"Alien: Romulus" - Back to formula for 30 minutes

Josh
Aug 25, 2024
6 min read

Updated: May 17, 2025

Fede Alvarez (2024)

What happens with you mix Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, Alien Resurrection with a splash of black goo?

As of writing this, it’s been 45 years since Ridley Scott’s first Alien film. And with a total of 6 films and 2 crossover’s; utilising 7 different visions between each movie, this 7th instalment managed to avoid doing almost anything original. Whether it was the decision of director Fede Álvarezs (Evil Dead (2013), Don’t Breathe) to create a hodgepodge slurry of previous instalments or if they came from a mouse dressed in using statistics to determine what moments will make people cheer in the theatre, I have no idea. I have no strong feelings towards Álvarezs previously mentioned films, but the moments that felt original are the parts where I was most engaged with the film. Beyond that, throughout the entire film all I could think was, “this was done better in other movies.”

We’re thrown into a pretty unique perspective of the Alien universe as we’re introduced to our lead Rain, played brilliantly by Cailee Spaeny, a worker trapped on a Weyland Corp mining colony on a planet engulfed in constant storms blocking out the sun. And she’s accompanied by an outdated synthetic android ‘brother’ Andy, with another brilliant performance by David Jonsson. As an older model of an android, we witness two strong contrasting physical performances from Jonsson as he limps and awkwardly hobbles around while telling terrible Dad jokes, as this android was programmed by Rain’s deceased parent’s to ‘do what’s best for her’. So we’re introduced to a pretty strong duo with goals of leaving a corrupt corporation for a better life for the both of them. I wish I could say the same for our other characters. All sharing the dream of better life on a new planet, they hatch a plan to ransack a deserted ship of its cryo-pods to then drift away for their 9 year long journey. Now, I know the excuse is used of “I don’t expect deep characters in a horror movie because I want to see them get killed by the monster.” But this is a piss-weak excuse for lazy writing. All the best slashers and horror films (including the first Alien film) have characters with a personality. Tension is created in horror when you want to see characters survive because you have an attachment to them. As mentioned, the original Alien has a lot of characters but they all had a personality that made them unique whether that’s how they react to a horrible situation neglecting protocol to help their co-workers, or how they interact with everyone else on the ship during that fantastic Robert Altman like dinner scene. Or my favourite example, John Carpenter's The Thing (which won’t be last time this is mentioned in this review) where when introduced to all our characters they have a little something that separates them from everyone else in the crew.

The set production is a throwback to the 70s sci-fi aesthetic. Everything is controlled by big buttons, cables, levers and latches with every interaction having a strong tactical feel. I personally prefer this style of sci-fi over the hologram Minority Report as the actions are much easier to relate to and understand. The cinematography is very reminiscent of Alien and Aliens with rooms full of fog with strong shafts of lights and silhouetted characters in dingy mechanical hallways. There are props throughout the movie that stay true to H.R. Giger's iconic surreal grungy sexual visuals and as mentioned, it was an actual prop. What kept me mostly engaged after the first portion of the film was the fact that mostly practical effects were used. We say little animatronic facehuggers and slimy bloody Alien costumes. And towards the end, even when I thought that a certain character must be CGI, I found out they had a massive 7 '7 basketball player in prosthetics. Although, I wish all of these positives were in service of a cohesive story.

The Romulus space station that holds their desired cryo-pods was a research facility that had picked up the fossalised alien corpses from the destroyed Nostromo. As characters explore the ship in a scene similar to the Norwegian base exploration scene from The Thing, we see the aftermath of a horror show. You piece together everything that may have happened to cause this ship to be abandoned. But instead of indulging in the mystery, the pacing kicks it up to 100% because after a well done facehugger set piece we have a character hugged up and giving birth to a chest burster within a few minutes. Again, I could only think back to the first Alien movie where we spend so much time with John Hurt comatosed with a facehugger as the crew try to figure out what to do. Only to drop their guard to then witness the horror of the chest burster. In Romulus, we rush to get an alien in the film so then we can quickly rush into the next set piece that references another movie in the franchise. We have the scene where they’re shown how to use a pulse rifle, a reference to the electric prodstick, humans strung up against walls to the harvested (which is something aliens just do I guess, not just the Queen Alien), calling the ships AI mu/th/ur. a thin blue laser hovering just above floor level like in the Space Jockey’s ship, a personal moment between our lead and a xenomorph and an awkward execution of the catchphrase “Get away from her you, Bitch”. Just a quick note on that line, it works so well in Aliens because of the build up and conflict between Ripley and the Queen. But here, Andy just says it with no motivation other than for the audience to cheer. The scene even has a beat so the audience can stop clapping and hear the next line of dialogue. The most distracting and painful moment of ‘Oh I remember this from a better movie’, was the use of the android Ash from Alien. What looks like a deep fake of the great Ian Holmes, for some reason the evil android that will stop at nothing to complete the mission for the company is the same model as Ash. When we just see the model of his face, the effect doesn’t look too bad but as soon as he starts talking his mouth looks very blurry. If you’ve ever seen gameplay from the 2010 game La Noire, the early attempts of in-game facial capture where their lips blend together when pronouncing B’s and Ps looked very much like this contemporary visual effect. Having this character be Ian Holmes android didn’t affect the story or add any form of new conflict as our characters have no history with that model, he was only there to point at and recognise.

While attempting to blend all previous films together, I felt tonal whiplash and lack of tension as the film goes on. As we start with some pretty atmospheric horror as our two Sussex British lads explore the ship but we switch to more of an Aliens tone mid-way through. And a small issue that I have with the original Aliens, is that one xenomorph taking out an entire crew is scary. But seeing numerous xenomorph's get mowed down by marines makes them less scary. Although what does work in Aliens favour is that fact that our tough squad of marines turn into a slobbering group of babies as they realise what they got themselves into. Here, we have a whole swarm of aliens getting mowed down with reasonable ease which doesn’t give these bugs any real sense of danger.

Now finally, as a savvy reader you’ll realise that I haven’t mentioned any references from Alien Resurrection or Prometheus. Just when you think the movie should’ve ended, we tack on a long action scene where a pregnant woman gives birth to a monster-hybrid of the xenomorph and the Engineer. Similar to the Queen and Ripley final fight, this conflict is deflated as it’s not built up at all throughout the movie. And like the Queen and the stowaway alien, this isn’t a surprise that our heroine got attacked after letting her guard down. We saw the pregnant woman inject herself with the black Prometheus space goo so you just sit there and wait for the final boss fight to happen. It was a tedious fight and by this point I was desperate to leave. I had just watched 6 different movies mashed together in a two hour timeframe.

Where I was hoping for a return to form, I was met with a film suffering from an identity crisis. Where were we meant to experience a horror film? Action? A thought provoking story about the damage and neglect that comes from corruption at the expense of human lives? But if I can give this movie any props, it made me appreciate the accomplishments of the little film that kicked off this saga 45 years ago.