The Reel Review
While scavenging the derelict space station Romulus for cryopods to visit a distant planet, a crew of young space colonists come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe. Callie Spaeny and David Jonsson star in this sci-fi/horror set in the years between 1979’s Alien and 1986’s Aliens.
Writer/director Fede Alvarez (Evil Dead, Don’t Breathe) does some things exceptionally well in Alien: Romulus. He masterfully captures the same back to basics look and retro vibe of the original two films with some truly spectacular set design. He also mostly keeps the action moving at a brisk pace and has plenty of his now trademark gore. Other things aren’t so well done. The plot is more like a video game than a story, and there are way too many distracting callbacks to nearly all of the other Alien films – even Alien 3, Prometheus and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. The jarringly hokey-looking CGI of a surprise character also falls way short of its intended effect, and Callie Spaeny (Civil War, Priscilla), while adequate, is no Sigourney Weaver, overshadowed by an impressive David Jonsson (Industry) as her synthetic companion who is more like a brother to her.
The final act also gets pretty bonkers, as Alvarez defaults to his off the rails, gore-over-substance body horror schtick. Even so, Alien: Romulus has more than enough Facehuggers, Chestbursters and adult Xenomorphs to be an entertaining enough sci-fi/horror, just nowhere close to being in the same league as the first two films or even 2012’s Prometheus.
REEL FACTS
• Director Fede Alvarez says Alien: Romulus was inspired by a deleted scene from 1986’s Aliens, later restored in the Special Edition, that featured a bunch of children running through the corridors of the planet’s space colony.
• Initially, Alien: Romulus was going straight to streaming on Hulu (Disney+ outside the U.S.), but Disney execs were so pleased with a screening that they decided on a theatrical release.
• Of the original seven main crew of 1979’s Alien, only three are still living – Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt and Veronica Cartwright. John Hurt and Harry Dean Stanton both died in 2017, Ian Holm, who played the synthetic Ash, died in 2020, and Yaphet Kotto died in 2021.
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