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Alien: Romulus Movie Review

Alien: Romulus is a 2024 science fiction horror film directed by Fede Alvarez and starring Cailee Spaeny. It’s one of the greatest entries in this franchise.

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“The solution for a claustrophobic astronaut

is to give him more space“

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Space colonizers come face to face with the most terrifying life-form in the universe while scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station. Alien is one of my favorite movie franchises, so I felt worrisome after ‘Covenant’ somewhat disappointed with its quality and especially when Disney bought Fox. I shouldn’t have worried as Ridley Scott’s departure and Fede Alvarez’ involvement led to not just a great Alien movie, but the best one since the original itself. Yes, it’s that terrific and I am still surprised by just how good it was.

Romulus is set between ‘Alien’ and ‘Aliens’, effectively functioning as a midquel. While this movie isn’t concerned with the science fiction genre as much as ‘Prometheus’ was, it’s still one of the most SF-oriented takes on this franchise while still not forsaking its horror roots. It’s a fantastic mixture that fully worked. It’s an engaging, riveting movie that remained claustrophobic and intense throughout while never forgetting to include a genuinely interesting and, dare I say, original story.

Fede Alvarez showcased his knack for originality back in ‘Don’t Breathe’, so the choice to have him helm an Alien film was an exceptionally smart one. It led to a reinvention of the entire series and hopefully more movies under his name in the future. He is a writer-director who has an impressive grasp of not just what this franchise needs in terms of story, characters and ideas, but also just how to execute action and suspense.

I was blown away by just how unique and perfect the action set pieces were in this flick. In fact, I would actually state that this one has some of the best action in all of Hollywood from the last decade or so. I watch a lot of movies, so this one managing to surprise me or at least meet my expectations for every single sequence was huge. Almost every moment and scene not only made sense, but Alvarez managed to wring the maximum suspense and spectacle out of them.

Romulus, thus, shows us that even older franchises (and this one is over 40 years old) can found originality within the familial confines of the basic plot. For instance, this is the first movie in the franchise where the filmmakers actually thought of gravity and how the characters can use it to their advantage to dispose of the xenomorphs. That entire sequence was so incredible and so obvious that it’s crazy that it has never happened before. It’s instantly timeless. How the alien acid was integrated into the horror scenes was also remarkable. And of course the ending made use of pregnancy in the most diabolical and horrific way imaginable.

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I loved that we got to explore more of the xenomorph biology and that final creature not only looked intriguing, but it was genuinely disturbing. This is one of the scariest entries in the series for sure. The movie also made a clever choice to not just focus on the aliens, but also on the androids themselves. Following in the footsteps of Scott’s focus on Fassbender’s David, we here get David Johnson’s fascinating and highly likable Andy. His change in personality was so well realized and seeing Ian Holm back after all these years was a lovely touch.

The film depicts the differences between programmed, calculated robotic coldness and human sensitivity. There are scenes here that perfectly contrast this difference and all of it was quite intriguing. Andy is one of the film’s most endearing and memorable creations for sure, but the humans also acted unexpectedly mature for this particular franchise that always struggled in that regard. There are still moments of stupidity, but those actually mattered and aren’t just plot holes as they explored how human emotions can sometimes negatively impact our survival chances. There is also that eternal pitting against a perfect biological killing machine and a weaker, but intelligent human being. I loved all of that stuff in this fun, clever flick.

Alien: Romulus doesn’t have the greatest characterization, but for a horror flick they are mostly well developed. Well, Bjorn was rather rushed and his android phobia should have been better explored. Navarro is just there to be killed off first, which was frustrating. Isabela Merced’s Kay is a plot device, but an effective one. Archie Renaux was very good in the underwritten role of Tyler and as I’ve said above Johnson’s Andy is one of the absolute standouts.

He’s so interesting and complex and I loved the sibling bond between the two protagonists. As for our leading lady, Rain is smaller in statute, but immensely smart and with great survivor instincts, which made her action scenes all the more interesting. Cailee Spaeny was rather cold and introspective in her previous roles (‘Priscilla’ and ‘Cold War’), so it was refreshing seeing her in a more proactive, emotional and relatable role. She’s so good, here, that hopefully she gets more work out of this one.

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The choice to make the protagonists be younger and blue collar workers was a fine one and that led to that very fun and old-fashioned first act that was all about adventure and mystery before it became a genuinely compelling and disturbing SF horror story. Alien: Romulus has some frustratingly obvious callbacks to the previous entries and it would have benefited from more dialogue and characterization, but the special effects were stellar, the production design was so competent and the sound and score thrilling, leading to a technically arresting and perfectly paced genre flick. The world building is also marvelous, though the scope is smaller than usual for the series.