I am a huge fan of Sci-Fi horror. In fact, Aliens (James Cameron (1986), specifically the director’s cut) is one of my top 3 movies of all time so you can imagine my joy when I heard they were finally revisiting the franchise – especially after the weird car crash that was Neil Blomkamp’s attempted Alien 5.
I went into Alien Romulus specifically not knowing much about it, I’d seen the trailers but I’d stayed away from any other media surrounding it so I could watch the film with a clear and unbiased viewpoint. So with that in mind, here’s my review of Alien: Romulus!
What’s Alien Romulus About?
Rain (Cailee Spaeny – Civil War, Mare of Easttown) has sold her soul to the devil, and in the Alien universe that means one thing: She works for the Weyland-Yutani Corporation.
She’s is a farm worker on the colony of Jackson’s Star, an industrial hellscape where people die in the mines on a daily basis and where rules are changed at a moments notice.
Rain has completed the terms of her contract so goes to try and buy herself out of it only to be told that Weyland-Yutani have changed the contract rules and instead of completing 1200 hours, she now needs to complete 2400 hours of work due to a worker shortage. Not only that, she’s going to be moved from her agricultural role over to the mines – somewhere she’s probably not going to escape.
In a strange turn of luck her friend, Tyler (Archie Renaux – Shadow and Bone, Morbius), happens to have come across a signal from a derelict ship floating above Jackson’s Star – and what’s even better? No one else seems to have noticed it yet.
Tyler proposes that a group of his friends fly up to the ship to salvage cryopods from the vessel so they can make the long trip to the planet Yvaga, somewhere portrayed as a paradise world beyond the reaches of the Weyland-Yutani corporation.
Tyler’s asked Rain to join them as her brother, Andy (David Jonsson – Deep State, Rye Lane), has a special talent – he’s a Weyland-Yutani Android (he prefers the term “Artificial Person”) that will allow them access to the ships systems.
Rain’s father found the malfunctioning Artificial Person discarded in a junk pile, fixed him up and gave him one directive: Take care of Rain (along with programming him with a load of terrible Dad Jokes).
When Tyler, his sister Kay (Isabela Merced – Madame Web, Sicario 2: Soldado), best friend Bjorn (Spike Fearn – The Batman, Aftersun) and his girlfriend Navarro (Aileen Wu – Short films Closing Doors and Skin), Rain and Andy reach the beacon they discover that the ship is in fact a massive research station that’s been captured by Jackson’s Star’s gravity and is slowly being pulled into its ring system which will destroy the structure.
As the motley crew board the station, they realise that it wasn’t abandoned but overrun by creatures seemingly derived from the DNA recovered from the Xenomorph that wreaked havoc on the freighter Nostromo in the first film in the franchise, Alien (1979 – Directed by Ridley Scott who serves as producer on this film).
A game of cat and mouse ensues as the gang try to evade the aliens on board the station while attempting to get their much needed supplies for their long trip to the planet of their dreams.
The question is not will they survive but who will survive.
So with the plot over, let’s take a look at my thoughts!
The Good
The film is wonderfully shot, the lighting and sound are magnificent (if it doesn’t get an Oscar nod for cinematography (Galo Olivares – Most known for music videos) and sound design there’s something very wrong) and the soundtrack (Benjamin Wallfisch – The Flash) is so haunting it’s unreal.
The way that sound is used is beyond anything I’ve heard in recent years. When you think of the big Marvel-esque action movies, everything is wall-to-wall noise but Alien: Romulus cuts the sound completely at points to highlight the fact that in space no one can literally hear you scream.
There are a lot of practical model and special effects too and you can tell – sometimes it’s obvious when something is CGI’d (I’ll get to that in a minute) or green screened but you actually feel like these sets are real (because they are) and that they’re extremely creepy (because they are) and that the aliens are really there (because they are).
The acting is also phenomenal, David Jonnson is of particular note as Artificial Person Andy, swapping from broken to creepy to efficient with ease. You also really feel the bond between Rain and Andy, with the former fiercely protective of her “brother” in the face of disparaging comments from Bjorn.
