Film Review - Alien: Romulus (2024)

Alien: Romulus is the new film in the Alien series and is directed and co-written by Fede Alvarez who did the 2013 remake of Evil Dead and Don’t Breathe in 2016, this film takes place on a Weyland-Yutani colony where a young girl named Rain (Cailee Spaeny) lives with her synthetic brother Andy (David Jonsson) and it is here they learn of an abandoned space station that might help them get off their colony to a better world but unbeknownst to Rain and her companions (Isabela Merced, Aileen Wu, Archie Renaux and Spike Fearn) something creepy this way comes.

Alien Romulus I had mixed hopes for, on the one hand the Alien franchise since 1986’s Aliens by James Cameron has either been mediocre (Alien 3 and Covenant) or stupid (Resurrection and Prometheus) but there was a part of me that also thought that many would see this as a step up maybe even beyond the first 2 films because it was being made by Disney now that they own 20th Century Fox and it was being made by Fede Alvarez who is a popular horror director (a silly thought to be sure but it was one that I had) plus I loved Cailee Spaeny in Civil War earlier this year.

However this movie I fucking hated and the first reason why is that yet again the Alien franchise is either incapable or unwilling to be anything more than what it has become since Aliens which is either quasi-religious bullshit (Alien 3, Prometheus and Covenant) or just devolve into the laziest type of fan service where the movie just has to hit every little beat they’ve seen before and as Vincent Ward pointed out in the Wreckage and Rage documentary about the making of Alien 3 the audience is ahead of you at that point and are just waiting for the movie to catch up to them sitting in their seat.

And this movie for the most part does just that, lazy fan service that has some fun gooey horror effects but like the other films post Aliens it just adds more unnecessary stuff that just ends up taking away that little bit more from the fun and the simplicity of the premise that kick started this damn franchise to begin with which is that the wonders of the universe can be the things we know least about and can also be fucking terrifying and kill us without a second thought.

Where did it come from, who cares, what matters is that this creature is unstoppable and we have to stop it before it kills us all and/or we can get to safety.

Also there is a major part of this movie that every time it came on screen it just kept pulling me out of the movie and made me think “Didn’t this happen to this person” and then finding myself asking “Why didn’t you just use this person, their inclusion would make more sense and also THEIR STILL ALIVE!!!”

And lastly much like when I saw Alien Covenant in 2017 I kept being reminded in my head of Aliens and asking myself “That was a sequel to Alien”, “That film worked brilliantly” and “Why did that one manage to work when the other sequels including this one didn’t” but after asking myself those questions I almost instantly answered my own question like “Simon those are stupid questions, James Cameron was the reason why and he is a movie law unto himself.”

Anywho that was Alien Romulus and once again the Alien franchise just can’t seem to burst out of its own chest as this has lazy fan service, a very questionable character insertion and just feels like more the same that seems to come with this series after Aliens, frankly watch that and the original Alien instead, 1 out of 5.