Director: Fede Álvarez
Writers: Fede Álvarez, Rodo Sayagues
Cast: Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn, Aileen Wu,

“In space no one can hear you scream.” Ironically, those immortal words have echoed down through the decades since the 1979 release of Ridley Scott’s sci-fi horror classic Alien. In the years since, we have had numerous additions to create one of the longest-running franchises in cinema, including crossovers with the Predator franchise. One or two of the films have been good, some have been alright, and some have been downright awful, so forgive me if I went into this one as a fan of the series but with low expectations. Are we finally seeing more of an uptick in the quality of this franchise, or are we going to be waiting another decade to hear genuine screams of terror?

Set sometime in the fifty-seven years (in-film) between Alien and Aliens, Alien: Romulus, follows Rain (Spaeny) and her loyal personal synthetic android Andy (Jonsson) as Rain’s friends Tyler (Renaux), Kay (Merced), Bjorn (Fearn) and Navarro (Wu) try to convince her to join them on a daring mission to retrieve five cryochambers from an old derelict Weyland-Yutani Company research station, namely because they need Andy to get the station functional. Rain is determined to leave her slave-like existence on a planet that is being terraformed to better hold human life, as are her friends, and head to another planet the equivalent of nine years cryo-sleep away. So, Rain and Andy join her friends in spite of their misgivings towards synthetics. But what they find on the station (named Renaissance and divided into two parts: Remus and Romulus) is a lot more than they bargained for.

Much like Prey was to the Predator franchise, Alien: Romulus is a breath of fresh air to its own, or perhaps old air would be more fitting, considering how much it successfully emulates the suspense, terror and brutality of Alien. Álvarez adeptly blends modern technology with the SFX of the 70s/80s that made many horror movies of the time so effective: “technology of today with the philosophy of the old movies”, to quote the director himself (Álvarez also directed the 2013 Evil Dead reboot, which I’m also a huge fan of, so this film was definitely in good hands). It was exactly the right idea to bring onboard the SFX crew from Aliens, as it delivered an authenticity to the visuals that has been sorely missing in the series since 1986, and perhaps having Scott onboard as a producer helped, too (although I’m not a huge fan of Prometheus or Alien: Covenant). The Xenomorphs are familiar and terrifying, and, without spoiling anything, we are introduced to a new horrifying breed of sorts in a terrific ending to the movie; we’ve seen many over the years, but I found this one to be particularly nightmare-inducing.

What has also been missing over the past forty years is a good balance of human/alien screentime and dialogue. Romulus takes us back to the Alien roots where it’s all about how these humans are going to escape this serious threat, so if there was some kind of Bechdel test equivalent for a Xenomorph, I think this film would pass quite nicely (including actual verbal references to the Xenomorph name for once). There are some cheesy yet fun references to the previous films, and a particular bittersweet cameo of sorts, but some references are important to fully tie the entire past and present of the franchise together, so that in a way Romulus acts like a sturdy bridge for the whole thing. It also apparently encompasses aspects of the short films, so be sure to check those out on YouTube (which I will be doing straight after writing this review), and the 2014 video game Alien: Isolation (a game that I purchased years ago and am yet to play because, well, I’m too scared).

Going with a younger cast and characters was risky, but it paid off because they are well-rounded characters that reflect the crew of the Nostromo in Alien and the actors were well-cast. The performances are pretty solid for the most part (in spite of some English accents that even I as an Englishwoman struggled to understand at times due to a lack of enunciating) and each character was defined by their individual characteristics, so unlike some previous films, there’s no confusion over the roles they play. Without comparing Spaeny to Sigourney Weaver, her performance as Rain came close to what we saw Weaver do with Ripley, in that she is a strong lead and delivers a performance that will make audiences want to root for her. Jonsson is only slightly below Spaeny’s level in his performance, wonderful as Andy in different forms, far better a synthetic than Michael Fassbender’s Walter in Prometheus and Covenant or David in Covenant. Renaux, Merced and Wu give solid supporting performances, and Fearn provides an extra level antagonism with his synthetic-loathing character.

With a strong plot (apparently James Cameron, director of Aliens, had a few notes on the script), a fantastic level of SFX versus minimal CGI, a good cast and claustrophobic frights galore, Alien: Romulus really does take the franchise back to its humble beginnings and delivers something that Alien fans can genuinely enjoy. The film was apparently initially headed for release on Hulu, but fortunately it is having the theatrical release (something that should also have been done for the Predator franchise’s Prey), and it is definitely worth a trip to the cinema. For the first time since watching Aliens, I’m rather looking forward to where the Xenomorph will end up next.

Check out a full run-down of the Alien series to-date at Dawn of the Tapes’ Film Club: Alien.