Alien: Romulus

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Victoria's Statewide Mornings program on August 22, 2024.

(MA15+) ★★★★

Director: Fede Álvarez.

Cast: Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn, Aileen Wu.

"Honey, I'm home."

Somewhere along the way, the Alien franchise fell out of orbit, like a decommissioned satellite.

It was probably around the point where Alien 3 became a mess in pre-production and then again during filming, and yet again in post-production, which just goes to show that studios and producers can always find multiple new ways to fuck things up, often on the one film.

But franchise fans who suffered through the schlocky Alien vs Predator films and the god-awful Prometheus can finally breathe a sigh of relief. Romulus is the Alien film you've been waiting for. It's like Covenant, but shorn of the fat, and replacing the mythologising and philosophising with entertaining world-building and genuine terror.

In a plot that's not a million light years away from Alien and Aliens, Romulus features a group of young people arriving at an abandoned space station, only to find it home to a horde of Xenomorphs. It's only a matter of time before faces are hugged and chests are burst.

Romulus is a balancing act - it wants to be an homage but not a remake, a child not a clone, a spiritual successor and not a ropey re-tread. Thankfully its largely successful in its ambitions. Its tone and look is reverent to Alien and Aliens, and its plot is very close in many ways to those two films in a back-to-basics way that's refreshing after Prometheus and the more bloated elements of Covenant.

 

In Spaeny, so great in Civil War, we have an excellent Ripley proxy, but the show-stealer is Jonsson as defective droid Andy. His character is by far the most compelling of the ensemble, many of whom are merely there to be Xenomorph fodder. Andy gives some much-needed heart and soul to proceedings, and Jonsson's nuanced performance makes him one to watch.

Romulus nails the brief of telling a new story that fits in with the space-horror-action vibe of the only truly good Alien movies (the first two). It's very much connected to its universe, referencing just about every movie in the series successfully (though do we really need to hear "Get away from her, you bitch!" again?). 

You could argue that Romulus is formulaic or that it hews too close to its predecessors, but you could also argue it's a perfect mix of what made the first two films great. There are new scares and old, and once again you will remember that in space, no one can hear you scream.