The Alien franchise is terrifying again in its most recent outing which offers fresh body horror and yet another story about screaming in space. Alien Romulus is set between the first and second movies in the series, and it fits neatly like the perfect puzzle piece while paying respect to the six other films that came before it.
Over the years, the Alien movies have bounced between genres from space horror to action adventure to philosophical queries into the origin and meaning of life. But when Alien: Covenant failed to make back its budget, the franchise was put on hold while Disney bought out Fox and tried to determine if the IP was worth salvaging.
Now, seven years later, the series is back with a tighter budget and far greater results, proving it’s not money that makes the movies in this franchise good, but the story, the visuals, the characters, and, of course, the creatures.
The story follows a desperate space miner named Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and her brother, a synthetic human named Andy (David Jonsson) trying to find a way out of their abysmal living conditions.
Their ticket off-world comes from a space crew that plans to break into a derelict space station called the Romulus, steal some stasis pods, and go live on a better planet several light-years away.
But, of course, when the crew arrives at the Romulus, they discover it’s a secret lab experimenting on xenomorphs. The lab lost control. The xenomorphs broke out. Everyone died. Most folks can probably guess where the story goes from there. What started as a simple equipment retrieval job becomes a horrific escape and struggle to survive against one of the scariest creatures in outer space.
Alien Romulus pays homage to several of the movies that came before it with a wicked cool gun sequence, plot threads that tie into Prometheus and Alien, and more body horror than the average filmgoer might be comfortable with. The last 15 minutes make the c-section from Prometheus look like an episode of My Little Pony by comparison. (Seriously, don’t take your kids to see this.)
The crew in Alien Romulus is only slightly less memorable than the squad from Alien Resurrection outside of Rain and Andy. They’re perfectly fine for the body count an Alien film requires, but no one should expect to remember them once the credits roll.
With terrifying monsters, solid action sequences and an original story, Alien Romulus would make a good entry into the franchise. But what puts it over the edge from “good” to “great” are the sound design and set pieces.
This is a movie that knows how to use silence to its advantage, and it cleverly employs a lack of noise to remind the audience this is outer space. Yes, the xenomorphs are going to make haunting sounds, but some of the most tense situations arise when there’s no noise of any kind except nervous breathing from a haunted crew of would-be survivors.
Despite being a bleak movie where bloodthirsty and parasitic aliens hide in the shadows, Alien: Romulus doesn’t make the mistake of letting everything get so dark that audiences will miss the action, ghastly visuals and gore galore. Previous entries like Alien vs. Predator were so frustrating because the sets were too dark to see what was happening throughout most of the film.
Thankfully, Alien Romulus is well-shot and uses practical effects wherever possible to avoid shoddy CGI. Not only that, but the film does an amazing job of emulating the technology and feel of the original Alien. Flashing lights, handheld trackers, CRT monitors, tight corridors, and derelict hallways, the film makes use of it all.
It looks beautiful and sounds awesome. This is a well-crafted creature feature that does what so many legacy IP sequels fail to do. It tells an engaging (yet simple) story, gives the audience a few likable characters to cheer for, and is put together in such a way that it’s obvious to longtime fans the crew really cared about the original movies and paid attention to what made them special.
And all that happens on an $80 million budget. See, Disney? Expensive movies don’t automatically make for great cinema. Give Fede Álvarez another Alien film or two. Let him do to this franchise what Denis Villeneuve is doing to Dune.
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