Film Review - Alien: Romulus

A review of the chilling next instalment in the Alien franchise.

Film Review - Alien: Romulus

In 2024, the seventh installment in this chilling, sci-fi horror series is Alien Romulus and is a sequel to the original 1979 film, Alien, set twenty years later in-universe after Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley’s first encounter with the titular monster.

This film has already been well-received by fans with it being the most popular 21st century release and is easily my favourite of the entire franchise.

When this film first came out, I hadn't seen any of the other films and honestly wasn’t a big movie fan, d7dd9f263372ff0a2c2f02a10c759ae88049ac45.pngI was more into watching tv shows than movies. That being said, I was always interested in the premise of this franchise for years and knew about it scattered around as pop-culture references in other forms of media. With all the previous six films on Disney Plus, I plucked up the courage and started watching them which led to me immediately falling in love with this franchise.

One of the many enticing features of the film is the design of mainly the settings. Because this film is set not long after the first, the aesthetic had to remain retro-futuristic and also from the 2014 video game, Alien Isolation, which the director and producers drew inspiration from. Retro futuristic or retrofuturism refers to an art piece that combines old-fashioned styles with futuristic technology.577466fa5b207a90539909a5d044db0f9d941191.png

So when the designers for Alien Isolation started making the game, they deliberately designed the environment as if it was being made in the 80s. For example, instead of fancy, massive 80” wall computer screens and holograms like you’d expect in a space movie set in the future, a lot of 20” block computers with green pixelated text take their places along with leather wheeled chairs.

Those eagle-eyed viewers and fans of the video game may have noticed some easter eggs and references from the game in the film. For example, the emergency telephone stations used for saving the progress of the game are scattered around the station in the movie, even the entire station is based on the one seen in the game.

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This latest film follows a group of young space colonizers from a mining colony planet, exploring a seemingly abandoned space station looking for cryo sleep fuel so they can get to Yvaga III, a fully terraformed planet hoping for a better life. The group consists of Rain and her android brother, Andy. Rain’s ex-boyfriend, Tyler, his pregnant younger sister, Kay, their cousin Bjorn and Bjorn’s adoptive sister, Navarro.

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We’re introduced to Rain and Andy first and they already have a really sweet relationship. They’ve remained close ever since Rain’s late father reprogrammed Andy to be a kind of caretaker for Rain when he passed, but instead of being a surrogate father, Andy malfunctioned and became more of a younger brother for Rain who needed looking after which led to them having a close bond. Andy would even make bad pun-based jokes to Rain whenever she wasn’t feeling great.

Throughout the Alien franchise, the Weyland-Yutani Corporation is always present in some way to make the protagonist’s lives more difficult. They’re a technology supplier making starships, androids and computers and also possess extensive assets in interplanetary shipping and transport while also operating human colonies. But as seen in this film, Weyland-Yutani exhibits the worst aspects of corporate profiteering by making their colonies work in dangerous, life-threatening, inhumane conditions under the guise of “Building Better Worlds”, as their slogan says. As far as I’m aware, this is the first time on-screen where the truly awful side of the company to other humans is shown on a massive scale, apart from all the times when they’re particularly interested in the Xenomorph species and will do anything it takes to capture a specimen.

717d8f47663f7deb80cfa2c5c4e2101bd72d417e.jpegSpeaking of the Xenomorph, everything about them is just terrifyingly well done! In my personal opinion, the Xenomorph is probably the best villain in the horror genre. Pretty much every shot of the creatures was physical effects and actors playing them and only on very few occasions CGI was used. It wasn’t until halfway through the movie that the audience got a glimpse of one of the creatures. That’s what’s amazing about them, you just have to catch glimpses of them in the shadows or their screeches for them to be very effective. It’s probably why movies like Alien³ and Alien Resurrection weren’t that well received because seeing a lot of them at one time could have weakened the scary factor and the audience most likely got bored by then at that point. Sure they look cool, but not as creepy or terrifying anymore in those movies.

It all started with Navarro. Most of the audience would have known beforehand that poor Navarro0d286c7159cdd57fd6a39c2c482ee10bdb5ff8ab.png wouldn’t survive given that her death was shown in trailers and she’s literally in the process of being killed, by a face-hugger implanting a Xenomorph in her, on the DVD covers and movie poster which is at the top of this review. A recreation of the iconic chest-burster scene from 1979 with John Hurt’s character was done with Navarro along with Kay, who was present and trying to help her friend, with a spine-chilling scream and thus, the Xenomoph was born.

Another important character to the story that our main characters meet on the abandoned space station is an already wrecked Weyland-Yutanib5bf5c01094cf2fea5155dc58d16c2d43aae07e8.png android called Rook who resembles the android Ash from the first movie. At first glance, I was incredibly worried that they used AI for the android because the original actor for Ash had passed away at the point of production and it honestly didn’t look perfect. Luckily, when I watched the behind-the-scenes extras on the DVD, my worry vanished when I saw that the team made a fully workable animatronic and they just used CGI to animate the face for expressions the animatronic couldn’t. They even spoke with Ian Holm’s family, Ash’s actor, to ask if they had permission to use his likeness to which they gave their consent.

So after all the typical shenanigans of previous Alien movies, when the audience thinks the main threats have been sorted out and most of the characters have died except for one or two, there’s just one last surprise in store. Forget the Xenomorphs being the scariest thing in the Alien universe, we are introduced to the Offspring and as you can tell from its very first shot as I present here, it’s bloody terrifying! I’ve never been properly creeped out from watching anything on screen but this is on another level. Kay is who gave birth to this and you’re probably wondering how? So Kay was injected with a mutagenic compound extracted from an alien pathogen found in the Xenomorph’s29a56eaf989dccba940151d9880c463e59053144.png DNA by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation meant to augment the physiology of humans to withstand adverse environmental conditions. Kay injected herself to heal the wound she sustained from a Xenomorph attack, however it mutated her unborn baby. This isn’t the first time the alien pathogen was seen and discussed in the series, it was actually the prequel films Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant (2017) that first went into that concept and I suppose Alien: Romulus expanded on that idea. Plus in those films, humans got a bit existential and found out how the human race was created and it was by an ancient race called Engineers which the Offspring shares some resemblance. The way that shot was done was stellar with a shadow shrouding its face and everything going completely silent when Andy and Kay see it for the first time.

One thing I really enjoy about this series is its strong lead female characters. First, we had Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley in the first four, Noomi Rapace as Elizabeth Shaw in Prometheus, Katherine Waterson as Katherine Daniels in Alien: Covenant and now Cailee Spaeny as Rain Carradine. Each one of them managed to take down their respective alien threat on their own and survive it with all of them being played by fabulous actors. Towards the end of most of the movies, there’s sort of a final confrontation between the main character and an enemy alien which shows the acting abilities and how great the characters are.

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I highly recommend this movie to anyone who’s a massive science fiction lover and maybe a horror fan. You don’t necessarily need or have to watch the previous films to understand the plot since this can be enjoyed on its own. If you do enjoy it, then obviously I would say to check out the rest of the series so any possible questions might be answered.

Author

Josh Tomes

Josh Tomes

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1 Comments

  • Mark Powell

    On 31 January 2025, 13:21 Mark Powell commented:

    Great review, Josh!
    The earlier films really scared me - in a good way ;) Can't wait to see this one too now.

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