‘Alien: Romulus’ Review: Fede Álvarez’s ‘Alien’ Sequel is a Sometimes Thrilling, Yet Synthetic Greatest Hits Album
Forty-five years ago, Ridley Scott’s Alien completely changed the game for science fiction filmmaking. It combined aspects of the B-movies of the 1960s with the paranoia of the 1970s, all while addressing the most destructive tenets of capitalism. It was a completely original artistic achievement; perhaps most importantly, because it exercised incredible restraint, making the audience sit with every moment of unflinching terror. Since Alien’s release, several sequels and prequels have spawned to varying degrees of success, including James Cameron’s action-packed Aliens (1986), David Fincher’s feature directorial debut Alien 3 (1992), and more recently, Scott’s polarizing prequels, Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant (2017). Set between the events of Alien and Aliens, Fede Álvarez’s (Evil Dead, Don’t Breathe) Alien: Romulus dares to sandwich itself between the franchise’s best entries, fully embracing the former and lightly touching the latter. While Alien: Romulus is, at times, an exhilarating horror film, it lacks the thematic clarity and the bold ideas necessary to make it a worthwhile sequel.
Alien: Romulus opens beautifully with a lo-fi, wordless homage to the franchise’s first installment. Outer space is dark and boundless, and Álvarez’s camera takes us on a tour to get acquainted with the craft floating by. The retro title cards, the sound of MU/TH/UR (MOTHER) waking up on the system, and the bright white interiors make us feel comfortable; we’ve been here before. Meanwhile, on Jackson’s Star Mining Colony, Rain Carradine (Cailee Spaeny) dreams of being anywhere else, specifically YVAGA, a beautiful, distant colony with nature that resembles Earth. Rain is an orphan whose parents died three cycles ago from contracting lung disease in the mines, and she knows she can’t withstand the brutal working conditions much longer. She can’t leave, though. Her contract at the Weyland-Yutani Corporation (still not a great place to work!) isn’t up yet, and when she finds out the company has extended it inexplicably, there’s a feeling that it never will be. The timing is apt when she comes across a ragtag group of fellow space colonists ready to leave Weyland-Yutani and Jackson’s Star behind. The leader of the crew, Tyler (Shadow and Bone’s Archie Renaux) shares that they’ve discovered a decommissioned ship on their radar and want to venture out to it to steal equipment and enough cryofuel to get to YVAGA. They don’t just need Rain to complete their journey, though. They need her brother Andy (Industry’s David Jonsson), a Synthetic who speaks MOTHER and can communicate with the technology onboard. Once they dock, the crew realizes that this isn’t a decommissioned ship but a deserted outpost, and they have 36 hours to gather the cryofuel and get back to their transport before the outpost crashes into the planet’s rings.
This premise isn’t new ground for the franchise: an unlikely crew winds up on a haunted ship and must complete a mission before they’re killed by the creatures lurking on board or the ticking clock runs out. Within this framework, Álvarez and his cinematographer Galo Olivares (Gretel & Hansel) create a visually sinister playground with some of the most tense, full-throttle moments of horror filmmaking this year. The film’s first act takes time to establish a sense of dread, complemented by Benjamin Wallfisch’s (Blade Runner 2049) haunting score that feels like a new science fiction classic, referencing Jerry Goldsmith’s original creation. When Álvarez shows off his penchant for gnarly, gross filmmaking, Alien: Romulus is at its best, featuring creative kills and spectacular creature design. Hundreds of Facehuggers throb, writhe, and swim, raising the stakes of earlier entries and creating an unbelievably tense atmosphere. The sleek, beautiful design of the Xenomorphs would even impress H.R. Giger, the artist who designed the original effects almost fifty years ago. This is especially true because Álvarez and the visual effects team expand on the psychosexual terror that Dan O’Bannon introduced in Alien’s script, emphasizing and boldly illustrating the phallic and yonic characteristics of the beasts onboard.
