Alien: Romulus (2 ½ stars out of 4)
Like the “Terminator” franchise, “Alien” movies have been trying to recapture their former glory for several decades. In both cases, successful sequels gave filmmakers the idea that their franchises had continuing potential, but as of 2024, it’s hard to argue that any releases after 1986’s “Aliens” or 1991’s “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” have even approached the towering quality of those early classics.
That being the case, “Alien: Romulus” is a pretty worthy stab at the goal. Fede Alvarez’s film won’t threaten the lofty status of the Ridley Scott original or the James Cameron sequel, but compared to the other pretenders, “Romulus” does a lot of things right, and is worth a look in spite of its faults.
The story follows an ill-fated group of 20-somethings as a seemingly simple heist operation gets a heavy dose of Xenomorph complications. Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and her companions live on a remote mining colony where politics and bureaucracy have eliminated any chance of a better life. To escape, they need hibernation pods to enable the multi-year journey to the nearest civilized world, and a nearby abandoned space station just happens to have a few.
What the young thieves don’t know is that the orbiting hulk is the site of a science experiment gone horribly wrong. The crew had acquired a Xenomorph from the wreckage of the Nostromo (the ship featured in the 1979 film), and it chose not to cooperate with the experiment.
Naturally, Rain and co. get stranded on the station along with a host of aliens, either in traditional facehugger or full-grown form. The standard cat-and-mouse game follows as the more expendable characters get dispatched, and the slightly-more-sympathetic ones face increasingly steep odds of escape. Along the way Alvarez sprinkles in plenty of nods to the earlier films, most dramatically with another attempt to CGI a deceased actor back onscreen.
By focusing on such a young cast, “Romulus” undercuts some of the gravitas of those earlier films, but rather gives Alvarez’s film more of a traditional slasher vibe, befitting his own past work in 2013’s “Evil Dead” remake and 2016’s “Don’t Breathe.” It’s an interesting spin on the franchise, and a nod to the “haunted house in space” concept of the original film, but it has its drawbacks.
Still, there really are some good elements at work here. The visuals and atmosphere are spot on, and the world of “Romulus” is claustrophobic and fully believable. And even if the twists and turns get a little stale by the end of the film’s 119-minute run time, Alvarez keeps his moving parts mostly interesting. The finale is a little more funny than frightening, but the director deserves credit for trying.
Ultimately, the film’s reliance on franchise tropes starts to make it feel like more of a soft reboot of the first film, with sprinkled references to the second, resulting in a fun movie that’s more of a tribute than an original story of its own. Again, compared to some of the other sequels in the franchise, it’s not a bad thing. But there’s definitely the sense that some different decisions might have delivered something that could stand on its own.
“Alien: Romulus” is rated R for scattered profanity and sequences of horror violence.