In space, no one can hear you scream. But they can in a movie theater, and Alien: Romulus is determined to make sure that you won’t be sitting still and silent. A hair-raising film that finds fun new ground while giving homage to the previous entries, Alien: Romulus is one of the year’s best films.
Taking place on a distant planet, humans have carved out a meager existence. They mine all day, the sun never comes up, and they dream of better lives for themselves. It’s that dream that leads friends Tyler, Navarro, Kay and Bjorn to want to break into a space station to steal the cryopods to make the journey to another planet, one that would set them up for the lives they should be living. It’s why they rope in Rain, whose transfer papers have recently been denied by the mining company she works for, to their schemes. They need her synthetic Andy to help them break into the ship and somewhat reluctantly she agrees. Of course, this isn’t just any ship, but one containing a terrible secret, xenomorphs. Not only do these friends have to fight for the future they want, but for their lives in the present as these creatures want nothing more than to kill them.
Alien: Romulus is an Alien movie so you will likely know exactly what you are getting into from the start. While the film doesn’t spend much time exploring new avenues in the lore or the world these movies take place in, it finds visually interesting ways to make the previous trod ground worthwhile. This movie is like a well worn couch, you maye sit in a new location on it, but you’ll still get the same comfort. With the exception of one particularly egregious call back to the past films, I found myself immersed in this new ship and dazzled by Fede Alvarez’ command of the film. Fede is a director that hasn’t met a terrible act that can be visited upon a body and thought how he could make it worse. There’s some truly horrific moments in this movie that the most squeamish of audiences will no doubt turn their heads at, but his direction is at it’s strongest when he’s using the whole of the picture to terrify. The production design and VFX are incredible and he makes expert use of them, every room feels both cavernous and claustrophobic, terrifying yet potentially peaceful.
Much was made of the cast of 20-something actors that were cast in the film, but I cared no more or less about them than anything other humans facing an inhuman threat. Regardless of who the humans are you do want to root for their survival, even as you low key root for them to also get torn apart. There’s some good performances in the movie that do hold you attention, chief among them Cailee Spaeny and David Jonsson as Rain and Andy, respectively. Not just human and robot brother, these two find additional wrinkles and nuance to their performances that make them a winning duo.
These elements when put together make for quite the entertaining movie. There’s certainly lots of references of the past films, and these are mostly successful. While this may bother other viewers, there’s some of this to be expected given that it’s a sequel/reboot. Thankfully under the steady hand of Fede Alvarez the movie never slips into pastiche, and keeps its wits about itself, delivering prime horror movie goodness.