Rent Alien: Romulus on Amazon Video (paid link)
Written by: Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett (characters created by), Fede Alvarez & Rodo Sayagues (written by)
Directed by: Fede Alvarez
Starring: Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux
Rated: R
Watch the trailer
Plot
While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonists come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe.
Verdict
This is a fun Alien movie. It doesn't try to do too much like the recent movies. This has the right amount of world building and it focuses on the inherent drama of being trapped on a ship with a frightening creature. Some of the side characters are a bit generic, present just for the plot and as fodder, but the core of this movie is the initial impending doom, the stark reality of the situation, and this devolves into a horror movie. It has all the hallmarks of the franchise while introducing a few new creative elements. It doesn't try to continue the story of characters we've seen before; it stands alone and does a great job of realizing what made the first two movies so engrossing.
Watch It.
Review
Cailee Spaeny has quite the run with Priscilla, Civil War, and now Alien: Romulus. Alvarez has been primarily a horror movie director with Don't Breathe and Evil Dead, but that style fits this franchise well.
After Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, this is a return to form for the franchise. Those movies tried to do and show too much by focusing on inane subplots and origin stories. Romulus focuses on what made this series great: a crew trapped in a ship with aliens.
This opens with a teaser scene of a ship acquiring an alien fossil. From there we transition to seeing life on a mining colony. It's crowded and dirty. Rain (Cailee Spaeny) works the mines, trapped in forced labor because the mining company can arbitrarily extend her required hours whenever she is close to release. She's permanently stuck on this planet with no hope for a better life.
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| Archie Renaux, Cailee Spaeny play Tyler, Rain |
Rain's friend Tyler (Archie Renaux) has a plan to scavenge a derelict ship, hoping to find cryopods so they can travel to a better planet. How exactly her friends happen to have a ship and why the mining operation doesn't care about the unmanned ship orbiting the planet are an unanswered questions. We're told their ship can't travel as far as they want to, so what do they do with this ship? It ultimately doesn't matter as it only needs to transport them to the derelict craft so we can get to the plot proper. Tyler needs Rain because her brother Andy (David Jonnson) is a synthetic and can unlock the unmanned ship.
Rain and friends dock with this ship, and knowing the franchise, we can see the telltale clues that foreshadow doom. This employs a lot of the classic Alien trappings like the face huggers, chest bursters, synthetic humans, and Weyland but it's used to build this world. As soon as I saw the first face hugger, I knew what was going to follow. We see remnants of a battle with an alien that killed everyone on board. This group doesn't realize what they're seeing.
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| Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson play Rain, Andy |
This is a solid addition to the franchise. Like the best Alien movies it's claustrophobic and intense. This group has to not only repel face huggers and an alien, they need to get off this ship. Frequent attacks impede progress, as well as Andy who gets a new prime directive to do what's best not for the humans but the Weyland company.
The uses gravity generators for a cool strategy against the aliens, and a health scanner is used to drive tension. Just when I think this is winding down it takes a turn into full on horror movie. I can't blame the movie, as it had to do something to distinguish itself. This isn't as good as Alien or Aliens, but it is the best Alien movie since.
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