‘Alien: Romulus’ Review: Fede Álvarez’s Back-to-Basics Sequel Is the Summer’s Biggest Letdown
David Ehrlich
Somehow, the Xenomorph returned.
More specifically — if I can dare to reveal what happens in the very first shot of “Alien: Romulus” — employees of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation fished around deep space until they found the exact specimen that Ellen Ripley ejected from the airlock of the Nostromo at the end of “Alien,” and then decided to bring its seemingly lifeless body aboard the space station Renaissance for further study. Bad idea! It turns out that “the perfect organism” is pretty hard to kill. And so, it would seem, is the sci-fi horror series that birthed it into our world.
Of course, that’s exactly what makes them both so valuable as pieces of intellectual property, with the Xenomorph being especially priceless to a corporation whose trillionaire founder died while searching the stars for the secret to eternal life. While there isn’t a lot going on under the surface of Fede Álvarez’s grimy and graceless “Alien: Romulus,” the seventh proper installment of its franchise is nothing if not fascinated by deathlessness in all its forms.
That, more than its limp efforts to bridge the story gap between Ridley Scott’s prequels and the rest of the saga’s timeline, is what ultimately makes this very August movie feel of a piece with “Prometheus” and “Covenant,” even if its emphasis on slaughterhouse thrills cleaves a lot closer to the likes of “Alien: Resurrection” (or the video game “Dead Space,” which embarrasses the scale and imagination of Álvarez’s setpieces at every turn). Absent the patience and world-building of the series’ foundational classics or the wonder and humility of its more recent chapters, “Romulus” is left to look inward, and — like a newly sentient android — reflect on the strange reality of its creation.
The “Alien” films are too rich a text to reduce to a single ethos, but they’ve always been morbidly compelled by our instinct for survival in the face of a universe that doesn’t give a shit. We’re dumb enough to ruin the only livable planet we’ve got, but stubborn (and resourceful) enough to scatter across the stars in search of a new home, even if it means doing long-haul work for Weyland-Yutani or slaving away on some nightmare mining planet in the faint hope that the company might put you into Cryosleep one day.
That same lust for life naturally extends to the things that we create (e.g. robots, conglomerates, familiar and reliably profitable stories), and it’s what makes a killing machine like the Xenomorph such an ideal foil to our programming. Like all of its characters, “Romulus” simply exists because someone refused to let the idea behind it die. The only thing that sets it apart from the ongoing rush of self-aware meta sequels is how openly — and how ghoulishly — it confronts the primitive impulse of its existence, which it does with a tactlessness disturbing enough to make 20th Century Studios feel like a direct progenitor of Weyland-Yutani’s corporate ethos.
That tendency might add some much-needed texture to this otherwise basic-as-hell bloodbath, but the uncanny horror of watching “Alien: Romulus” zombify a certain actor is much, much scarier than anything else that Álvarez is able to put on screen. And while the decision to go that route definitely speaks to some of the “Alien” mythology’s underlying themes, it does so in such glancing fashion that any conversation it provokes doesn’t seem worth having in the first place. Besides, simply acknowledging our species’ refusal to die feels like a severe backstep for a franchise whose most effective films have been ambitious enough to question why we insist upon staying alive in the first place.
Which isn’t to dismiss this movie for eschewing the high-minded (and admittedly polarizing) curiosity that defined the recent prequels. The problem here isn’t that “Romulus” goes back to the blue-collar survivalism of the original “Alien,” the problem is that it does so poorly, and with precious little understanding of why people cling to it with the combined force of a 1,000 Facehuggers. Where Scott understood the potency of atmosphere and character, Álvarez traffics only in tension and release — and even then just on a shot-by-shot basis. The best part of any “Alien” movie is the slow build-up to when all hell breaks loose, but “Romulus” lacks the patience required for that moment to feel like the rift that it should. Despite telling a story that’s set in the space between films from 1979 and 1986, this interquel is clearly a product of 2024.
In fairness, Álvarez does what he can to push against that feeling with his sets; the purgatorial mining colony where the story begins is so palpably grim that you almost wish the movie stuck around for a bit longer. Not that we don’t appreciate why the orphaned Rain Carradine (Cailee Spaeny, endlessly capable) is so eager to leave Jackson’s Star and never look back. She’s never seen a single ray of sunlight in her entire life, and the natural generosity of her spirit shines that much brighter against the “Blade Runner”-esque darkness of her miserable homeworld. (The joy of Spaeny’s performance is in watching her sharpen that selflessness into a weapon of its own, a clever aspect of Álvarez and Rodo Sayagues’ script that allows Rain to be more than just a Ripley clone.)
