There are, off the top of my head, two major sci-fi franchises where the first movie was a straight up horror, and the second skewed more towards action, in which the popular opinion is that the action sequel is the better movie. In the case of both Alien and Terminator, people in my experience generally prefer the action heavy sequels. I, however, in both cases, prefer the original. This opinion is not heretical, but is not often agreed upon, but it does mean that I will never complain about Alien going back to straight horror, and oh boy does Romulus go for horror.
The movie presents three sets of orphaned siblings: Rain (Cailee Spaeny) is a miner who looks after her adopted brother Andy (David Jonsson), a reprogrammed synthetic; Tyler (Archie Renaux), Rain's ex-boyfriend and his sister Kay (Isabela Merced); and finally Tyler and Kay's cousin Bjorn (Spike Fearn) and his adopted sister Navarro (Aileen Wu). After Rain's attempts to get herself and Andy away from the miserable world they live on are thwarted by a forcibly extended work contract, she teams up with the others to raid a decommisioned space station and steal cyrosleep pods to get them to paradise. Unfortunately the space station was decommisioned after it retrieved remains from the wreck of the Nostromo from the first movie, so naturally there are deadly aliens aboard and things go south, leading to the team having to find a way to escape with the help of the station's half-dead medical officer Rook (Daniel Betts), while being hunted by facehuggers and Xenomorphs.
Okay I'm getting this out of the way now: deepfaked Ian Holm as the physical presence of Rook is weird and distracting and pointless and dystopian. Not even death can get movie studios to stop you reprising your role time and time again for nostalgia's sake. I hate it. Moving on.
While we're on the negativity train, let's start with the biggest problem, which is that while Rain and Andy get plenty of development and scenes to make us feel for them and build tension when they're threatened, nobody else really gets that. They get moments to show that they're people with lives, but it's mostly just small things: praying while taking off into space, or doing silly tricks with gravity while taking off into space, or getting sick while taking off into space because they're secretly pregnant. In fact, the takeoff into space scene does quite a lot to show us that these people have rich inner lives and personalities. It's really the only scene that does that.
There is an attempt at banter between the characters, but it's mostly quite shallow. One character is consistently unpleasant to Andy because he doesn't like synthetics, and another character tells us it's because a synthetic made a decision that killed his parents. He doesn't really get any other character traits, and any horror movie needs an unpleasant character we don't like to be the first victim and establish the stakes and the scares, but nobody else gets much after the first couple scenes either. Truth be told, I didn't realise that Rain and Tyler were supposed to be ex-partners while watching the movie, because I missed the dialogue in the very noisy beginning establishing that and nothing about their businesslike and perfunctory interactions throughout the rest of the movie gave me that impression. We care about the people because they're people, but we're given no reason to connect to one character besides the fact that she's pregnant, and she has little personality outside of that.
Rain, Tyler and Andy get the best of it, but Tyler is mostly practical besides a few moments, and Andy spends much of the movie with his personality being overwritten by a module that grants him power, but forces him to prioritise the interests of the company over his friends and family. A good indication of the company valuing profit and property over people's lives and safety, and a rather effective exploration of the theme of capitalism ruining everything, certainly, but not something that endears you to the character.
When Rain puts herself in danger to save her brother, despite having spent much of the movie hiding a pretty major secret from him, and her brother having spent much of the movie putting her friends in danger for profit (granted against his will) the decision seems noble, but not built up to, since the movie has gone out of its way to show us how unpleasant Andy is now. I don't disagree with the decision, but maybe more indications on how her brother is still in there throughout the movie would have worked better than the likeable character being completely subsumed by the character we hate would have worked better.
Okay, negativity over, and despite my ranting I did really like the movie because it does a good job with the tension and the scares and really does a great job at selling how deadly and terrifying the xenomorphs are. Quickly establishing how many extremely prepared people on the space station were annihilated by a single xenomorph, the movie, once in the dangerous situation, does a wonderful job in rapid escalation, putting characters in danger, tearing the group dynamic apart due to the stress and different priorities, only to then make everything fall apart by tearing someone's chest open because, well, that's what these aliens do, and it's terrifying. The effects work is spectacular and the character/creature work on the creatures is gorgeously scary. I spent half of the movie with my hand over my mouth, both because of the tension (and there are a few cheap jumpscares, I'll say, but most of the scares are well earned and very effective) and because of the horrifying imagery.
While everyone else is just sort of there, our main protagonist is likeable, reacts in interesting and believable and mostly intelligent ways to the bad situation she's in, and we want to see her do well, which makes it very tense when she's about to get got by one of the multiple horrifying creatures stalking her and her friends throughout the setting, and Cailee Spaeny sells every moment. She really is the standout here, and her slow evolution comes across less as arbitrary action heroine-fication and more like desensitisation: by the end of the movie she's seen enough horrors that the thing she's staring down now seems less scary, but no less threatening, and you never lose the sense that this character you want to succeed is in just so much danger at all times, which makes her decision to put herself in more danger to help her friends make her even more noble and makes you want to see her succeed, especially juxtaposed with the somewhat selfish place she started from.
I'll admit I've spent more time on the negative than the positive here. It's strange that the criticisms are somewhat more interesting to talk about. The praise is perhaps generic praise for a good Alien movie, but this is a really good Alien movie with some characterisation issues sprinkled throughout. Basic, perhaps, but if you're going into an Alien movie looking for sci-fi horror, it gives you what you want.
Oh and the turn the movie takes in the third act is gross and I love it so much. Extremely good and distressing imagery on display here, it's awful and it's amazing.
Full disclosure: I don't really know much about the Alien franchise, for reasons I won't get into in this post. So, in a way, this is the first time I'm truly dipping my toes into this world. And... I'm definitely left impressed. I have always enjoyed Fede Álvarez's films (he's the main reason I gave this a try), and his trademark style shines as much as ever in this film: he's a master at creating claustrophobic atmospheres, and he always makes an effort to use practical effects whenever possible. Thanks to his work, the movie ends up becoming a surprisingly scary and anxiety-inducing experience. I must admit some details required a little suspension of disbelief, but overall I'm super satisfied with Alien: Romulus. I really should get over my dumb gripes with this franchise and try watching some of the original movies...
A group of young space colonists come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe when they are scavenging in the deep of a derelict space station. The chance of a better life is all they wanted.
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Continue reading Alien: Romulus (2024) Review
