Producers: Ridley Scott, Michael Pruss and Walter Hill Director: Fede Álvarez Screenplay: Fede Álvarez and Rodo Sayagues Cast: Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn and Aileen Wu Distributor: 20th Century Studios
Grade: C+
One good thing about this seventh film in the “Alien” franchise is that it hearkens back to the first two, inarguably the best of the bunch—Ridley Scott’s 1979 original and James Cameron’s 1986 “Aliens”—not only by being situated chronologically between the two but in having visual effects supervisor Eric Barba and special effects supervisor Gábor Kiszelly rely more on the sort of practical effects they employed as opposed to the wall-to-wall CGI so prevalent nowadays. (To be fair, the third and fourth entries, by David Fincher and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, have their moments, and Scott’s two prequels, “Prometheus” and “Covenant,” even more. It’s the “Alien vs. Predator” spinoffs that have really given the series a bad name.)
In fact, the script for “Alien: Romulus,” by Fede Álvarez and Rodo Sayagues, might be thought of as variations on themes drawn from the initial two films, with just a dollop of Scott’s prequels tossed in at the end for good measure. It even brings back, in a way, a character from the original film, though with a different name—though the decision requires the sort of digital razzmatazz that made Peter Cushing appear to live again in “Rogue One.” (To be honest, the process doesn’t seem to have improved much in the intervening eight years. The result remains more wishful than successful, though the plastic sheen is less irksome in this case.)
That will probably satisfy most fans, who were rather turned off by the cerebral, mythic tone of Scott’s return to the franchise. But it does, of course, mean that a good deal of the movie is very familiar and, some will argue, it’s a kind of retread (as was another “Star Wars” movie, “The Force Awakens”).
And there’s another drawback. As director Álvarez has facility in building suspense; he showed that in the “Don’t Breathe” movies, despite their other problems, and it’s occasionally put to good use here. At one point, for instance, it’s suggested that the characters threatened by the aliens might be able to mask their presence by raising the temperature around them to equal that of their bodies, making it impossible for the creatures to detect them so long as they keep still and quiet. (It’s an idea, of course, that mimics “A Quiet Place” as well as “Don’t Breathe.”) Another twist involving a change in gravity also has possibilities.
But such tactics are brushed aside fairly quickly in favor of a more hell-bent, literally go-for-the-jugular approach, complete with a raucous sound design and a score by Benjamin Wallfisch that’s extremely loud and insistent—even though Álvarez and editor Jake Roberts do slow things down for expository scenes and Wallfisch periodically inserts some allusions to the music by Jerry Goldsmith from the original. But generally in its pacing and booming ambience (especially in IMAX), “Romulus” resembles contemporary horror movies more than the first two “Alien” entries, although in the grungy look (production design by Naaman Marshall and costumes by Carlos Olivares, as shot in dark, gloomy tones by Galo Olivares) it harks back to them.
As to the plot, it’s fairly simple. On a miserable mining colony run by the notorious Weyland-Yutani Corporation, orphan Rain Carradine (Cailee Spaeny) is informed that her contracted service has been summarily extended just as she’d hoped to depart for a more hospitable locale with Andy (David Jonsson), the once-trashed android her late father had reprogrammed as her protector, and whom she considers a brother dependent on her. Disappointed, she’s approached by erstwhile boyfriend Tyler (Archie Renaux) to join him, his sister Kay (Isabela Merced), his ill-tempered cousin Bjorn (Spike Fearn) and Bjorn’s girlfriend Navarro (Aileen Wu), an accomplished pilot, in commandeering a ship to take them to a derelict corporate vessel threatening to crash into a ring of asteroids. Their purpose is to access a store of energy that would allow them all to be kept in a cryonic stasis during a long journey to another, more livable planet. They’re especially interested in Andy, whose programming will allow him to access the closed-off portions of the ship simply by inserting a finger into its various locks.
Of course, things do not turn out as they expect. The vessel, one half of which is called Romulus (the other, of course, is Remus) was actually a research laboratory devoted to experiments aimed at evolving the Xenomorph from the first movie into ever-more efficient workers and more advanced weapons. And, of course, it’s not long before the beasts emerge and proliferate in various forms, up to and including a particularly horrifying human-alien hybrid that stars in the big finale. Along the way to that denouement, there are a number of chest-burstings more graphic than John Hurt’s, lots of tentacle attacks, and plenty of jump scares occasioned by the appearance of the Xenomorph’s yawning visage, its teeth greedily at the ready.
Spaeny makes a sympathetic, energetic younger version of Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley, and Jonsson is equally fine, morphing from awkward to Spock-like as Andy’s personality is transformed by a change in programming initiated by that digitally-recreated returnee. Unfortunately the remaining humans are little more than sketches serving as obvious morsels for the alien brood; the only question is the order in which they will be removed, and the gruesomeness with which they’ll be dispatched, though there is a curveball thrown by a pregnancy.
All told, “Alien: Romulus,” like the creature itself, does what it’s designed to do: provide jolts to the viewer (while gobbling up, the studio hopes, box office receipts). But it brings little new to the table, and ends up a rather unimaginative, if undoubtedly busy, addition to the series.