Alien: Romulus

Starring: Cailee Spaeny,  David Jonsson, Isabela Merced, Archie Renaux, Aileen Wu, Spike Fearn

Director: Fede Alvarez

Based on a story and characters created by Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett

After the Weyland-Yutani Corporation forcibly extends her contract that will keep her on the perpetually dark colony on Jackson's star, orphan Rain (Spaeny) sees her dream of seeing the sun slip further from her grasp. She sees her chance to escape when her ex-boyfriend Tyler (Renaux) comes to her with a proposition: join him, his sister Kay (Merced), his cousin Bjorn (Fearn) and Bjorn's girlfriend Navarro (Wu) to a derelict ship that is floating in space above the planet to recover a stasis pod that will have enough energy to get her to where she wants to go. All they need is Andy (Jonsson), a reprogrammed synthetic raised as her brother who, as Weyland-Yutani property, can help them once they board the ship. They quickly find there is something more sinister on the ship, creatures intent on making sure that everyone, including Rain, never see the light of day.

The Alien franchise has been around for a long time, garnering many fans ever since the chestburster appeared in a fit on bloody violence in 1979. While its sequel Aliens made quite the impression, with many believing it to be the best in the franchise, the rest of the films have struggled to capture audiences thanks to shoddy mythology and poor action. After the most recent underperformance of Alien: Covenant in 2017, producer Ridley Scott hoped to go back to basics, bringing in horror maestro Fede Alvarez to tell a story closer in tone and scope to the original.

For the most part, they succeeded. For about an hour and a half, this movie is a tense thrill ride that took its time to establish stakes and build tension. In fact, I think the movie was careening towards becoming one of my favorites in the franchise. Alvarez uses a lot of practical sets and even when he did need to use CGI the film looked good. It was dirty but it worked for the story. I was even willing to overlook the ghastly decision to resurrect a deceased actor to take part in the plot.

The facehuggers are legitimately terrifying in this. Adding more to their inherent creepiness is the fact that they are animatronic. Never one to shy away from the more gruesome aspects of his movies, Alvarez chooses to show us, up close, how the face huggers try to attach themselves. It’s more unsettling than graphic but it still made me cringe. The Xenomorphs themselves, once they come into play, are played by actors in suits much like the original.

The third act of this is wild, and not in a good way. The movie doesn’t know when to end and could have concluded at least twice before it actually did. Also, it tries way to hard to connect to other films in the franchise. I get it but it didn’t need to happen.

The cast is a mixed bag, with many just being obvious fodder for the creatures. Cailee Spaeny, while not a perfect Ripley replacement, is quite good and has a believable arc into action heroine. The real standout is David Jonsson as Andy. There is a lot more to him than meets the eye and as a character who is a synthetic ends up being the most sympathetic character in the film. He also gets the best call back that works better than it should.

While its not the best in the franchise, it is still a step in the right direction for a franchise that is looking for serious course correction. I wasn’t expecting to like this as much as I did.

Grade: B-