Alien: Romulus is Out of This World
The latest instalment has resurrected the dying franchise
Hey there! Long time no read. I know, it’s been a minute since my last post (thanks for sticking around!) and I’m finally ready to give you another piece of my mind. I’m currently on a week off from work and I’ve been using it to record vocals for some beat demos that I’ve had kicking around for a few years. My last release was in December 2023 and I’m *hoping* to share a new track by the end of the year to keep relevant. Watch this space! Anyway, it seems that The Drip Tray has pretty much become a film review blog at this stage, so I hope you like analysing movies too – it’s a big one.
If you read the introduction to my manuscript on horror cinema way back when, you know that Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) is one of my favourite films of all time. Given the mediocrity of the original director’s prequel entries Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant (2017), I wasn’t overly excited to hear that another instalment was in production a couple years ago. When I later heard that Fede Álvarez was signed on to direct Alien: Romulus (2024), it piqued my interest. I had hope after seeing the trailer some 37 times at theatres and reading that it had received glowing reviews online. Then friends who also love the original and had (ashamedly) seen the new one before me were itching to gush about it. By the time that I finally had a chance to secure my own cinema experience for this highly-anticipated film, it was hard not to go in with overhyped expectations. Thankfully, I was far from disappointed.
Directed and co-written by Fede Álvarez with longtime collaborator Rodo Sayagues, Alien: Romulus is the ninth film in the franchise if you include the AVP spin-offs. It’s somewhat of a requel, set between the timelines of Alien and Aliens (1986), with unrelated characters largely recreating the events of the original. On my podcast Dead House, we recently proposed Álvarez as a suitable candidate for an Event Horizon remake – prior to seeing this – and I stand by it. There’s not enough space horror in modern cinema if you ask us. Who better to carry the torch than the guy who debuted with ‘the most terrifying film you will ever experience’, and who managed to bring one of the greatest sci-fi sagas back from the brink? Produced by Scott Free Productions and Brandywine Productions, Alien: Romulus has already grossed $288.5 million on its budget of $80 million – and I’m hoping to see it again.
Now, there are three things that made the original so unique: art direction, suspense, and the concept of a “lived-in” future. Sure, you could argue that George Lucas already explored a dirty dystopia in Star Wars (1977), but that wasn’t horror. Luckily, Romulus manages to meet the same criteria, just on a smaller scale and with less social commentary. It ticks all the boxes of what viewers, old and new, could want from a new instalment. We get reconstructed traditional sets, mentions of legacy characters, stunning practical effects and, of course, great kills. In saying that, there’s a lot of fan service. I love how it blends elements of the first four films with scream queen Sigourney Weaver as the badarse Ellen Ripley – and even the 2014 video game Alien: Isolation – by taking the best bits from each then putting them together for a single two-hour experience. And it has the original’s famous fourth act!
On top of these clear influences, there’s plenty of less-than-subtle nods throughout. Beginning with the iconic title card sequence, we also see Mother – stylised as MU/TH/UR – waking up in a dark, empty spaceship, vertical sliding doors and air vents that open and close like camera apertures, and even the classic drinking bird prop. There’s also a brief scene that involves traversing a crawl space, sans xenomorph and tracker. It’s obvious from the start that Álvarez is a true fan of the franchise and has remained faithful to the first film’s gritty attention to detail. Furthermore, it features a digital reappearance from evil android Ash – originally played by Sir Ian Holm (R.I.P.) and voice acted by Daniel Betts here – whose mutilated torso they reconnect to the server for information, and an onscreen homage to Kane – originally played by Sir John Hurt (R.I.P.) – the first victim of the notorious dinner scene death in Alien.
In the simplest terms, Alien is a male rape film. The concept of a foreign entity forcing itself upon its victims who must then act as a host for the parasitic embryo until its violent birth results in their gruesome death was designed to make men uncomfortable. Romulus leans heavily into this theme, with the more grotesque side of sexual reproduction and childbirth on display. It even goes so far as to make one of the crew members pregnant, implying a sort of parallel with the organism, who undergoes a horrifying labour (more on that later). Another big theme of this film is distrust of new technology and the companies that develop them. This has always been a grounding point of commentary for the franchise, but perhaps most blatantly in Prometheus. More specifically, it raises the question of how far can a character get from human and still be sympathised with, even if it’s just a machine?
