Movie Review: ‘Alien: Romulus’

It’s entertaining and well-done, with one standout performance especially, but ‘Alien: Romulus’ leans hard on nostalgia to the point of distraction.

(L to R) Cailee Spaeny as Rain Carradine and David Jonsson as Andy in 20th Century Studios' 'Alien: Romulus.' Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2024 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

Opening in theaters on August 16th is ‘Alien: Romulus,’ which was directed by Fede Álvarez and stars Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn, and Aileen Wu.

Initial Thoughts

Isabela Merced as Kay in 20th Century Studios' 'Alien: Romulus.' Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2024 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

The ‘Alien’ franchise has gotten especially convoluted in the 21st century, with spinoffs (‘Alien vs. Predator’), origin stories (‘Prometheus’) and sequels to prequels (‘Alien: Covenant’) clogging up the trajectory of what started out as something simple and elegant: a haunted house movie set in space. ‘Alien: Romulus,’ directed by Fede Álvarez, works hard to bring the brand back to the basics. And in many ways, Álvarez succeeds: working off a script he co-wrote with Rodo Sayagues, Álvarez has created a mostly tense, atmospheric, and to-the-point monster movie that – much like the first ‘Alien’ – has a terrific central character at its core.

But Álvarez also makes the mistake of leaning too heavily on nostalgia, with ‘Alien: Romulus’ – particularly in its second half – playing like the franchise equivalent of a greatest hits package and showing a decided lack of imagination in its callbacks to not just the first ‘Alien,’ but ‘Aliens,’ ‘Alien: Resurrection,’ and even the controversial ‘Prometheus.’ And one creative choice in particular is not only incredibly distracting and jarring, but bordering on unethical – and also a spoiler.

Story and Direction

Director Fede Álvarez at the San Diego Comic-Con 2024 'Alien: Romulus' panel. Photo: Disney.

‘Alien: Romulus,’ we find out fairly early on, is set around 20 years after the events of the first ‘Alien.’ It opens on a mining colony on a brutal, storm-tossed world where it’s hard enough for humans to survive, let alone work. Rain Carradine (Cailee Spaeny) works for, of course, the ever-present Weyland-Yutani Corporation, and gets the bad news that her contract – more like indentured servitude – has been extended another six years without her knowledge.

Devastated by the news that she cannot get herself and her child-like (because he’s been damaged in the past) android “brother” Andy (David Jonsson) off the planet, Rain joins a group of four other young co-workers who have detected an abandoned space station drifting above the planet. Their plan: fly their own ship up to the derelict, break in and load its cryosleep pods into their vessel, and fly off to the distant planet Yvaga, where life is presumably more pleasant and one can actually see a sunrise instead of round-the-clock darkness.

We’ve already glimpsed that space station in a brief prologue, and it’s no spoiler to tell you that our young friends find out the hard way that while there is no crew in sight, the spacecraft is definitely inhabited. The initial buildup of the story is brief, with the six colonists getting up to the station in relatively short order. The exploration of its darkened, abandoned corridors is one of the highlights of the film and most reminiscent in spirit of both the original ‘Alien’ and the space Marines’ foray into the deserted colony on LV-426 in ‘Aliens’ (although why no one else seems to know this rather large space station is floating above the colony is a mystery that the film never answers).

Xenomorph in 20th Century Studios' 'Alien: Romulus.' Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2024 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

The pace continues to pick up as our friends make their first contact with Xenomorphs (come on, it’s right in the trailer) in their facehugger form, ending in a bad way for one of their number. There are other revelations to come as well, including how a Xenomorph first got on the station, what the station’s purpose was, and how the seemingly innocent Andy undergoes an upgrade that suddenly has Rain wondering if her adopted mechanical sibling can be trusted even to save her life.

A lot of exposition comes courtesy of a plot device we won’t discuss in detail here, but is the one that audiences – ‘Alien’ fans in particular, but also people with a conscience in general – may find difficult to reckon with. Yes, that’s the one we mention above that’s distracting and frankly ghoulish; we can only hope the right people got paid well for it, but even then it may set a terrible precedent. That in turn opens the floodgates for a series of callbacks to various other ‘Alien’ movies as Rain, Andy, and their dwindling band try to escape the growing infestation of Xenomorphs and the station itself, which in time-honored ‘Alien’ tradition is on a path to destruction in less than the two hours it takes to watch ‘Alien: Romulus.’

