Alien Romulus
Alien Romulus is a better than average addition to the Alien franchise that gives us a fresh new cast and expands on some ideas, but doesn’t do much to advance the overall mythology of the series .
Full Disclosure: In preparation for this movie coming out I went back and re-watched 4 of the previous films in the Alien franchise, the first two – Alien and Aliens, and the most recent two – Prometheus and Alien Covenant. I’m not made of damn time though, so I skipped the two 90s movies, probably the two weakest entries and ones which seem less consequential for this story given that they’re set afterwards. I did this in the hopes that this review will be grounded in the context of the whole franchise..
Review
Alien Romulus is set sometime in between Alien and Aliens and follows a group of young space mining colonists who are desperate to leave their dark and disease-ridden world, where they’re trapped by the unfair work contract policies of the all powerful Weyland-Yutani corporation. When the six colonists discover that a derelict space station has drifted into their planet’s orbit, they figure that they might be able to salvage it for the needed cryo-technology that will allow them to travel to a new sun-drenched world.
Of course, as these movies go, once they get to the space station, a dual entity named Romulus-Remus, everything goes to hell once they encounter the existence of xenomorph lifeforms. I really liked that they went with a younger cast in this movie. It somehow made the danger all the more poignant because, even though they’re essentially trying to rob a space station, their motivations seem much more pure and innocent than previous victims of the xenomorphs.
The movie also did a great job of explaining the characters’ relationships early on with minimal exposition – there’s a brother-sister duo (Tyler and Kay, played by Archie Renaux and Isabela Merced), a pseudo brother-sister relationship between Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and her sweet and damaged synthetic “brother” Andy, and romantic involvements between the other two characters, Bjorn and Navarro, as well as Rain and Tyler. All of this means that their interactions and decisions throughout the movie are much more understandable than those of some of the characters in the previous films.
The star of the movie is Cailee Spaeny’s Rain, who carries on the proud tradition of female leads in the Alien franchise, from Sigourney Weaver to Winona Ryder to Noomi Rapace to Katherine Waterston. Spaeny is good in this role. She doesn’t really pop on screen as much as someone like Weaver, but that’s probably asking too much. Although I thought the same about her work in Civil War earlier this year, where she again was good, but not really a presence onscreen. She might still have more to give as an actress, and I hope that as her career progresses we’ll see a few stand out performances, but for now she’s in the Sam Worthington mould for me as a “star” who can carry a decent film, but also somehow seems fairly replaceable.
Cailee Spaeny carries on the proud tradition of female heroines in the Alien franchise.
This movie takes a lot of existing Alien lore and builds on it, giving us a bunch of new things that we haven’t seen much of previously in the franchise. For example, the movie makes great use of the concept of gravity on space stations and ships, with scenes where the inconsistent functioning of artificial gravity plays a key role in determining the action. The movie also expands what the audience knows about the aliens, explaining that while the facesuckers are blind, they can hunt by sensing human body temperature.
This movie is much more of a return to the first film in terms of tone and overall mood. It fits more neatly into the horror genre than anything since Alien, complete with a bunch of jump scares and horror movie screaming (mostly by Merced, who nails one scream particularly well). Whereas in a number of the previous movies they’ve explored wide open spaces and even scenes in broad daylight, Romulus is much more about cramped quarters and low light with lots of places for the aliens to hide.
Aside from the aliens themselves, there have always been two main villains in the Alien franchise – massive corporations and AI. Both play an important role in the inevitable tragedy of this movie, and the problematic nature of the elements seems perhaps even more relevant today as it probably first did back in 1979. The corporate greed of the Weyland-Yutani corporation, prioritizing growth and profits over human lives, and the unknowable uncertainty of the motivations of artificial intelligence are both timely topics. The “synthetics” of the Alien franchise have always had an off-putting detachment to their interactions with humans. David Jonsson nails this in his portrayal of Andy, even though Andy is meant to be a “nice” and slightly-addled robot.
In terms of pure action and character development, this is one of the better entries in the Alien franchise. For any fans of the series, it’s definitely a must-watch, and general movie goers who are just looking for an entertaining horror/thriller movie will find lots to enjoy as well.
