A late-stage abomination with little thematic connection to anything that brought it into existence.
Alien: Romulus is a beautiful-looking Alien fan film. From the cinematography to the production design, the visuals range from ‘loving tribute’ to ‘stunning vision’, a perfect blend (perhaps the best of any nostalgia sequel to date?) of 1979 analog and 2024 emulation. In the initial part of the film, the world-building is solid if unremarkable. As the alien outbreak gets underway, the film leans hard (ahem) into its sexual horror origins, with some genuinely tense moments early on. And the cast is pretty great all around – particularly Cailee Spaeny as Rain, and David Jonsson who gives a two-in-one performance as Andy the android – and I was surprised to find myself not wanting to see any of these kids die, as most of them must in an Alien film.
As for what happens in Alien: Romulus… i wish i could say that the most embarrassing thing about it is that it’s basically an immersive theme park adventure for the now-grown kids who sure loved Alien (1979), set in its hollowed-out, acid-burned carcass. As we get deeper into the story, and a now-compromised Andy leads the human characters deeper into the ship, it becomes murky as to whether Andy is to be trusted, as to whether we want him to succeed, and, as the film descends deeper into ever-more-vacuous fan service, as to whether Alien: Romulus can be trusted to nail the balance between reference and pastiche, remix and cover version, tribute and vandalism. For example: when Rain decides to go back and rescue Andy, is it because that makes thematic sense for her character, or simply because that has to happen in an Alien film? It’s a palpable tension, and it’s not always clear just how much it’s by design.
For a supposed commentary on the monstrous inhumanity of capitalism, Alien: Romulus reanimates corpses both literal and metaphorical to say nothing more than things that have been said before. Which of those things will prompt delight, and which will prompt eye rolls, will depend very much on the kind of Alien fan you are. And in the moments where Alien: Romulus does try to say something… well,
we need to begin by asking: does a white British android really say to a black android, without further commentary from the film, “Our colonial progress was built on the backs of your kind”?
Perhaps more than any other instalment in the Alien franchise, the biggest payoffs in this movie are to setups from others. As a result, this movie’s tension-and-release has a half-life shorter than its runtime. And as it wears along, the tension in which Alien: Romulus traffics is decreasingly generated within its own setting and increasingly drawn from “Eh? Ehhhh?” rib-nudging, which becomes increasingly relentless, to the point where it cracks through your chest and the release is you simply croaking, “K-kill… m-me”.
In setting this story in between Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986), Alien: Romulus attempts to squeeze more lore between the bare minimum given and absolute maximum needed for those movies to work. So now face-huggers detect potential hosts only by their body heat? … ok. So now Xenomorphs might be intimidated by the sight of human weapons? … what. Given the gratuitous and unfounded quotes in this movie, it’s frankly shocking that Rain and Tyler (Archie Renaux), when forbidden from being able to actually shoot their guns, don’t straight up say, “What the hell are we supposed to use, man, harsh language?”
Setting aside that Ash (played by the CGI zombie corpse, and bafflingly not a melty animatronic, of Ian Holm) looks to be in much better shape than he should given he was literally torched prior to being discovered here (edit: he’s actually another android of the same model, Rook, who was similarly but not identically destroyed in his own ship’s alien catastrophe… forgive my confusion, but in every way that matters, the film is literally telling me to see him as Ash); his entire presence, mannerisms, and talking-head-on-a-screen-ness is basically cackling video game villain, the unintentionally hilarious Zola to Alien: Romulus‘ Captain America: Winter Soldier (2014), which simply diminishes the unexpectedly incisive commentary on the inhumanity of capitalism which he represented in Alien:
Yes, there are big swings, which might be commendable in themselves; however, as they get progressively bigger, they become increasingly vapid, and the payoffs become more and more exclusively to setups from other movies. Ultimately, the film’s ludicrous final boss (the baby human-alien hybrid thing) is emblematic of Alien: Romulus itself: a late-stage abomination with little thematic connection to anything that brought it into existence.
Alien was a B-grade slasher movie elevated by its high-grade execution. Alien: Romulus is high-grade aesthetics dragged down by a complete lack of anything to say that isn’t in quotes.
Further Viewing
Director of Photography Galo Olivares breaks down shooting the Xenomorph Chestburster Scene (via Variety):
Atmosfear aka Nightmare is an example of the type of interactive VHS game evoked (in the mind of this viewer at least) by the deployment of Rook/Ash in Alien: Romulus:
At least one viewer in my showing seemed surprised by the not-at-all-subtle genitalia on display in the alien forms in Alien: Romulus – or at least, they seemed to think this was a new addition to this world, and not a core concept which dates all the way back to, well, the conception of Alien (1979):