Directed by Fede Alvarez | Written by Fede Alvarez and Rodo Sayagues, based on characters by Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett | ▲▲▲△△ | Crave
You could call this Alien 7, maybe even Alien 9 if you include those two Aliens vs Predator movies, but nobody does because they’re awful.
Director Alvarez is already a veteran and admired horror and thriller filmmaker (Don’t Breathe, Evil Dead, and The Girl in the Spider’s Web) and a confessed fan of this 45-year-old franchise. His credentials and the hype overall gave me hope Romulus would breathe some fresh air into these monster movies. The recent Ridley Scott return to the franchise didn’t set the universe on fire — Prometheus, and Alien: Covenant — though I had time for them.
I’d compare Romulus to Covenant. The filmmakers’ need to directly recreate elements from the originals everyone loves so much smothers much chance of originality, and in the case of Romulus, the hurried pacing of the plot to get to the scary bits leaves the actors stranded. Still, there’s no missing the professionalism, especially in the craft departments — this is a slick and effective looking and sounding space horror.
The cast is a whole lot younger this time out, which Alvarez has said is intentional — he thinks it’s harder to see younger people die horribly. As a slightly older person who always appreciated the grizzled personalities on the Nostromo, I’ll dispute that assertion.
Rain (Priscilla and Civil War‘s Cailee Spaeny, working a lot lately) is part of a cohort of people whose parents have died on a mining planet where it’s always night, run by Weyland-Yutani, the intergalactic corporation responsible for all the awful stuff in these movies — aside from the xenomorphs. Realizing she’s going to get stuck there just like her parents were, she agrees to a friend’s desperate plan — burglarize a derelict space station in orbit around this planet for cryogenic chambers they can use to sleep through the nine years it’ll take to get to a much more pleasant galaxy.
Rain’s pals all have a single characteristic: Tyler (Archie Renaux), the handsome guy, his cousin Bjorn (Spike Fearn), the asshole, Kay (Isabela Merced) is the pregnant one, and Navarro (Aileen Wu) is just her job, the pilot. Only Andy (David Jonsson, of the excellent Rye Lane) has any complexity because he’s an android, programmed to look out for Rain, and key to this plan: as obsolete W-Y tech, he can talk to the computer on the space station and get access to everything they need.
Naturally, things don’t go well on the station. Its orbit is degrading and it’ll soon collide on the rings of the planet below. Worse, the station was abandoned because it’s lousy with aliens — this was where the company’s weapons manufacturing and gene-splicing division was centred before things got out of hand.
This set up is promising, but because of Alvarez and editor Jake Roberts (who also was on Civil War) need to keep things moving at a pace entirely unlike the movies that inspired this one, we never get to know these characters and then feel nothing when they start to die. It really doesn’t matter how young they are if you haven’t done your job as a screenwriter and a filmmaker to get us to invest in them.
The key connection here is between Rain and Andy, and therefore they’re the only ones more interesting than cardboard — cleverly Alvarez borrows some thematic juice from that other Scott classic, Blade Runner, as we wonder about Andy’s humanity when he’s unexpectedly reprogrammed, his character and priorities changing accordingly.
Production designer Naaman Marshall and their team have done an exceptional job recreating the vibe of the environments in those first two films — the sets, props, and overall look is impeccable — and it makes you wish we could just pause to take it in once in awhile. Also full marks to the sound designers and the composer, Benjamin Wallfisch, bringing in themes from the original scores by Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner, respectively, to help with the familiar feel of this nightmare.
And how are the monsters? Terrifying, as you might expect. We see a bit too much of them this time out, but then I guess being coy about this famed beast and its many iterations doesn’t wash anymore. A scene of a skittering swarm of facehuggers is maybe the most frightening thing in a movie so far this year, while also impressive is a scene where characters face off against the monsters in zero gravity.
You may have also heard a prominent character returns thanks to CGI, and given how many practical effects are used here and with such success, you’ve got to wonder why they tried to digitally recreate this individual when surely a lookalike actor or a whole lot of make-up would’ve been more convincing. It’s distracting as it was in Rogue One, and given that movie is eight years old there’s no excusing how shoddy it is here.
We also get more than one direct homage to Alien and Aliens (and Alien3, etc.) in the way Romulus is shot and in the lines in the actors’ mouths. It immediately takes you out of the movie when a piece of dialogue 38 years old shows up said by someone else — it’s pedantic and annoying, delivering a fan service unworthy of the material.
How the aliens transform so quickly from one form to another is a separate issue I’ll leave at the feet of the speedy filmmaker, as well as a ridiculous, poorly staged final fight between surviving combatants. Those folks who gnash their teeth at the Newborn, the unpleasant thing at the end of Alien Resurrection, they’re going to have a lot of trouble with the deeply stupid last creature in Romulus.
All said, this is a ways from the worst in a series that has a rich thematic underpinning and impressive legacy of fear. Credit to Alvarez for the providing the visceral thrills, though the really good chunks make you wish he wasn’t just satisfied with giving us new versions of the series’ greatest hits.
