Alien: Romu­lus review – does enough to get a pass­ing mark

When it comes to eth­i­cal­ly dubi­ous DNA-splic­ing lab exper­i­ments with a medi­um-to-high fail­ure rate, Hol­ly­wood def­i­nite­ly knows what time it is. Those pony-tailed execs love noth­ing more than to test out a dodgy-look­ing boost­er, or give the green light to a high-wire surgery which involves fus­ing two genet­i­cal­ly-com­pet­ing organ­isms togeth­er – to hell with the results! 

Indeed, just like the com­i­cal­ly nefar­i­ous Wey­land-Yutani Cor­po­ra­tion, whose oper­a­tives go to self-anni­hi­lat­ing ends in their attempts to pre­serve a spec­i­men of the vaunt­ed evo­lu­tion­ary mir­a­cle, the Xenomorph, Hol­ly­wood too just keeps hatch­ing new crazy schemes to keep these fetish-styled, acid-blood­ed mur­der geck­os on our screen. Thus, wel­come to the sev­enth canon entry into the Alien saga, this time brought to you by genre jour­ney­man Fede Alvarez – the guy known for his very bad remake of Evil Dead.

First thing’s first: time­line. So, Alien: Romu­lus takes place between the events of Rid­ley Scott’s Alien (1979) and James Cameron’s Aliens (1986), with the film open­ing on a suc­cess­ful (but unwise) sal­vage mis­sion to locate the float­ing corpse of the Xenomorph that Sigour­ney Weaver’s Rip­ley blast­ed out of the air­lock in the first film. We’re left to guess how that all turned out.

Down on the ground, The Company’s attempts to ter­raform plan­ets for human habi­ta­tion are not going so well, with indus­tri­al dis­ease from strip min­ing rip­ping through the pop­u­la­tion. Rain Cara­dine (Cailee Spae­ny) and her syn­thet­ic side­kick Adam (David Jon­s­son) want off this rock, but The Com­pa­ny has oth­er ideas. A tear­away gang of sim­i­lar­ly-miffed rebels have hatched a plan to break free of their sor­ry lot by nip­ping up to the dor­mant space sta­tion that’s hov­er­ing omi­nous­ly over­head, pinch­ing the unused cryo cham­bers and tak­ing a nine year sleep en route to sun­nier climes. Simple.

The quick in-and-out mis­sion, how­ev­er, quick­ly den­i­grates into a self-admin­is­tered blood­bath as the dor­mant ves­sel, named Romu­lus and Remus, is actu­al­ly the one from the sal­vage mis­sion which – non-spoil­er alert! – did not go well at all. One wrong but­ton pressed and sud­den­ly the face hug­gers are defrost­ing and, as it tran­spires, extreme­ly horny, and we’re soon back in very famil­iar territory.

There’s no get­ting around the fact that this feels like a frisky, well-made but unnec­es­sary addi­tion to the wider fran­chise, more inter­est­ed in hit­ting a series of care­ful­ly placed nos­tal­gia pres­sure points than offer­ing up some­thing new. The slow burn set-up doesn’t work, sim­ply because the ​“kids unwit­ting­ly walk­ing into the haunt­ed house” trope has been done to death in the pre­vi­ous episodes. We sleep­walk through the whole alien birthing process with sundry gory dis­patch­es along the way, and it’s only about an hour into the film that the stage is set for Alien: Romu­lus to evolve into its own species.

And it kin­da does, with Alvarez set­ting off a bunch of stop­watch­es to have var­i­ous cat­a­clysmic count­downs occur­ring simul­ta­ne­ous­ly as a mini squadron of Xenomorphs do their usu­al hunter/​gatherer thing. Although the film­mak­er has come up main­ly through hor­ror films, this might actu­al­ly be the proof that he’s actu­al­ly a bet­ter action direc­tor, with a cou­ple of intri­cate and orig­i­nal set pieces cap­ping off the final act.

Spaeny’s Rip­ley homage, mean­while, comes through with­out being too on-the-nose, as she is essen­tial­ly a back­ground fig­ure until the spot­light is even­tu­al­ly shone on her for the finale. Jon­s­son is excel­lent as Adam, nod­ding back to Michael Fassbender’s tech­ni­cal­ly-adept dual-role work in the belat­ed Scott sequels (Prometheus and Alien: Covenant). His char­ac­ter also leans into the fact that he’s essen­tial­ly an inden­tured slave, and Alvarez and co-writer Rodo Sayagues turn some uncom­fort­able stereo­types on their head in a way that’s nev­er too pleased with itself.

In the end, though, this is lit­tle more than anoth­er gene-splic­ing exper­i­ment where all the con­stituent parts are still far too vis­i­ble for it to be con­sid­ered an unmit­i­gat­ed suc­cess. The late game fan ser­vice nods are extreme­ly ick, to the point that you can just about hear the mak­ers slight­ly retch­ing when they arrive. That said, it’s supe­ri­or to the stuffy, lore-obsessed recent Scott films, yet doesn’t hold an atmos­pher­i­cal­ly flick­er­ing can­dle to the orig­i­nal or its sequel. It also doesn’t have the rough-and-ready, over­reach­ing char­ac­ter of Fincher’s famous fol­ly. Yet it makes for a decent time at the pic­tures, and the grind­ing first half is worth endur­ing for a pleas­ant­ly rip-snort­ing finale.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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