Review: Alien: Romulus

Directed by: Fede Álvarez

Written by: Fede Álvarez & Rodo Sayagues

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

Rating: [4/5]

Life truly can be simple in the things we can enjoy from a warm slice of apple pie, a nice night out to the movies, or even watching a xenomorph tear apart a ship full of people. As great as any American tradition that started back in 1979, has certainly had some bumps in the road, but gets a nice new revamp in Alien: Romulus. A film that makes some disheartening decisions but ultimately has the goods in delivering what we like about these slimy aliens.

Stuck on an ever-dark planet with no hope of release, Rain (Cailee Spaeny) teams with a group of scavengers who hope to get onto an abandoned ship to commandeer it out of their current circumstance. When they arrive on that ship, they see signs of destruction and soon realize exactly why when something begins to track them. 

Having gone through two different cycles going back to Ripley’s story in the first quadrology and then the prequel duo with Ridley Scott back in the helm, Alien: Romulus felt like the first time this franchise sought to bring in a truly fresh voice. They sought to provide something different narratively and visually, and this feature certainly succeeds in some and fails hilariously in others. 

I say that knowing how much I enjoyed this film overall, hence my rating of it, but let’s get the bad out of the way. Without spoiling it entirely, this film reprises an OG character from earlier in the franchise that feels so unnecessary but also disrespectful. A move that leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth and could have sunk this film given the other elements where this film seeks to callback to the earliest films of this franchise to an eye-roll inducing degree. It reeks of studio meddling where you can tell no one involved wanted to speak out some of that unfortunate line delivery, but hey, people will get it because Ripley said it before. 

With that out of the way we can get to the praising of this film where it proved obvious the producers brought on Fede Álvarez provided a brutal telling of a story involving xenomorphs, and we got just that. The level of suspense built out in various scenes will leave you on edge as it displays what makes these alien creatures so terrifying to be around. One scene involving the regulation of one’s temperature was brilliant in building out the tension of survival and what happens to the human body when put under stress. Truly a tremendous sequence among others but it all gets accentuated by a bright young cast that while not all of them have much to work with, those that do make sure to take advantage of it. 

Telling this story with a young cast of rising stars brought a different perspective to the story where we do not have a crew of specialists but rather some young adults seeking an escape from their current lives. It therefore explains some of their silly and rash decisions, given they do not have the experience to deal with what this situation presents to them, not even in the slightest. This naïveté brings something new to this world, and it gets led by the awesome duo of Cailee Spaeny and David Jonsson. 

Bursting out into the scene at least in my eyes just last year, Spaeny marvelled as the titular character in Priscilla and Jonsson charmed mightily with his work in Rye Lane, which made them coming together to lead this new series of Alien films so exciting. Spaeny steps into the lead role as we follow her journey of trying to gain some freedom, and she more than does her part in showing the difficulty in surviving this horrid ordeal. She proves she’s more than capable of leading the line of any film but Jonsson had a much more difficult cast in portraying an android. Both lacking emotion but also demonstrating it when necessary, Jonsson sells it so well as he makes this much-maligned character someone we want to see continue as he battles through what his program demands of him. I will also always appreciate Isabela Merced showing up in any film, even with the limited screen time she received. 

While having its unquestionably glaring issue of trying to emulate the films that came before it, Alien: Romulus is a delightful return to form for this franchise. While ambitious and going for something different, the prequels by Ridley Scott never quite cut the mustard and handing the baton off to Fede Álvarez proved to be the best idea as someone else gets to play in the sandbox. Within said sandbox, Álvarez takes this young and talented cast and puts them through the wringer for our entertainment. He crafts an exquisite-looking film that further drives home the fear of getting stuck on a ship with a xenomorph.