Movie Review: Alien: Romulus (2024)

Alien: Romulus (2024) co-written and directed by Fede Alvarez

A group of young adults decides to leave the mining colony because they have no future prospects other than dying in the mines. The Weyland-Yutani Corporation runs the planet and never lets anyone out of their contracts. The group spots a derelict space craft in a reachable orbit. Their only chance to infiltrate the spacecraft is Rain's (Cailee Spaeny) "brother," a Weyland-Yutani android called Andy (David Jonsson). With his corporate tech, he can access the ship's systems and take out the cryochambers. With those, they could make the nine-year interstellar flight to the closest free planet. Rain is a bit reluctant but goes along, especially since Andy was programmed by her dead father to do whatever is best for her. When they get to the ship, they find it's really a derelict space station that harbors scientific experiments that turned it into a derelict (though they don't recognize the danger right away). So bad things are on board, things that wake up once they dial up the internal thermostat to a livable temperature.

This movie is a throw back to the original Alien movie. It is a haunted-house thriller in space. This movie uses the same visual aesthetic, a future that's a bit grubby and uncomfortable. Nearly fifty years later, the special effects are more gruesome and lean into the body-horror and reproductive-horror that are staples of the Alien franchise. This film doesn't get into any deeper issues, it's just a fight for survival that depends more on grit and circumstance than intelligence. The young people are desperate enough to stay in a situation that is beyond their capabilities. Some rise to the occasion, some don't. The real question is if anyone can make it out alive. It's akin to the slasher genre but no viewer is going to root for the killer.

Nothing new is added to the Alien mythology which is good, given the track record of previous films that made a hash of adding more narrative and explanations. This film is just a straight-up horror. It works well in that vein if it does depend on gross-out moments too often. The actors do a good job at their roles though no one is outstanding. The ending shares a lot with the first Alien film, which is comfortingly familiar and disconcertingly unoriginal. 

Mildly recommended--if you are a fan of the series, this is enjoyable even if it doesn't add anything to the bigger picture.