Film review - Alien: Romulus - Law Society Journal
The most compelling thing about the Alien franchise is how each film follows similar narrative structures applied to different genres. The original was a claustrophobic high-concept sci-fi horror, the first sequel an all-out space-marine action romp, then a dark and oppressive operatic horror art house, an over-the-top traditional sci-fi blockbuster, a contemplative philosophical space adventure, and finally a brooding and depressive mystery about facing extinction. There are no two Alien movies the same.
And yet, when a new one comes out, it taps into the feeling of watching the first one for the first time. We’re constantly chasing that original high, even when stylistically and thematically, each of the seven titles (and I’m not counting the Alien vs Predator trilogy) has its own DNA. This week, film critic Matt Zoller Seitz commented, “there are no bad Alien films, only good or great”. I am inclined to agree with him. They all stem from a simple idea (humans in close space hunted by an unkillable organism) that provides an excellent sandbox for filmmakers to explore.
Alien: Romulus, the seventh film in the franchise, is the first time a sequel looks back at its legacy. Keeping up with the postmodern trend of self-referential self-awareness, it doesn’t follow up on the latest Prometheus and Alien: Covenant but instead makes one placed somewhere between the first two titles. It comes up even before the title – a Weyland-Yutani spaceship collects a fossilised xenomorph from the wreck of the Nostromo, the first film’s vessel. We’re back in time, baby. A feeling heightened by director Fede Álvarez’s choice of trying his best to mimic the same visuals from Ridley Scott’s original masterpiece.
From the prologue, we quickly move to the plot. On a mining planet, a ragtag group of young rebels plan to invade an abandoned spaceship in orbit, where they may find means to travel to a different planet and escape their hellish corporate nightmare. Most of the characters are forgettable, except Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and her android “brother” and protector Andy (David Jonsson), our de facto point of view. Before we even had time to explore the rest of the group, we quickly discover a good reason as to why the craft was abandoned.
So far, so generic Alien, but where the films divert to find their own path within the same concept, Romulus goes out of its way to visually and thematically reference the original Sigourney Weaver “quadrilogy”. Weyland-Yutani’s evil antics retake centre stage, bringing that “the real monster is capitalism”. There’s a baffling moment where Álvarez decides to include a character from the original film played by an actor who unfortunately passed away, which is both puzzling, poorly done, unnecessary and offensive to the memory of said actor. The second half of the film then devolves into an action crescendo like Cameron’s Aliens. If each Alien film is a mirror of the state of pop culture at the time it was made, it makes sense Alien: Romulus is a work of reverence for the better films made before it.
What’s disappointing is that it didn’t have to be this way. The beginning and reasons why the kids board the craft didn’t have to be so convoluted when it could’ve easily been reduced to “what if Wages of Fear, but it’s Alien?” The horrible CGI of an old actor could’ve been replaced by better and more creepy options (I entertained a broken android with unrecognisable face to drive the “faceless corporation” point even further), and throughout the film there’s this gnawing impression that many decisions here were made by studio committee and audience test screenings. Particularly the moments where Álvarez promises some blood and guts, only to be scaled down by quick and safe editing. The facehugger scene includes this disturbing image of the creature’s appendage forcing its way down a human’s throat, yet it doesn’t linger long enough to effectively disturb us.
The natural progression for an Alien movie would be to reduce it to pure B-schlocky madness: the kind of subgenre it surprisingly has yet to explore. And Álvarez is the perfect fit for that – his Evil Dead remake left me happily traumatised – but he only gets to unleash in the film’s third act. And what a third act it is. Suddenly, Romulus becomes a grizzly, gnarly, body-horror nightmare with an edge-of-your-seat set piece. Where was that film 90 minutes before? Is there anything else left for Alien other than having your great idea ruined by a large corporation?
Verdict: 3 out of 5
Even a mediocre Alien film is good. It was disappointing that slithers of great ideas were undermined by too many misplaced franchised references and elements and horrible misuse of a respectful late actor. That said, though, it sticks the landing—it really does. I’ll go back to the cinema just to watch those last 10 minutes.
