Alien: Romulus
Directed by Fede Álvarez
Written by Fede Álvarez, Rodo Sayagues
Starring Cailee Spaeney, David Jonsson, Isabela Merced
Rated R
Runtime: 1 hour 59 minutes
In theaters August 16

by Ryan Silberstein, Managing Editor, Red Herring

After three sequels, two crossover movies, and two Ridley Scott directed prequels, the Alien franchise feels somewhat directionless at the moment. No one has tried to continue Ripley’s (Sigourney Weaver) story post-Resurrection (dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1997), and Disney apparently has little interest in letting Scott complete his David trilogy. In a lot of ways that makes sense: aside from Aliens, every other follow up to the 1979 original has more detractors than fans. Positioning Alien: Romulus as a safe bet from the Xenomorphs’ new Disney owners–although it did feature prominently in one of their theme parks from 1989-2017) to welcome fans back to the fold–makes a lot of sense when you think about it from a studio perspective. And the choice of director and co-writer in Fede Álvarez, who successfully brought Evil Dead back to life with his 2013 standalone film, underlines this. But that is not why we are here.

If the goal is to remind people why they love this franchise, Alien: Romulus achieves this directive with aplomb. Stuffed with references to previous films both large and small–there is a recreation of the shot from Alien3, the goo from Prometheus gets a shoutout, as does the existence of Colonial Marines–Álvarez has composed the roller coaster version of the franchise. All the things you’d want in an Alien movie are present but tweaked enough to make this feel like a new experience and including enough twists, turns, and surprises to make it feel like a satisfying ride. And make no mistake, Romulus is a ride. It does just enough set up for us to meet our characters before putting them in the most stressful situations imaginable.

Like the first two films in the franchise, Romulus has a very straightforward setup. Rain (Cailee Spaeney) and her android brother Andy (David Jonsson) work for the series' real villain, the Weyland-Yutani company, on a mining planet where the sun literally never shines. When her work contract gets extended just when she was about to hit her quota, she decides to follow along with her friends as they try to escape to an independent colony. It takes 9 years to get there, and all they are missing are the sleep pods for the long journey. Conveniently, there is an abandoned space station in a degrading orbit right above their planet. Of course, we know that this heist is not going to go smoothly, and soon, the small crew are overrun with facehuggers after stumbling into a research lab onboard.

All hell does break loose, and the scenes of Rain, Andy, and their friends navigating the derelict station are where the film shines. Intermittent gravity cycles, facehuggers hunting them through temperate differences, and of course, highly corrosive acid blood are all challenges the characters must face as they try to make their way back to their ship. Álvarez’ aptitude for horrific invention is on full display, as these sequences are where Romulus feels the most new, giving us images and moments that feel fresh but stand alongside anything the previous entries have shown. Álvarez understands that the scariest form of the Xenomorph is the facehugger and leans into that in a way unlike any other film in the franchise so far. Romulus also demonstrates an impressive command of tension and pacing, and the entire film modulates tone and terror perfectly. There are sequences of this movie that are among the most exhilarating of the entire year because of how well Álvarez directs these sequences to clearly establish the threat and the problem-solving abilities of the characters in peril.

Romulus does have a major flaw. This is a bit of a spoiler, although it happens in the first third of the movie (around the same time this crew of friends run into the facehuggers). For Alien: Romulus, they have digitally recreated Ian Holm’s appearance from the original film as an android, this time called Rook. Holm passed away in 2020, and while his estate is thanked (and presumably got paid for it), there are two major aspects that make me uneasy. Like the appearance of Peter Cushing’s Grand Moff Tarkin in Rogue One; A Star Wars Story (Gareth Edwards, 2016), it is extremely uncomfortable to be watching a “performance” by a person who has passed on before being able to give consent to their own likeness being used. It’s an especially bizarre choice here, as there is not much about Rook that wouldn’t be achieved by another actor in the role, even one made to look like and/or doing a vocal impression of Holm. And equally offensive, it looks like hot shit. My screening of Romulus was in IMAX, and so much of this film looks incredible, but whenever it cuts back to this monstrosity, it is extremely jarring to the point of taking away from the rest of the film. It is an absolutely garbage choice, especially because even if it were perfect, it would add little to nothing to the story here.

But I have good news about androids as well, and that is because of David Jonsson’s performance as Andy. Androids are as essential to the Alien franchise as the Xenomorphs, and Andy stands alongside Ash, Bishop, and David as a fascinating addition. When we first meet Andy, he is acting in ways that appear to represent a sort of neurodivergence, but as the film goes on, he evolves in parallel to the aliens in this film, becoming something more than he was. This is only Jonssons’s second feature film role, and while I am unfamiliar with his television work, he was excellent in last year’s Rye Lane. This is a complicated and nuanced performance, and what happens to Andy raises deep questions about family, personhood, and personality. Andy is the most thematically rich element of Romulus, with much of the rest being well-done rehashes of the previous themes of rape/non-consensual pregnancy, motherhood, and Frankenstein retellings. They are satisfying here, but they also make Romulus feel smaller compared to the big ideas Scott was exploring in Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. There is room for both in this series, but in horror franchises, interesting ideas often mean more to me than technical execution. Alien: Romulus feels like it was engineered in a lab from the parts of the previous Alien films, but it is a relentless thrill machine.