Alien: Romulus - Sam Cohen's Theatrical Review

The internet has been aflutter with analyses of Alien: Romulus marketing materials ever since the first poster hit, with people hanging on every word from filmmaker Fede Álvarez to figure out what the hell his entry would be about. Luckily for everyone reading this review, Álvarez was pretty forthcoming with his inspirations for the film, including his love for all the sequences taking place on Hadley’s Hope in Aliens: Special Edition. But why? To him, the children of these space colonists will be burdened to carry on what their parents started. Sounds like a classic downbeat reality that could be caused by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, right? Álvarez shifts the focus to the hopelessness caused by humanity’s desire to find new life in space, especially as it relates to those who wish to profit off of space exploration and terraforming.

Taking place 20 years after Alien and 37 years before Aliens, Alien: Romulus follows a ragtag group of space colonists employed by the Weyland-Yutani corporation as they live their semi-hopeless lives on Jackson’s Star, a colony about halfway through a decades-spanning terraforming process to make the planet livable for humans. Rain (Cailee Spaeny) is one of those hard-working colonists who has put in 12 years of service to the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, the amount of time needed to “retire” and leave the planet for greener pastures. But when Rain is denied her retirement, all seems hopeless once again. That is until Tyler (Archie Renaux) convinces Rain and her synthetic brother, Andy (Jon Rosson), to accompany them on an illegal mission to rob a defunct space station of its cryo fuel. That way they can make a run for it to a more-hospitable planet that’s lightyears away.

Naturally, things go bump in the night, but the journey there makes for an engaging twist on the usual set-up for an Alien movie. In Alien: Romulus, the people getting into trouble are the children of space colonists doomed to continue their parents’ work with no guarantee of freedom at the end. All these children know is the Jackson’s Star colony, a dirty grafting of colonialism onto a dangerous planet’s surface. You take a step outside of the colony and you may die, and Rain has never known a life elsewhere. Who wouldn’t want to take a risk to get out of dodge? As we’ve learned over the years, that’s when a preying alien force rears its ugly head.

Álvarez wants you to buy into Rain’s story like nothing else before it, not even Ripley. She’s not a hardnosed colonist who knows her way around a ship, nor is she a Colonial Marine who is trained, armed, and ready for alien confrontation. To her, the only pathway is through, because going back either means death or prison. That’s not to say the film flips a switch where she becomes an action heroine immediately. Her journey is much more gracefully plotted out, following her as she increases her skill set as the danger increases, although the film has a very hard time of keeping the spooky scares consistent as we go through plot revelations. The second Alien: Romulus brings back a REDACTED to dump some exposition, the pacing stops too sharply for the sake of nostalgia. That said, all callbacks to the earlier Alien films are used as a means to an end rather than deepening established franchise lore. Those worried about Ridley Scott’s own proclivities for god complexes and foo-foo nutty science will find comfort in Álvarez’s unfussy approach.

Oh, and speaking of unfussy: There’s a ton of practical effects mixed in here, to the point where I wasn’t sure if some shots were composites of digital and physical or not. The blending between the fake and real works wonderfully here. Enough of CGI blood defying gravity, Alien: Romulus has all the blood, gore, and nasty violence you could ask for from a big-budget horror movie.

But what about all the spooky scares? Alien: Romulus has plenty of them! The film has a tough time getting to all the action, but I attribute that to the focus on character drama that leads into everything. There’s quite a bit of hand-wringing around helping these characters become more than just what commodifies them, slightly to the detriment of everything else around it. Álvarez doesn’t seem too confident in how to connect the deeper moral stakes to the rollicking action in the first two thirds of the film, but the finale more than makes up for everything before it. Once the hammer drops, the horror comes fast and hard with set piece after set piece of gorgeous bloody alien action. Fans of the Alien films that came before Alien: Romulus may find the callbacks a bit too cloying, though I give Álvarez credit for remixing things enough to make it unique and engaging. 

Alien: Romulus was viewed in Dolby Cinema at AMC Theaters Boston Common with a 4K Dolby Vision presentation that astounds throughout. The vast, dangerous expanse of space is rendered beautifully by Álvarez and cinematographer Galo Olivares (Gretel & Hansel), the visual effects look better than they did in Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, plus the film takes great advantage of the thick, deep black levels available with the Arri Alexa 35. The film was captured at 4.6K and finished at 4K for theatrical presentation, showcased in the 2.39:1 aspect ratio in this showing. I cannot wait to see Alien: Romulus in the expanded IMAX ratio of 1.90:1, as those big action sequences beg for more headroom and you can see how well they utilized the extra space even in the standard 2.39:1 version. 

As with some Dolby Atmos presentations in Dolby Cinema theaters, Alien: Romulus revels in the silence of space and the way screams rip through that silence like no other. The downfiring channels made terrific work of all the environmental effects, like thrusters from a spaceship lighting up over your head as it approaches for a landing. Benjamin Wallfisch’s score makes good work of mixing Jerry Goldsmith’s soundscape in with something more modern, but not overwhelmingly so. Creature effects have a grand ole’ time jumping from speaker to speaker in an all-out assault on your ears. 

Alien: Romulus is sure to have its detractors who think it has desecrated what has come before it. These same people took issue with Ridley Scott bending over backwards to turn the Alien franchise into his own horrific myth on creation and evolution. But with Álvarez, the focus is firmly planted on getting the story from point-A to point-B without getting wrapped up in world-building nonsense. The xenomorphs are back and they come easily Recommended.