The Alien franchise, originally spearheaded by Ridley Scott, is one of the most iconic brands in cinema history. From chest-burster scenes that horrified audiences to the heroine, Ripley, courageously saving the day, Alien has captured audiences in awe and horror for over four decades. This summer, director Fede Alvarez makes his claim on the sci-fi titan with Alien: Romulus, where a group of young space colonizers encounters a horrifying creature on a derelict spaceship, and in my opinion, the film is a mixed bag of astonishment and letdown.
Alien: Romulus starts in the mining locations operated by the Weyland-Yutani corporation where our young cast, lead by Cailee Spaeny as Rain and David Jonsson as Andy, try to seek work leave but the good, kind-hearted mega-corporation denies them, potentially killing them in their work similar to their parents. The crew decides to go on the offense by commanding an abandoned spaceship and flying off to greener pastures. However, in typical Alien fashion, something unexpected lurks on the spacecraft. The main conflict or theme Alvarez is concerned with is the relationship between Andy and the crew since Andy is seen as other due to his artificial person status and how he tries to be accepted by his peers.
Performance-wise, the acting on display was interesting. Our two leads deliver good performances that capture the dread, the fear humans possess in the face of uncertainty and the stoic, composed demeanor androids are built with and both Spaeny and Jonsson did great jobs doing so. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew were annoying, constantly swearing with no purpose and behaving like petulant children. The film’s direction by Fede Alvarez was superb. The cinematography truly captured the awe and horror of space, effectively utilizing the darkness and the special effects to bring the monsters to life should warrant an Oscar for the team. In addition, the score was not the highlight but a nice touch to a film pushing for visual storytelling forward and the script was quite inconsistent. At times, it wanted to be a comedy but other times it excels at what Alien does best: horror and sci-fi merged.
The strengths of this film are the visuals and sound as Alvarez and co want you to be submerged into the cosmos and feel the nightmare lurking around the corner with clever techniques mentored by James Cameron and Ridley Scott decades ago in this franchise. However, the great weakness of Alien: Romulus is the script. The film’s agitating personas on screen make you wonder why Alvarez wanted to put Stranger Things into space and displaying cockiness as confidence was not the right move in my opinion.
My overall impression of the film is that it is a good addition to the Alien family with some faults but not as bad as previous films (Alien 3 and Ressurection in particular). What makes the first two films work is the battle between brain and brawn where the smart, capable humans compete with an unrecognizable creature, and this film is swapped with a naivety that is overdone in Hollywood currently. I would recommend it to not only Alien fans but also young horror fans to see this epic. That is the target audience Alvarez and co want to tap some nostalgia into and explore more in this franchise.
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