Some of the homages are subtle and kind of neat, like a reference to the events of ‘Prometheus’ that works in context. Others, however, approach ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ levels of inanity and over-slavish fan service, while another climactic reveal channels the last plot turn you’d expect from one of the less popular entries in the series.

In fairness, Álvarez – who has covered this kind of territory before with his underrated 2013 ‘Evil Dead’ remake – keeps the action moving, the shocks visceral, and the atmosphere grimy and bleak, aided by Galo Olivares’ excellent cinematography and Benjamin Wallfisch’s score. Both effortlessly channel the vibe and tone of the early ‘Alien’ movies. In many respects, this is the most intense and effective film in the series since the first two, which makes the decision to lean hard into blatant nostalgia bait down the stretch all the more irritating.

The Cast

20th Century Studios' 'Alien: Romulus.' Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2024 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

Following her recent sterling work in ‘Priscilla’ and ‘Civil War,’ Cailee Spaeny is a bit flat here as Rain. Like the rest of the cast, she seems a bit too young to have been laboring for years already under Weyland-Yutani, although the future’s child labor laws may have started her in the field at a young age. She’s clearly meant to continue the time-honored ‘Alien’ tradition started by Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley, but her character isn’t given enough development early on and her line readings tend to veer toward monotone. Spaeny does handle her eventual (and expected) transformation into action-oriented warrior well, and she’s still an engaging screen presence.

Even though Spaeny is top-billed, the movie belongs to David Jonsson as Andy. It’s also been a feature of the ‘Alien’ films that its synthetic characters are among its best, and Andy follows in the tradition laid down by Ash, Bishop, and David. But he’s also his own unique creation: found “in the trash” by Rain’s late father and adopted as a sort of little brother with intellectual disabilities that she must take care of, Andy undergoes the best, most fully realized (and arguably only) character arc in the film, an arc that creates its own narrative tension and makes for the most compelling parts of the story. Jonsson is spectacular throughout, handling Andy’s transformation with nuance, mystery, and a mix of empathy and unease. It’s also interesting to see more of the ‘Alien’ universe here, in terms of how synthetics are perceived and treated, which opens up all kinds of possibilities should the series continue.

David Jonsson as Andy in 20th Century Studios' 'Alien: Romulus.' Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2024 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

As for the rest of the small cast, they also unfortunately follow a time-honored ‘Alien’ tradition of simply being Xenomorph fodder. But while previous installments were often peppered with seasoned character actors who could make something out of nothing (Harry Dean Stanton, Jenette Goldstein, and many others say hello), this crew is largely forgettable, as hard as they try and as fully as they commit.

On the other hand, special props should go to the actors and operators behind the practical and animatronic Xenomorph manifestations – it’s refreshing to see Álvarez return to physical creations on set, which also keeps ‘Romulus’ in line with the franchise’s initial, classic entries.

Final Thoughts

Cailee Spaeny as Rain Carradine in 20th Century Studios' 'Alien: Romulus'. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2024 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

As we said earlier, as so many legacy sequels and franchises are prone to do, Álvarez’s film feels the need to rely on obvious and even silly callbacks in the name of fan service. Like so many filmmakers nowadays, he seems to worry that the fan base may not be perceptive enough to handle new ideas without reassuring them that he’s not straying too far. This, along with that one unsettling element we mentioned earlier, hurts ‘Alien: Romulus,’ but not fatally.

Yet there is a lot to like in the movie too; in a series that’s yielded far more disappointments and squandered opportunities than not, it’s nice to see an entry fashioned by a filmmaker who’s clearly passionate about this mythology and legacy. ‘Alien: Romulus’ is an often exciting, suspenseful, and gruesome crowd-pleaser that fits well into the existing canon and works hard – almost too hard – to recreate the experience of watching the saga’s best films.

‘Alien: Romulus’ receives 6.5 out of 10 stars.

Alien: Romulus

"In space, no one can hear you."

R1 hr 59 minAug 16th, 2024

Showtimes & Tickets

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What is the plot of ‘Alien: Romulus’?

A group of young space colonists hatch a plan to salvage technology from an abandoned space station and inadvertently come face to face with an incredibly dangerous life form that threatens all their lives.