I also need to give a shout out to Isabela Merced who, as Kay, is put through the ringer so many times I honestly don’t know how the actress coped.
The Bad
My first gripe is the how young the cast look. Which is actually ridiculous when you realise that Sigourney Weaver was only a couple of years older than Cailee Spaeny when she took on the role of Ripley.
The reason for my age moan is that while the look young, they also act quite young as well – almost like teenagers with their naïve view on how things will pan out. With Alien you got the sense that the Nostromo crew was world-weary, even the young Ripley has an air of despondency about her.
In Alien: Romulus the characters are full of youthful hope that just doesn’t quite gel with the reality of their lives working for Weyland-Yutani.
It’s a minor issue but it’s one that did pull me out of the film on a couple of occasions.
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My second problem that it’s one thing to pay homage to works that have come before you but it’s another thing to rip off prior works completely.
The writer/director/producer (never a good sign to have one person do everything unless it’s James Cameron), Fede Alvarez (Evil Dead (2013), Don’t Breathe), is obviously a massive Alien fan and it shows – perhaps a little too much.
You could argue that the difference between a knowing nod and an outright rip-off is a fine line and that Alvarez is firmly leaning towards knowing nod territory however there are so many “nods” it actually became annoying. I was almost tempted to get out a bingo card to see what scene or line would be ripped off next.
That’s not to say that the film isn’t original and you could argue that he’s throwing in these references to anchor this film to the franchise and provide cultural references to an entirely new audience. This is all well and good but, to a person who has watched Alien, Aliens and Alien3 countless times (don’t ask me about Alien Resurrection, okay?) it just seems like unoriginal and lazy film making.
At one point I thought “Don’t you dare do the [no spoiler] scene” and 2 minutes later they recreated that exact scene (but then, as we saw in my No Way Up review I am a movie savant so maybe that’s just me being clever….)
If you’re not a massive fan of the Alien franchise these call-backs won’t be too annoying but if you’re a fan they feel more shoehorned in than something that’s a lovingly crafted part of the script.
The Ugly
I don’t want to give away anything too much here but they bring back an actor from Alien but, as this film is set just 20 years after the first film you couldn’t have the actor look as they do today, 45 years later.
Many films have done de-aging well (See: Kurt Russell in Guardians of the Galaxy 2) and some have done de-aging terribly (See: Jeff Bridges in Tron Legacy) and unfortunately this films falls into the latter camp.
I don’t know if it was available time, budget, not having the actor available or just sheer laziness (a theme in some aspects of this production I fear) but considering the amount of screen time afforded to this character it should have been done in a far better way – I actually laughed out loud when I first saw them because of how terrible (and I do mean terrible) it looked.
When you consider the deep fake AI tech that’s available now I don’t even know what the heck they were thinking with this (See Jeff Bridges fixed in Tron as an example, or even Henry Cavill in Justice league which was done by a fan!)
It really ruined the scenes this character was in if I’m perfectly honest. I hope they can fix it for the Blu-ray release because it’s truly awful and a real let down.
Final Thoughts
Given the issues I’ve talked about above, you might think that I didn’t enjoy Alien: Romulus one bit, but that’s not the case.
It was an enjoyable film and the cast was exceptional, it was just let down slightly by a sub-par script that relied a bit too much on fan service than being a truly original entry into the series.
Cailee Spaeny is certainly an actress to watch out for and I will definitely take a look at some of her other work (although I apparently have seen her in The Craft: Legacy and didn’t recognise her so that’s more testament to her acting skills I guess).
So the question is: Would I recommend you go and see Alien: Romulus?
If you’ve never seen a film in the Alien franchise before (and how on Earth have you managed that?) then I would highly recommend it. It’s a great introduction to new fans of what the universe is like.
If you’ve see films in the franchise before, know that while it’s nothing ground breaking it’s not Alien Resurrection, although it does almost go there. But it’s mostly a great film.
Mostly.
Watch this film if you’re a fan of sci-fi horror and are up for a good old fashioned popcorn movie that looks and sounds great and has some standout acting.
Don’t watch this film if you understand how gravity and Newton’s first law of motion works.