On that note, perhaps the biggest (or only) letdown for me is the characters. They’re a little two-dimensional and kinda annoying, particularly one guy who takes too long to be killed off, but I guess they’re just kids after all. Nonetheless, it’s always a bad sign when you see a movie and can’t even remember anyone’s name immediately afterwards. We follow orphaned protagonist Rain – played by Cailee Spaeny – and her synthetic “brother” Andy – played by David Jonsson – who was created by her late father. Spaeny is convincing enough and competently handles herself in the end, but she’s no Ripley. Rain doesn’t really do much of her own accord and relies on Andy for direction when shit hits the fan. Jonsson, however, undoubtedly eclipses her performance, delivering dry dad jokes throughout for comic relief and making the audience genuinely care about him – even when he’s programmed to be evil!
The film takes place at a mining colony that never sees the sun, where Rain and Andy are persuaded by their friend Tyler – played by Archie Renaux – to assist his group on a dangerous mission. The crew of six aim to illegally fly to the abandoned spaceship Romulus to steal the equipment required to leave their dismal working lives at the colony in pursuit of a brighter future. Little do they know that Romulus is actually a research station owned by the devious Weyland-Yutani Corporation, who are harbouring – and harvesting – dark secrets inside. There’s an obligatory shot of debris from the Nostromo as they prepare to board the ship before we get into Alien territory, with a small group investigating the eerie halls for supplies. They come upon a lab with mysterious specimens in temperature-controlled tanks that they don’t seem to notice until it’s too late and then the fun begins.
Did somebody say genetically-engineered face-huggers? Fortunately, they did in the writing room. Now these little fuckers can swim and their fertilisation appendage is a good eight inches long, so you know damn well that Álvarez is gonna take his sweet time with a shot of it coming out of the victim’s throat. I loved squirming in my seat whenever things were going where they probably shouldn’t. Of course, this leads to the introduction of the chest-burster and OH MY GOD IT LOOKS SO GOOD! The character uses some futuristic medical device that works like a portable x-ray with a flashlight, showing the foetus breaking her ribs as it prepares to exit straight through her sternum. As cool as it looks, I can’t believe that someone would be able to physically do this in such an excruciating and traumatising moment. Even so, the creature still owns the close-up and it had me grinning like an idiot the whole time.
Finally, we get the fully-formed xenomorph – a combination of animatronics and a suited Trevor Newlin – as it emerges from a cocoon resembling a giant vagina. This final stage of its rapid metamorphosis was cut from the original film and later incorporated in Aliens as a result of the queen that was strangely absent from Romulus. The iconic creature design is fantastic, from the webbed fingers and scorpion-like tail to the elongated head and set of inner jaws. Sadly, they included a snippet of the xenomorph in the trailer, which kinda defeats the whole purpose of the slow reveal. One of the best ways of building suspense is to only show glimpses throughout, although I must admit that a very long shot of the monster stepping out and flexing each of its features for the camera was sick. I even wondered if I would cry, it was that beautiful (lame, I know).
What follows is pretty much the same as the first four films: characters are picked off one by one in the dark as they steadily run out of resources and means of escape. Meanwhile, Ash overrides Andy’s directive to ensure that he preserves the specimen at all costs, leaving Rain and Tyler sceptical of his intentions. Rain eventually convinces Andy to let her revert his directive back to doing what is best for them, no longer just her (aww), and help defeat the xenomorphs – that’s right, they’ve bred by this point. There’s a cool scene that sees them dodging acid blood in zero gravity, although I don’t know how accurate the physics and motivations of this big finale are. But wait! There’s a fourth act, remember? I’m not going to tell you what happens next because I think it’s best left as a surprise, but I will say that I was very nervous about it. Rest assured that it doesn’t ruin the movie, yet it probably wasn’t necessary.
The overall technique of the film is equally considered. As I mentioned earlier, Alien is a masterclass in art direction, thanks largely to H.R. Giger. The set design of Romulus is dark and clinical, with lots of empty space and long, meandering corridors to get lost in. This also makes the layout ideal for its brilliant sound design, even the expert use of silence. Shots of collisions and explosions outside the ship are eerily quiet, as they most likely would be in the vacuum of space. It’s particularly effective in a tense scene where Rain, Andy and Tyler must stealthily make their way through a room crawling with face-huggers, which hunt by sound and heat signature. Not only is the opening sequence a clear homage to the original, a similar dissolve is used to transition to the close-resembling final shot of the film. It gives the illusion of a happy ending, even though many people are dead and the perfect organism always finds a way.
I may be biased in saying this, but I believe that Alien: Romulus is the best instalment in the franchise since Aliens. It looks like many others online feel the same, so I don’t think it’s too unreasonable a claim to make. As a diehard fan of the original (can you tell?), this could have swung hard either way for me. Thankfully, it was in capable hands, with a bold vision from Fede Álvarez and an incredible team of special effects artists at the helm. My chest is bursting with appreciation for this modern update!