Alien: Romulus returns the sci-fi franchise to its roots with an entry that draws on the horror premise of the original film rather than the high-brow aspirations of the most recent entries.
Set sometime between the events of the first and second movie, Alien: Romulus is a more grounded effort as opposed to having the philosophical undertones of Ridley Scott’s Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. The result is a more approachable movie but sometimes feels more like a video game.
The original Alien movie, at its heart, was a slasher movie set in space. Following that first movie, subsequent filmmakers, and Ridley Scott, himself, seemed to overlook what makes the Alien universe so appealing. In a nutshell, it’s essentially a load of blue-collar workers in space working for a shit company. Something very relatable for most of us. In the case of Weyland-Yutani quite possibly the shittest company ever.
Aliens shifted the series more towards that of an action movie. The third movie, which could have ended novice director David Fincher’s career, didn’t know quite what it was. The fourth movie, well, we’ll leave it at that. Even Ridley Scott’s return to the franchise struggled to revitalise the series.
Alien: Romulus seeks to right the ship.
After a brief dialogue-free scene-setting sequence that suggests that “the company”, Weyland-Yutani, is up to its old tricks, Alien: Romulus takes us back to the 1970s retro-future of Alien. Rain and her “brother”, Andy (a salvaged synthetic programmed by her late parents to look after her) live on Jackson’s Star, a Weyland-Yutani mining colony. The grim place is also in perpetual darkness.
The movie gives us a better idea of the conditions the people of Hadley’s Hope lived under that was only alluded to in James Cameron’s Aliens. The colonists, effectively indentured slaves, are forced to work for years to buy their way to a better life on a terraformed world. Most, though, end up dying of one of the novel illnesses that seem to afflict space-faring humans.
A group of Rain’s acquaintances have had enough of being exploited by the company and have found a derelict space station in the ringed planet’s orbit. The station has the cryo-pods that they need to make the nine-year space voyage to freedom. The only catch is that they need Andy’s help, as a Wayland-Yutani synthetic, to access the station. Of course, the salvage mission doesn’t go to plan.
I wasn’t sure of the distinctively youthful cast, at first. But Cailee Spaeny, fresh from Alex Garland’s Civil War, steps into the archetype made famous by Sigourney Weaver, with ease. David Jonsson, as Andy, also does an impressive job as both the malfunctioning synthetic and an upgraded version later in the film. Hats off to the rest of the cast who also do a great job of selling the idea of a rebellious, if fated, crew of misfits.
The movie features all your favourite stages of the xenomorphic lifecycle. Lots of facehuggers, a chestburster and, of course, the aliens, themselves. The movie introduces a new stage in the lifecycle, a cocoon, both for the transition between the chestburster and the adult alien, as well as a dormant stage. We also get to see something similar to the hybrid aliens in Alien 3 and the engineers from Prometheus.
The movie manages to include callbacks to all the previous Alien movies, including the two most recent entries. For instance, the USCM pulse rifles as well as a surprise appearance harking back to the original Alien movie.
The gore is unrestrained, reminding me of the disturbing scenes that were the stock and trade of the direct-to-video sci-fi horror movies of the early ‘80s. The director exploits the opportunities for body horror presented by the alien xenomorphs to the max. The addition of a refined version of the alien liquid from Prometheus results in a gross-out sequence that could scar you for life. The movie more than doubles down on the facehuggers as the crew are chased through the station by a horde of the things, their gross finger-like appendages feeling their way through that gap in a door that absolute nightmare fuel.
The movie does rely on a few too many set pieces. Having the cast tasked with challenges like traversing through floating alien acid-blood in zero-G, quietly sneaking past facehuggers and having to hit all the levers makes it feel like a video game at times.
Overall, though, it is a proper Alien movie. It may stick too close to the formula for some, but to be honest, that’s what makes it an Alien movie. You are not going to walk away with a greater understanding of the origins of humanity, but you will have a great time having jumped out of your skin a few times and been grossed out by some proper old-school body horror.