Director Fede Alvarez delivers a new chapter in a 45 year-old sci-fi horror franchise. Our spoiler-free Alien: Romulus review:
We can only envy the first cinema-goers who saw Alien just over 45 years ago. Back before people knew who Swiss artist HR Giger was, or about the fearsome life-cycle director Ridley Scott and his collaborators had dreamed up. And yet, after decades of sequels, prequels, spin-offs and videogames, even Scott eventually began to wonder whether the once terrifying xenomorph had become too familiar to be scary; “The beast is done,” the irascible director once grumbled in 2014. “Cooked.”
With Scott’s direct involvement in the franchise ending with the muted ticket sales of 2017’s Alien: Covenant, he’s moved over to an executive producer role for Alien: Romulus, leaving the director’s chair open for Uruguayan filmmaker Fede Alvarez, who also co-writes with his usual collaborator Rodo Sayaguez. Alvarez’s previous work certainly suggests that he could be a good fit for a smaller, more horror-infused Alien movie, given that two of his best-known films – debut feature Evil Dead (2013) and Don’t Breathe (2016) – were both about luckless people being stalked and killed in confined spaces.
Alien: Romulus, set between the events of Alien and Aliens, introduces a close-knit group of six friends – all the working class sons and daughters of miners on a terraformed planet that feels like a prison. Like the young characters in Evil Dead and Don’t Breathe, they dream of escaping their miserable lives on a world where the sun never rises, and for Rain (Cailee Spaeny), adopted synthetic human brother Andy (David Jonsson) and their peers, recovering some valuable salvage from an abandoned, orbiting Weyland-Yutani station could provide the means of finding a better future for themselves.
Alvarez wastes little time in ushering his characters to the Renaissance, the listing, darkened vessel which serves as this film’s haunted house. But while he keeps the pace taut and the suspense rising, he still at least sketches in the kinship and connections between his grubby scavengers; Tyler (Archie Renaux), the mastermind behind their hunt, is Rain’s ex-boyfriend. The hot-headed Bjorn (Spike Fearn) is the cousin of Rain’s old friend Kay (Isabella Merced), who’s Tyler’s sister. Pilot Navarro (Aileen Wu) is Bjorn’s girlfriend – though their relationship is the one easiest to miss in the unfolding bloodbath.
Of the group, Andy is by far the most distinctly drawn, and Jonsson’s performance is flat-out wonderful: vulnerable, intelligent, and filled with a kind of repressed longing. For some reason, the android characters have often emerged as the richest in the Alien franchise, from Ian Holm’s Ash to Michael Fassbender’s increasingly Byronian David. That Jonsson’s soulful, unpredictable turn can be compared so favourably to Holm, Lance Henriksen (Bishop in Aliens) and Fassbender says a great deal about the young actor’s talent.
Our investment in these characters – though we may not always entirely like all of them – pays off as Alvarez switches from suspenseful build-up to full-on mayhem. The director shows off a similar appetite for dark and bloodily outrageous ideas that he evinced in his earlier films, and several of his set-pieces offer imaginative twists on existing ideas and lore. Even the idea of having a cast of younger characters – versus the 30-something-plus actors of the earlier movies – works within the story’s context, even if it did receive some backlash online. (Anyone fearing something along the lines of Scream in space or Pretty Little Liars with monsters, fear not.)
On a technical level, Alvarez delivers on his promise of a handcrafted film that relies more on traditional effects than CGI; everything from the facehuggers to the full-grown xenomorphs to the ships look like physical creations that exist in the same space as the actors. While there are certain sequences that couldn’t have been pulled off without the assistance of computer graphics, Alvarez and an army of collaborators – several of whom worked on Aliens, such as Alec Gillis – have created a world that feels retro in the best sense of the word. Even the typography on the opening title sequence has a hand-drawn, 70s feel.
Where Alien: Romulus falters, however, is in its callbacks to earlier movies. Not unlike Gareth Edwards’ Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Alvarez’s film has a solid premise and an evident passion for its rich, grimy universe; but it also relies on the familiar like an injured soldier using his rifle as a crutch. The strength of Alien: Romulus’s production design, pacing and brutal forward momentum is such that these references don’t ruin the film, but they do serve as unnecessary ballast; some fans may even find one or two of them distracting.
All of which means that, even as Romulus celebrates the imagery and design of Alien and Aliens, it lacks the individuality to match their classic status. Where it does succeed, however, is in delivering a cinema experience that evokes the requisite jolts and gasps of horror. Less maudlin than the compromised Alien 3, less camp than Alien: Resurrection, and more focused in its aims than the prequels, Alien: Romulus largely succeeds in forging a new hybrid from recognisable body parts. It may be 45 years old, but the beast isn’t quite done yet.
Alien: Romulus is in UK cinemas from the 16th August.
