The phenomenal success of the first Alien movie way back in 1979 was mostly due to the fact that it was a breakthrough in the sci-fi horror genre. It was a successful combination of 1950s outer space creature features and the more brutal sensibilities of “modern” scary movies like Jaws, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Halloween. Essentially it was a haunted house movie in orbit or a slasher in space. A crew of victims was stalked by an extraterrestrial boogeyman with unknown qualities. It’s never been that “pure” since then. Aliens might also be a stone-cold classic, an exciting siege movie that made an icon of Ellen Ripley, but let’s be honest now… every other Alien movie since then has had its detractors and its problems, meaning that none has reached similar heights. For this latest entry in the franchise, filmmaker Fede Álvarez (director and co-writer of this entry) promised a return to the straightforward horror of the OG entry, rather than the existential malarkey of the more recent offerings… and the flute-playing bastard androids. Starring Cailee Spaeny, who was so good in the recent films Priscilla and Civil War, this latest face-hugging, chest-bursting opus is now showing in UK and US cinemas, after avoiding a straight-to-streaming fate. Is it worth a Star Trek to see it though?

 

Starting with a very neat prologue that expertly establishes the point in the Alien timeline where it occurs, the plot introduces us to Rain Carradine (Spaeny). A young adult and Weyland Yutani employee, she’s lost both of her parents to illness on the grim mining colony of Jackson’s Star, a place where the sun (literally) never shines. Hoping to accumulate enough working hours to be shipped to another colony, she is distraught to find out that the company has changed the criteria for this, and she’s probably doomed to an occupational death on this miserable planet. Her only solace is the companionship of a dysfunctional “synthetic person”, that her father preprogrammed and named Andy (David Jonsson). However, an ex-boyfriend (Archie Renaux as Tyler) brings her into a promising scheme with a like-minded group of similar unfortunates. They’ve detected a decommissioned station in orbit that may contain working cryogenic pods, effectively giving them a free ticket to a better life. However, once onboard the station, which is split into two sections (Romulus and Remus, roll credits!), their unintentional meddling leads to a deadly encounter with … well, you can guess. Welcome to the shitshow in space.

 

Let’s state it up front. Is it better, or as good as Alien or Aliens? Absolutely not. Nowhere near it. Although it seems unfair to have those two superlative movies as continual benchmarks for the franchise to some extent. Is it better than the Prometheus entries and AvP efforts though? Yup. With his genre background established by Evil Dead and Don’t Breathe, Alvarez brings the unabashed gore and invention of the former and marries it (mostly) successfully with the tension and invention of the latter. There are some “buts” of course, but we’ll get to them. Just know that, as a standalone experience and a sci-fi horror, this is a breakneck journey with some cool moments to watch along with a string of the franchise’s Greatest Hits. There are issues, some of which are down to fan service and the apparently irresistible urge to keep changing Xenomorph lore, but it is an enjoyable thriller that offers some gruesome answers to some of the questions that Alien fans may have. Just what would happen if someone got properly splattered with Xenomorph blood? How do face-huggers track humans? Wonder no more, it’s all here folks.

 

Perhaps the strongest elements of Alien: Romulus are the visuals and the audio. We’re back to the grungy industrial blue-collar world that was established in Alien, with it being made very clear that Weyland Yutani is never going to win the “Employer of the Year” award. No matter what century it is! This makes for the grease-and-gears astrophysics, with added wonky anti-gravity and malfunctioning androids. Some superb sequences make great use of sound, or rather the lack of it. The opening shot is accompanied by absolute silence as a ship glides through space-borne debris. A trick that is repeated a couple of times, again to great effect when vehicles “crash” together. Also, Alvarez echoes some of the best parts of Don’t Breathe, as characters creep through a face-hugger-infested room, trying to maintain quiet and a cool body temperature.

