REVIEW: Alien: Romulus (2024)

Movie Reviews

The trailers for Alien: Romulus sold it as a trip back to the franchise’s origins, and it certainly is that, but not in the way most of us probably hoped. This is not just a throwback in a similar horror vein to Alien but yet another sequel that stands on the franchise’s past like a rickety ladder, with plenty of callbacks and outright cribbing of scenes, imagery, and more. The rub is that most of the new stuff is so lousy you understand why Fede Álvarez blanketed his film in what came before.

On a Weyland-Yutani work colony called Jackson’s Star, employee Rain Carradine (Cailee Spaeny) and her “brother,” an android named Andy (David Jonsson), find themselves stuck longer than they intended, so they hook up with a crew of scavengers to steal some equipment from an abandoned ship that will get them to the planet Yvaga. Once onboard, they discover some of Weyland-Yutani’s secrets and a creepy-crawly creature that spells doom.

The movie’s biggest drawback is the characters. Alien: Romulus gives us no one to care about beyond superficial reasons, and even those are scarce. Rain and Andy grew up together, but we never get a feel for their bond; we’re just told they have one. There’s another brother-sister duo – a more traditional one – on the team of space raiders, and it’s the same deal with them: we learn they’re related, and that’s the end of the human connection. They’re all stock characters: the female hero who pales in comparison to most Ripley rip-offs, let alone the real deal; the more traditional weak and frightened girl;  the leader of the team who’s moral and decent; the relentlessly jerky guy who makes a nuisance of himself for no discernible reason; the tough-looking woman with a buzz cut; and the requisite android. And they all talk in very modern parlance, which is grating. If you’ve seen the previous Alien movies or even a lot of other sci-fi, you’ve seen it all done much better.

It doesn’t help that they’re played by awful actors, or at least actors giving awful performances. I liked Cailee Spaeny in Civil War, but here, she’s just as lifeless as the abandoned ship she searches, with no personality ever coming through. It could be that this is a bad movie, and Civil War was a very good one. I’m not as familiar with the other actors, but knowing Spaeny is capable of better is why I don’t want to blame them entirely. There are some strange and downright awful narrative and character decisions that could have hampered the performances. Rain has a moment in Alien: Romulus where she asks Andy a question when he’s not in the room that is so bad it’s the biggest laugh in the film. And David Jonsson plays Andy as if he’s mentally challenged, which I don’t understand; the other androids in the Alien movies were never portrayed this way, and it adds nothing except for a shift later on that is silly more than interesting or scary. Everyone else is blander than oatmeal mix, and unlike Alien, it’s a struggle to care if they live or die when the monsters come out to play.

That lack of a spark makes the first half of Alien: Romulus feel like it’ll never end. The very long sequence where they inspect the abandoned ship is barely a crawl, and it’s at least partly because you’re stuck spending time with people who make Ferris Bueller’s teacher look like a live wire. It’s also not very exciting watching people walk around a lifeless vessel like that. Remember in Alien when they went to that planet that had the eggs with the Facehuggers? That scene was great because it was full of wonder, discovery, and the uneasy feeling that something is very wrong, even if we don’t know what it is. Alien: Romulus is going for that atmosphere, but it doesn’t achieve it because there’s no wonder in a dingy ship, and there’s no mystery because we know what the Alien and the Facehugger are, so we’re just waiting for the inevitable rather than wondering what happens next. It’s the difference between unbearable tension and checking your watch as you wonder when they’re getting to the good stuff.

At least the ship looks good, as does most of Alien: Romulus. The design of the vessel is very much in keeping with the Nostromo; it looks lived-in and derelict, even if the environment isn’t used as well as it was in Alien. The same goes for Jackson’s Star, the work colony, which looks like a depressing place to live; you can imagine a heartless corporation like Weyland-Yutani forcing its employees to stay there, and you understand why everyone wants to leave as soon as they can. The special effects are also mostly terrific, with the CGI (presumably) never feeling fake when ships are taking off; however, there is one instance that I don’t want to spoil that is absolutely horrendous (which is fitting because it’s an eye-roller of a plot point), something we’ve seen done a lot lately, and rarely well. The Aliens look excellent, probably the best they have since Aliens; again, the CGI works, and they fit seamlessly with the actors and sets.

There are also some good filming techniques in Alien: Romulus from director Fede Álvarez, who is refreshingly restrained instead of showing off with some fancy trick that doesn’t work. Zero gravity is conveyed with some tilts and slow spins that give a sense of weightlessness without going bonkers for cheap thrills. And while the search of the ship goes on too long, the slow takes work well in themselves and would’ve been even better if there were fewer of them. The score is also very effective, giving the film a creepy vibe that I wish it justified more and making good use of some of the tracks from some of the older movies. Alien: Romulus gets a lot right on a technical level; I just wish the story and characters were halfway decent.

I also wish it left the past alone a bit more. The music cues are great, but there are a lot of callbacks to Alien and Aliens, from recreated scenes to repeated lines to things I don’t want to spoil but are not only unnecessary but disrespectful. Like some other legacy sequels – Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Disney Star Wars – Alien: Romulus undermines the events of Alien, thinking itself clever by using elements of that film to bolster its own story without considering what it’s doing to the original. I’m sick of seeing this happen, to the point where I want pretty much everything left alone. The repeated lines do nothing but remind you of much better films (and reinforce the audacity of this one thinking it’s anywhere near as good), and the mirrored scenes and shots carry none of the same tension or excitement. Dear God, it even rips off the atrocious Alien: Resurrection at one point, and it manages to have less meaning than that regrettable film.

Admittedly, I didn’t have high hopes for Alien: Romulus, but it still managed to be worse than I thought. It’s a boring sci-fi horror movie with no one to care about, an over-reliance on its forebears, and a lack of tension or excitement. There is some good camerawork, the music is great, and the special effects mostly work well (though when they don’t, they’re awful), but it’s all window dressing for a chore of a film.