Alien: Romulus (2024)

Watched 8/18/24 (theater)

Alien: Romulus, everyone… In which Fede Álvarez delivers extra-crunchy, extra-nasty 21st Century updates to the 1979 original’s formula of average joes vs monsters from your worst nightmares…in space! Unfortunately, apart from a predictably rock-solid Cailee Spaeny performance and a stunning robo-turn from up-and-comer David Jonsson, character be damned. Álvarez puts so much well-realized effort into his sets and sounds that he forgets to give us reasons to want to hang out with this group of protagonists, or even at least see them live. Thankfully, despite the disposable heroes and some shoddy scriptwriting, Romulus gets by on the sheer harshness of its contents, contorting itself into all kinds of memorably fun horrors.

The tough part about characters in an Alien movie is that the movies aren’t supposed to be about character. Not first and foremost—you’re there for the xenomorphs themselves! But what some of the other entries in the franchise understood better than Romulus is that in order to squeeze the most juice out of your limited character development, you need to cast a few extremely charismatic performers in some key side-roles. Yaphet Koto and Harry Dean Stanton in ‘79. Michael Biehn and Bill Paxton in ‘86. Michael Fassbender and Charlize Theron in 2012. The art of the small part with big impact is not an easy one to pull off, mind you, but Romulus would have benefitted greatly from a few more interesting side characters. Instead they’re relegated to 2D movements: one-note anger, exposition dumps, and, on a more positive note, really effective deaths. But just think how much more effective those deaths would be if you had cared more for the characters.

Cailee Spaeny rocks. Between this, Civil War, and Priscilla, she has curated a coming-out trilogy of a truly fascinating polarity, giving a very different, very credible performance in each film. And David Jonsson opposite Spaeny as her synthetic brother is the standout here. He’s tasked with a very difficult, idiosyncratic role in which he must alternate between multiple personalities. Jonsson nails every moment. It’s neck and neck with Weaver’s Ripley and Fassbender’s David for some of the coolest performances in this series.

But the bummer is that the characters kind of stop there, both on the page and in the performances. There are above-average actors in this movie, they just don’t have big enough personalities to wrestle excitement off of the bland pages they were given. Isabela Merced, who has for years now been a very reputable actor, gets one cool twist and an epic horror movie scream, but outside of those couple of minutes’ worth of screentime, either sobs or sleeps through most of the plot. Spike Fearn’s character is quickly reduced to “guy who only talks when being prejudiced toward the robot.” He only gets so much mileage out of that. And then Aileen Wu and Archie Renaux turn out to literally be in the movie simply to serve as two more bodies to kill, even after they’re both set up early as being in relationships with other characters. No follow-thru and not enough charisma to carry the roles across the finish line.

But back to the good. There’s a richness in tension that can’t be understated. From the kickoff setpiece of swimming facehuggers to an acid blood, zero-g obstacle course, you can tell that Álvarez and his crew are obsessed with making their audience squirm as much as they are with franchise fealty. They douse the film in this legitimately eye-popping retro-futurist aesthetic to match the ‘79 original. It’s beautiful to look at, but more importantly, it creates a deeply tactile immersion that lends itself brilliantly to the in-your-face horror of it all. Without the peripheral detail of the set design making you feel like you’re there with the characters, the setpieces at play here wouldn’t be nearly as stirring.

Álvarez also gets significant mileage out of his music choice and special effects. The Benjamin Wallfish score blends the original Alien with more than a few notes reminiscent of Star Wars, producing an at-times overbearing but more-often absorbing footnote to various sequences, whether they be focused on sci-fi world-building, abject horror, or visceral action. And to mention the worldbuilding would be remiss without touching on the setup scenes, which take place on an eternally-dark colony planet by the name of Jackson’s Star. It’s a breathtakingly well-imagined prologue that does well to establish the stakes of the mission to come, even if it moves through that setup a bit too quickly. It almost makes you want a whole movie set on that mining planet…

But the CG and practical effects continue to hit high notes when the main characters reach their space station destination. While the retro set design has already been remarked upon, the spaceship work to get there and interact with the station in various ways is frequently powerful and inventive. Budget constraints do occasionally rear their ugly heads on some alien creatures, some blood, some unnecessary fan-service, and some zero-gravity moments, but they’re almost always followed by a next shot that wows with its dead-on realization of classic sci-fi imagery. It’s back and forth but resoundingly positive, with some nice gooey practical effects thrown in for good measure.

The flip side of those practical effects, it must be noted, is a brutally obvious CGI revival of a franchise character that is as disturbing as it is unecessary. This is the first and most egregious of a series of fan-service choices that neither make nor completely break the film. Space station Romulus itself and its many funhouse tricks are enough to satisfy today’s horror fans; I don’t think there’s an audience clamoring for Alien lore to be gratified in these blatant, awkward ways. Whether its recycled lines or cluelessly-rendered replications of dead actors, it all just feels out of place. Fortunately, there’s more than enough bright spots to overshadow the bullshit.

There’s an appropriately bouncy pace to keep audiences entertained, that’s for sure. I just wish that it had slowed down more for characters building relationships and less for weightless exposition. Once the plot kicks into gear, it never really stops for an extended conversation beyond some half-assed emotional stuff with Spaeny and Jonsson that skates by purely on the strength of the actors. Instead, it’s content to go from startling setpieces to contrived macguffins and back again, with some nothingburger franchise easter eggs thrown into the mix, too. And Romulus doesn’t really stray from that formula through its conclusion. While it does take a few new(-ish) ideas and commits to them, they never feel that risky, and because many of these setpieces have been done slightly more seamlessly and with more versatile ensembles, you end up here at times in just a really good haunted house movie, even down to a pretty shabby final battle that to me was both visually splendid (an incredible asteroid belt being the highlight) and honestly a bit incoherent in terms of its physics (what and how did Spaeny do what she did in those final 15 minutes?). I would have preferred some better use of the villain in this final battle, but alas, this movie was far more enjoyable to me than Prometheus or Covenant. No need to over-complain!

7.5/10