Like Aliens, this film is packed with plenty of gruesome kills and pulse-pounding action sequences, but, unfortunately, Romulus’ script is far less interested in its characters. In addition to Rain, Andy, and Tyler, our crew consists of Tyler’s pregnant sister Kay (Madame Web’s Isabela Merced), Navarro (Aileen Wu with Weaver’s Alien 3 buzz cut), and hotheaded Bjorn (Aftersun’s Spike Fearn). Despite having a talented troupe of new faces, the script gives them little to do and few moments for the audience to get to know them. Part of Alien’s power lies in those kitchen table moments, with the Altman-inspired crosstalk and a crew just eager to get paid and get home. Álvarez and co-writer Rodo Sayagues (Evil Dead, Don’t Breathe) establish these characters as individuals desperate to escape their circumstances and the fate that befell their parents, but their characterizations are otherwise thin. Spaeny is one of Hollywood’s most exciting new faces, recently leading Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla with an understated power and grace. She isn’t a one-to-one stand-in for Weaver’s Ripley, but rather combines her resourcefulness with Newt’s petite presence and fear. While Spaeny is a believable new action heroine, it’s unfortunate that the script doesn’t allow her to access any deeper emotional facets of the character. As Andy, Jonsson transcends the script’s more shallow conventions, creating a multi-faceted original character, sometimes recalling Justin H. Min’s brilliant performance in After Yang. At first, he’s insecure, clinging to Rain’s side and telling Dad jokes to pass the time before turning into a powerful, fully functioning Synthetic. It’s an unbelievably tricky performance, and Jonsson creates something entirely new when the film is begging for it. He even forces you to question your own opinions on artificial intelligence–when to embrace it as a comfort and convenience and when to fear it.
At times, Alien: Romulus feels similar to Star Wars: The Force Awakens in that it’s essentially a remake of the first entry existing solely as a nostalgia play for fans of the franchise. Admittedly, it’s easy to get sucked into a story that’s blueprint is one of the greatest science fiction horror films of all time, but it should also be in service of something greater, something new. It’s fun to spot shot-for-shot references to Aliens and character details that recall Alien 3, but when they have no true connective tissue to the story, it begins to feel like a vacuous exercise that unfortunately aligns with the current interests of franchise filmmaking. The reference to Prometheus feels particularly out of place, as if you can hear Scott telling Álvarez not to forget about his prequels. The film falters when Álvarez and Sayagues begin to shoehorn as many references to earlier films as possible, jettisoning any trace of ingenuity. It’s particularly frustrating that small glimpses of a bold, cool new science fiction classic lie within an egg that the studio doesn’t care to see hatch.
No doubt, the most discussed aspect of Alien: Romulus will be the unforgivable (and completely avoidable) uncanny valley CGI creation of a canon staple. This detail from the past feels hollow, looks atrocious, and undermines the stellar practical effects used to create the Xenomorphs and Facehuggers. It also further complicates the film’s already mixed messaging on AI, a timely topic ripe for unraveling in this franchise. The best horror films use genre convention as a Trojan horse to introduce and comment on relevant political themes plaguing people in the current landscape. Alien: Romulus only lightly scratches the surface. Despite the new understanding and threat of AI technology, its implications are felt with no more clarity than in 1979. Álvarez and Sayagues introduce fascinating threads, like the fact that Bjorn’s mother was killed in the mines by Weyland-Yutani in favor of saving the lives of Synthetics, but they’re quickly cast aside to move the action of the film forward to move on to the next Easter Egg. If anything, it feels like a shallow attempt to comment on the current state of franchise filmmaking while playing into its worse impulses.
Of the many chilling scenes in Alien, I often think of the moment when Brett (Harry Dean Stanton) ventures into the depths of the outpost to try to find Jones, the iconic orange cat who’s run off and decided to hide in the worst possible location. The camera shows a tan reptilian skin that once belonged to the frightening chestburster that killed Kane (John Hurt) hours before. That little chestburster with its silver, razor-sharp teeth has grown rather quickly into a creature much stronger than any of the crew members anticipated. If only Alien: Romulus learned nature’s lesson: in order to truly grow and reach peak form, the old skin must be shed.
Grade: C+
20th Century Studios will release Alien: Romulus only in theaters on August 16.
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