’ approach to practical design – and scares – brings visceral ‘sulphuric blood’ back to the franchise, while mostly playing to the beats and tropes of the series itself to please fans.
Rain (Cailee Spaeny), a young woman stuck on a grim, mud-caked remote mining planet – all managed at every facet of civilian life by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation – faces more unfairly assigned indentured work in the mines and no hope of a future other than what she knows. Her only other family is her brother Andy (David Jonsson), a synthetic companion programmed by her recently deceased father to be a watchful companion to her. Desperate to get off-world and to the remote (and in corporation-free space) planet Varga, Rain agrees to follow her friends on an illegal orbit shuttle run above the planet to scavenge a recently geo-synchronized and abandoned spacecraft in the hopes of stealing leftover cryo fuel and cry pods in the hopes of making the eighty-year journey to Varga and escape the brutality of Weyland-Yutani. The human troop consists of Rain’s sort-of boyfriend, Tyler (Archie Renaux), his brother and cousin, and his brother’s girlfriend. The group also allows Andy to come along – but for the sole purpose of using his synthetic design and connections to be able to speak to the abandoned crafts AI-based computer program, MU/TH/UR. As Rain and her friends board and explore the vessel, several things become clear very quickly: the vessel is a badly damaged experimental research facility owned by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, something very bad happened on board to leave it abandoned, and they are not the only organisms…onboard.
The first half hour of the film moves along very quickly, pushing through dialogue meant as quick exposition but leaving little to no room for emotional resonance while chaining several visually arresting scenes of Rain’s group entering orbit, docking with the abandoned craft, and moving their way through sections of the craft in search of their sci-fi plunder. While elaborate, rotated camera angles and tracking shots, exquisite lighting, and highly detailed set design all bring immense reality to the textures, temperatures, sounds (or lack thereof), and awe of things like planetary bodies, space flight, and zero-gravity environments, the human characters in the group are barely etched out in the script and presented on camera. The only relationship receiving any refining is that of Rain and Andy, serving as not only an attempt at an emotional arc through the story, but as an ominous source of conflict for Rain and the others, for the film’s script is not simply ‘man vs monster’ or ‘man vs environment,’ but ‘man vs machine vs monster’ in the ultimate and soulless environment of space. The rest of the crew caught in this cold steel nightmare barely register as more than xenomorph fodder; without Spaeny and Jonsson delivering considered and nuanced performances with the thick-tongued dialogue and knowing how to play to each other, the entirety of the human cast could be replaced by almost any stock ‘slasher’ cast of young talent, ready and eager to cry and crawl and scream and be covered in stage liquids of varying color to the joy and entertainment of the horror crowd.
A fantastically gory ‘greatest hits’ - plus some ‘new’ material - showcase for the franchise that is thankfully more ‘ALIENS’ than it is ‘RESURRECTIONS’
Speaking of the horror element – which is why many people will turn out to see the film opening weekend – Álvarez knows what fans and horror junkies are expecting from this entry in the series, as well as what will make this film memorable for younger audiences who may not be overly familiar with the staples of the franchise. Classic face hugger attacks, chest-busting incubation and birth, streams of corrosive blood on metal and flesh… all accounted for in this film. But seeing as this is an ‘interquel’ – set between ALIEN and ALIENS in the series chronology – Álvarez is very aware that the film has to innovate and surprise, as well as surpass some of the more modern failures of the series by taking the film back to its roots, which means an obvious – and impressive – utilization of practical physical special effects. Costuming, prosthetics, animatronics, and more make the many xenomorphs of this film feel incredibly real; whether crawling, jumping, stalking, or even in close-up of their fearsome, salivating sleek heads and teeth, the tangible presence of something real on film makes every detail truly gruesome. One scene involving the predatory miniature ‘tongue’ with teeth on one xenomorph, slowly peering out of the primary mouth and threatening to puncture an eye socket on one of the humans showcases tight, snarling lips around the teeth, glazed in flowing, thick saliva that is the stuff of night terrors. Álvarez adds new terror by showing us the horrific (and so very moist) evolution of the xenomorphs between evolutionary stages, as well as what happens when other species are used as hosts. It is deliriously scary stuff and precisely what audiences are looking to get with a ticket: awesomely terrifying creature effects, jump scares, intense action, and some ramped-up tension in the claustrophobic emptiness of space.
For many, these ALIEN elements are more than enough; Álvarez’s horror sequences are well paced and maximize their practical effects in a way that harkens to the original ALIEN and its original scares. As a thrill ride feature, Romulus is profoundly effective and ranks among the best of the series in that regard – one can only imagine what a 4DX screening would be like! But outside of the horror-tuned machinery of this vessel, weak characters, an emotionally-lacking and purposeless story, as well as a deep need for fan service to be met or ‘bested’, all keep the motor of this series entry whirring and running, but not humming and powerful as one might hope. After all, Álvarez’s pedigree as a horror movie director is well established and on show here, but for a blunt comparison, this film plays like his remake of The Evil Dead, and that comes with some of the wildly silly or incoherent elements of that film that he managed to avoid with the lean and muscular (and simple) gem that is Don’t Breathe.
What made the original ALIEN so effective was the care and time Ridley Scott took to allow audiences to meet and care for the team, as well as the gradual build-up to the initial ‘first contact’ and the subsequent horror and its fallout. Perhaps, in the shadow of the original, Álvarez’s Romulus would always be destined to struggle. The franchise’s tropes and thrills are well-known, even to those who steer clear of these types of films, so perhaps any ideas of surprising audiences with the shock of the ‘perfect organism’ are simply not going to work – nothing is as shocking or original as it was in 1979. But Álvarez also seems eager – too eager – to get to the body horror and jump scares with the giant xenomorphs that the cinematic foreplay of horror movies is rushed to get to the scares and the action at the risk of allowing the audience to invest in Rain and her friends, or truly build a complex connection with her relationship with Andy. Instead, we are given broad points to simply accept as we anticipate the start of the alien carnage: AI is always bad so don’t trust it, our ‘final girl’ is clearly marked… now cue the face huggers! It feels as though Álvarez struggles with just when and how to pivot to the franchise playbook and when not to, in order to service a story while trying to pay homage to the original and please fans, and somehow improve on the last few sequels that left audiences cold or bored. The result is a film that is indeed better than latter entries – certainly better than the inane Resurrection, the philosophically heavy Covenant, or any film featuring the Predators. It is designed to thrill and scare and deliver the goods the series is known for – and it succeeds – but with Álvarez’s horror ‘know-how’ and the dedication to telling a tangible and self-contained ALIEN story, one could be forgiven for expecting a bit more brain and a bit more heart…more than the ones spattered across the space station anyway.
Final Thought
Scott’s original is always going to be best of the series, but Romulus - and Álvarez - are dedicated to the genuine horror experience of the original, and that is worth experiencing in a packed cinema.