Spoilers Ahead
Enclosed spaces and lots of shadows. This movie gets back to its horror roots.
I’ve mention that the movie introduces us to a few new concepts that we hadn’t seen before in this franchise, but there are also a bunch of call backs and moments of familiarity. Some of these worked, some didn’t. The most obvious of these is the return of our OG AI villain in Ian Holm’s synthetic scientist. Now you may be asking yourself, “wait a minute – didn’t Ian Holm die?” Well, yes. Yes, he did. But that’s no impediment to moviemakers these days, and in true meta fashion, an AI Ian Holm is playing an AI Ian Holm. And it sort of worked? I’m still undecided on that.
The other biggest twist in the movie is when Merced’s Kay, who has been pregnant for the entirety of the movie, gives birth to a freakish human-xenomorph hybrid creature for the final actions sequence of the movie. Although the appearance and nature of this creature may come as a bit of a shock, anyone paying attention to the movie and genre should realize that something is coming. You just know that the fact that a non-lead character is pregnant in the beginning of the movie is going to play a role later on. In this case the way they got there was one of the few times where I thought the plot seemed a bit strained. Kay conveniently injects herself with a modified xenomorph compound, even after Rain told her not to and despite the fact that at the time she did it she was temporarily out of danger. They really just needed to move the plot along at that point, I guess.
Not forced, though, were the actions of most of the other characters, and even Kay, throughout most of the film. In any horror movie characters are often done in by their own basic stupidity, and you’re constantly wondering, “why the hell would they do that?” Some of these characters make really bad decisions, but the almost always make sense in the context of their relationships with each other, or the way the character has been established. Spike Fearn’s Bjorn, for example, is shown early on using gravity to create a massive flame from his lighter to light his cigarette, just for the thrill of it. So right away we know that he won’t survive, because he’s established as a reckless idiot.
It's a bit unclear how Romulus fits into the overall narrative of the Alien franchise. It’s set between the first and second movies, and while it’s clear how this story follows Alien, it’s much less clear how this movie informs or impacts anything that came after it in the Alien chronological canon. In other words, what happens in this movie ultimately doesn’t seem to have any consequences for anyone beyond the six main characters. It’s too bad they couldn’t have given us a bit more – maybe a connection to Newt from Aliens or something. I guess a movie can’t have everything.
Isabela Merced, in full horror movie-mode, launching an absolutely ear-piercing scream.
5 Quick Hits
Here at Unsolicited Film Reviews, we’ve been high on Isabela Merced since her work in Instant Family and Dora. And while she might never become the star we might have predicted, this is certainly a better step in the right direction than her part in the god-awful Madame Web earlier this year. Along with her interesting role in the recent Turtles All the Way Down (also this year – she’s busy!) she’s beginning to show her range and what she might be capable of as an actress in the future.
In one of the more obvious call backs the famous line “Get away from her you bitch!” was used in this movie. It was fun, but my only gripe is that it was said by the wrong character. They gave the line to the synthetic Andy, who showed no indication that that’s the kind of thing he would actually say.
As I mentioned, the CGI Ian Holm was an interesting call back, that really only worked because the character is a synthetic. We’ve seen this used in a few movies now (notably in some Star Wars properties) and the technology still isn’t quite good enough to seem realistic and seamless. But if you’re using it for a character that is already artificial (and torn apart to boot) I guess it works fine. But please, let this be a plea to all studios – stop using this kind of CGI to bring back dead actors until the technology gets much better!
Despite the movie title, the research station actually had two names – Romulus and Remus – named after the legendary twins that supposedly founded Rome. The station was divided into two parts, each side named for one of the twins, but the movie really didn’t make use of that at all. It was unclear why it was divided that way, how that impacted the plot, or what purpose any of that had besides just being a name that the writers thought was cool.
Fede Alvarez, the Uruguayan director of this film has a great sense of how to build tension. The first thing I saw of his would have been 2016’s Don’t Breathe, and he brought the same edge-of-your-seat action sequences to this film, even in moments where the characters are trying to keep still. I imagine every production company with a horror movie in development is banging down his agent’s door these days. If not, they should be.