 

The reference to “Greatest Hits” is not just a snarky putdown either. There are plenty of callbacks to previous entries, some of which work brilliantly (Rain learning to use a pulse-rifle, a character slipping carefully into a space suit, a bisected android, etc.) and some of which are probably ill-advised (the “surprise” cameo, umpteen close-ups of Xenomorphs shooting out their second mouth, “Get away from her you bitch!”, etc.). For the most part, though, it works. Freed from all the cobblers about god-like “cosmic engineers” playing with evolution, this is back-to-basics stuff. Whilst it doesn’t emulate the tension of the Isolation video game, there are some great moments where characters flee terrifying situations, and the repercussions of some cold-hearted decisions are made abundantly clear.

 

The conflict of human connection and empathy is tied up superficially to the title, with Andy being given some duality as his character evolves and the idea of “for the good of the greater ideal” overcoming singular safety. Only superficially though. It’s mostly running and gunning when the space shit hits the fan. However, it does allow Spaeny to expand the role into something close to Ripley’s stature, in an emotional sense if not a physical one and she’s rather good as the lead. Jonsson is also very effective as the meek synthetic who undergoes an evolution of his own in a clever twist. It has to be said though that the rest of the cast is largely forgettable and under-developed. For example, you would never realise Tyler was Rain’s ex-boyfriend, unless you had read the promo material, and you know next to nothing about all the other characters. Also, somewhat annoyingly, two of them appear to originate from 21st Century London (“Mate! Why are you obsessed with my balls?”, “Argh! I think I’ve ruptured my arsehole!” being two bizarre and genuine examples of dialogue). It’s slightly baffling and appears to be a callback to the group of English sweary actors from Alien 3, but it’s distracting, to say the least. Like a sci-fi Guy Ritchie film.

 

However, major plus points are given for the terrific moments of invention and how it plays with accepted lore (even though some have been inevitably spoiled by trailers). There’s the traversal of floating puddles of acid blood in zero-G, the revelation of a chest-burster in real-time with a portable x-ray, the swarms of face-huggers, the emergence of a fully-grown xenomorph from a suspiciously sexually-shaped cocoon after the chest-bursting phase, and plenty of tail-whipping. Whilst there is still CGI chicanery (especially at the climax), it’s refreshing to see a lot of Xeno puppetry and remoted-controlled scampering which returns some much-needed physicality to the slimy villains. It makes the jeopardy more substantial and believable, especially when you know that some of the characters are never going to make it and are surely going to meet a nasty end. This is underlined by the atmospheric “aftermath” scenes which show a tableaux of the previous victims in contorted poses and burst stomachs.

 

So there’s a lot of pluses there and it is a good-looking film for much of the running time (which just flies by). However, some not-so-great elements should also be mentioned. Rain gets into so many scrapes and dodges death by pure luck, that you begin to suspect that she’s related to Jones the Cat, inheriting his nine lives. It does get a little silly, especially towards the end. Speaking of the end, the last act is spectacularly bat-shit and feels a step too far. It does contain a fair amount of creepiness but feels beholden to a previous Alien sequel (that we won’t mention), with a nigh-identical outcome. And then there’s a “cameo” (which we won’t spoil), which uses technology to defy nature once again. It seems unnecessary and a piece of needless fan service. Initially, it seems cool, but once the novelty has worn off, you do have to question the inclusion and even the ethics of it.

 

Otherwise, that’s the situation. It’s good and we wouldn’t be averse to a follow-up with the (surviving) characters. But it sits squarely in the middle of the franchise in terms of quality. It doesn’t revive or reset the brand in the similar way that Prey or Evil Dead Rise did, but it does provide a solid piece of genre entertainment, where its immediate predecessors failed in achieving that objective. Alien fans are most likely to enjoy and support this offshoot, but whether it makes enough of a splash to provoke another interim story arc is currently an unanswered question. Meanwhile, it scratches that mean Xeno itch to a satisfactory degree and then there’s always Noah Hawley’s Alien: Earth series in 2025.