A group of impoverished mining colony grunts hoping that old abandoned Weyland-Yutani vessel floating in orbit will free them from the daily grind get a little more than they bargained for in Alien: Romulus, opening this weekend in cinemas worldwide. This gruesome outer space haunted house movie knows what it is and makes no apologies, and should meet or exceed most expectations following tepid reception to the previous film in the franchise, 2017’s Alien: Covenant.
Unlike any of the previous Alien sequels, which each took the franchise in different directions with varying degrees of success, Romulus is essentially a beat-for-beat remake of Ridley Scott‘s 1979 original. But when the beats are so effectively played, courtesy of director Fede Alvarez (Evil Dead, Don’t Breathe) and co-writer Rodo Sayagues, it’s hard to complain.
Alien: Romulus stars Cailee Spaeny (Civil War) as Rain, a slave to the Weyland-Yutani corporation on the distant mining colony of Jackson, a grimy, grubby wasteland covered by a thick layer of perpetual smog. She opens the film hopeful of ditching this cesspool after fulfilling the contract she was born into, only to be told that corporate requirements have shifted and another six years have been added to her sentence.
Hope comes in the form of ex-boyfriend Tyler (Archie Renaux), who has devised a plan with his sister Kay (Isabela Merced), cousin Bjorn (Spike Fearn), and Bjorn’s girl Navarro (Aileen Wu). The Romulus, an abandoned Weyland-Yutani ship orbiting Jackson just happens to contain five cryo chambers that will allow the whole gang to make the nine-year journey to the paradise of Yvarra. They just need the security clearance of Rain’s “brother”, a salvaged Weyland-Yutani android named Andy (David Jonsson), to help them get aboard.
After an intriguing setup that nicely establishes not only a new cast of characters, but an entirely new planet not previously seen in this franchise, Alien: Romulus starts to do the usual thing once the gang makes it to the titular ship and comes across a paranormal crime scene. Claustrophobic vents, dangling chains, dripping sweat, facehuggers, chestbursters, and fully-grown xenomorphs straight from H.R. Giger’s original design follow in quick succession.
Plot points, camera shots, and even entire sequences (especially the finale) are cribbed from the original movie, but there’s one returnee who comes as a surprise in Alien: Romulus. The actor Ian Holm, who passed away in 2020, is resurrected here to play the half-eaten android Rook, who the crew discover aboard the breached vessel and helpfully passes along the exposition they never asked for.
Given that Holm is not even playing the same character he did in the original film, it seems like an unnecessary expense. But after similar work from Carrie Fisher and Peter Cushing in recent Star Wars movies, the performance here (credited to Holm for “reference” alongside performer Daniel Betts and dozens of puppeteers and VFX technicians) is easily the best this stuff has looked yet. It helps that he’s playing an immobile, partially dissolved robot; still, one can recognize the underlying human elements that aren’t usually associated with this kind of thing.
And while the plot of Alien: Romulus heavily borrows from the original film, director Alvarez creates a wholly new look for the franchise, especially on the mining planet but also aboard the haunted ship. Gone is the slick, clinical vibe from Scott’s films, including Prometheus and Alien: Covenant; Alvarez embraces the industrial grunge of interplanetary life to deliver something more akin to what David Fincher brought to Alien 3.
Next to Sigourney Weaver‘s Ripley, the android characters have been the most interesting in the Alien franchise, and Alien: Romulus doesn’t break from tradition. Andy, and especially his relationship with Rain, is one of the more interesting things going on here, even if the movie doesn’t fully explore some of the themes it establishes. And as Andy “updates” his operating system, Jonsson is startlingly effective at developing a new persona with only a hint of the past.
Alien: Romulus mostly plays it safe, save for an ending that utilizes former basketball player Robert Bobroczkyi for maximum creep effect, and doesn’t have the over-the-top gore or nail-biting tension of some of the director’s earlier films. Still, unsuspecting audiences heading out to the cinema to catch a mid-August horror movie are in for a treat, and might be as shocked as they were in 1979.