As evidence of her empathy, Rain refuses to transfer to another system unless her synthetic “brother” Andy is able to come with her. Where “Covenant” focused on the role that sexual procreation would play in our efforts to colonize the stars, “Romulus” — per its title — places its hope for the future on the bond between siblings. An aging Weyland-Yutani android who Rain’s late father programmed to protect her at all costs, Andy’s outmoded software has left him as naive and helpless as a child (so brilliant and sly on HBO’s “Industry,” David Jonsson embodies the robot’s cognitive impairment with a permanent wince), but his inability to defend himself is the very thing that’s nurtured Rain’s humanity in return. I like to think that might have been part of her dad’s plan.
Rain might be the clear-eyed sibling who sees the world for what it is, but she isn’t wordly enough to recognize that capitalism doesn’t care about her, and she’s blindsided by Weyland-Yutani’s decision to renege on the transfer she’d been promised. Lucky for Rain, her vaguely distinguishable friends have just discovered a derelict space station hovering right above their heads, and — using Andy as a skeleton key — they’re going to break in and steal enough fuel to fly away from Jackson’s Star on their own. You can imagine how well that goes.
Unfortunately, “Romulus” starts to go off the rails before its ill-fated rabble of twentysomethings even reaches the Renaissance, as the movie is in such a hurry to kill them that it never gives us the chance to care if they die. Both “Alien” and James Cameron’s more action-oriented sequel understood that Xenomorphs would just be sweaty guys in rubber suits without memorable characters for them to kill, but the kids they murder here seldom manage to transcend their types.
There’s the handsome one (Archie Renaux), the racist-coded asshole who refuses to treat Andy like a human (Spike Fearn), the pregnant one who’s forced to carry Chekhov’s fetus (Isabela Merced), and the cool wild card who the film doesn’t know how to use (Aileen Wu). It’s possible these actors really are Gen Z’s answer to John Hurt, Yaphet Kotto, Harry Dean Stanton, and the rest of the indelible faces who crewed the Nostromo, but Álvarez doesn’t wait around to find out. A gorehound whose tastes and talents are much better-suited to the Grand Guignol splatter of “Evil Dead” than they are to the suffocating dread of “Alien,” the director would rather torture his cast than develop their characters. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that trade-off, but Álvarez doesn’t satisfy the first half of the equation well enough to justify his disregard for the second.
High on jolts (too many of which are motivated by the sound of a computer suddenly booting up) and low on more probing scares, “Romulus” isn’t nearly inventive enough to forefront its slaughter at the expense of its soul. Álvarez has some fun with gravity, and the film’s most breathless sequence offers a Facehugging riff on the same tricks that made “Don’t Breathe” such a terrific exercise in suspense, but the setpieces here are missing the kind of sustained terror that even “Alien: Resurrection” got right, and the wide halls and empty corridors of the Renaissance lack the ambiance that made the Nostromo feel like a character unto itself — and that inspired Scott to build his kills around the spectacle of their environment.
The asteroid belt the Renaissance is at risk of crashing into is a nice touch, but Álvarez rushes past all of the station’s more interesting details (don’t show me a dormant space-tram if you’re not going to do something cool with it!), while setting far too much of this movie in the generic spaces around them. At one point the characters recoil in fear at the discovery of an especially horrifying area, only for the dramatic reverse shot to reveal that they’re looking at… a dark cavern?
While the third act inevitably delivers on the gestational body horror that has always been endemic to the “Alien” franchise, the sheer grossness of the film’s biggest WTF moment is betrayed by the lack of imagination reserved for its afterbirth. Sure, it’s weird and icky enough to work as serviceable date night fun, but anyone the least bit invested in the big picture is due to be disappointed by how unproductively the movie iterates on the “Alien” story or further develops its mythos (the uncaring abruptness of its final moments suggest that Álvarez wasn’t much interested in doing either of those things).
It’s certainly hard to imagine a cruder way of connecting the dots between the series’ fractured mythology. I’m dancing around a detail that will surely be the subject of many thinkpieces to come, but the film’s refusal to abandon its past — or even to kill it if it has to — personifies the worst instincts of Hollywood’s approach to IP. That it does so with a damning hint of self-awareness, and the implicit admission that it’s a bad idea to the exclusive benefit of corporate interests, is a curious wrinkle, but not curious enough for “Romulus” to get away with having its cake and eating it too.
Especially not when it comes at the direct expense of the film’s heroine, whose choices are meant to represent a more humane solution to the same dilemma. Rain and Andy both deserve better, as do Spaeny and Jonsson, who both find novel and compelling ways of reinventing the “Alien” franchise’s most foundational archetypes. “I’ll fix you,” Rain promises her synthetic brother at one point. It should go without saying that her answer to the crisis has nothing to do with making Andy better, and everything to do with keeping him alive at all costs.
Grade: C
20th Century Studios will release “Alien: Romulus” in theaters on Friday, August 16.
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