Alien Romulus: A terrifyingly excellent experience

The Alien franchise is one of the most popular sci-fi horror film franchises of all time. Since the first movie, the series has been groundbreaking in its use of special effects and dark atmosphere. Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986) are amongst the most popular and critically acclaimed films in its genre. However, as time went on the franchise lost what had made it so special in its early days. Films like Alien Resurrection (1997) and the Alien vs Predator films (2004-2007) were completely missing the magic of the original films. The films were more focused on making money than in telling a coherent story with interesting characters. For me, as a fan who grew up watching the original movies, as time went on, I was constantly disappointed at the lack of creativity and magic that the new movies had. This changed when Alien: Romulus was announced. A completely new take on the series trying to blend in different elements of what made the series so great. I was skeptical at first, since the previous films were highly flawed. This is why newcomer director Fede Alvarez had a difficult task. Recapture the magic of the original two films while telling a brand new story that is faithful to the classics. Alien Romulus is based on that idea and seeks to be a great return to form for this beloved series.

The Xenomorph, also known as the Alien. Alien Romulus Poster

The movie is chronologically placed between Alien and Aliens. It follows 3 pairs of siblings who are investigating a space station. Along the way, they encounter the terrifying Xenomorph, the same alien that once terrorized the crew of the Nostromo all the way back in 1979. What stands out immediately about this film is the atmosphere. Fede Alvarez, a director known for horror films, brings his best into this film. The movie feels like a perfect blend between Alien and Aliens. It has the horror, tense and dark scenes of the first movie while also having great action sequences and big fights like the second. The movie is perfectly paced, it moves on from one sequence to the next with great speed and no scene overstays its welcome. Another great thing about the film are the visual effects. The director has said multiple times that he strongly opposes CGI and other digital effects so he had a difficult task when making the xenomorph and the facehuggers for this film. Even though he had challenges, he absolutely delivered with the effects in this film. The practical xenomorph looks absolutely amazing and makes the film feel more real and grounded even though it's set in space and has aliens. This movie is also very violent and dark. It has a lot of jumpscares and terrifying scenes that had little kids in the theater crying when I saw it. The movie really brings the audience into the film with its dark atmosphere and one scene in particular is very disturbing for anyone to see. Some cast members even vomited when filming this scene and it just elevates the production quality for this movie.

Scenes from the film

However, no movie is perfect and while this film is great, it does have some pretty evident flaws particularly in the script department. I found the main characters of the film pretty boring overall and I wasn’t really invested in any of their relationships or growth. While it was going to be very hard to replace an iconic character like Ellen Ripley, the main characters in this film leave a lot to be desired. Another thing that I wasn’t really fond of is the way they tried to connect this film to the others of the franchise. The story works very well as its own standalone film and the connections between this and other Alien films feels forced and is a detractor for the film. My final criticism for the film is that it starts to crumble down at the end for me. It takes a lot of huge risks and most of them didn’t really pay off for me. An extra 10-15 minutes in order to expand on some of these plot elements and set-pieces so that they made more sense would have given this film excellent closure.

Alien Romulus is a fantastic film and an even better Alien film. Everything about it just screams quality and there is clearly a lot of care and passion put into this project. The set design, performances, cinematography and music were absolutely great and elevated the film into a whole new layer. While not everything worked for me such as the ending or the main characters, the parts that did work are up there with Alien and Aliens as the best films in this franchise. I would recommend this film to any Alien fan, sci-fi fan or horror fan because this is a movie that is meant to be enjoyed on the biggest screen possible to get the full experience. 

Movie Rating: 8.5/10