It’s nothing short of a miracle for Fede Álvarez’s Alien: Romulus to finally grace our screens considering the amount of development hell it took for anything Alien related to get so much as a green light. With Neill Blomkamp’s attempt scrapped, and Noah Hawley’s Alien: Earth wrapped for Fox on Hulu, Romulus was planned to also go directly to Hulu. Thankfully Disney switched gears—I’m sure high praise from Sir Ridley Scott himself had “nothing” to do with it—to release Romulus on the big screen, and that’s exactly where it belongs. Álvarez delivers a stunner, giving us the best of the Alien series since James Cameron’s Aliens.
In Romulus, Rain (Cailee Spaeny), and her android “brother” Andy (David Jonsson), are recruited by their friends to steal some cryo pods from an abandoned space station. Desperate to leave her sordid life behind, she agrees to help. Little do they know that the space station happens to be full of Facehuggers, waiting for prey to unleash a new army of Xenomorphs. Now, our intrepid explorers are in for the fight of their lives, with a nastier threat than ever waiting in the wings.
A lot of chat has been made about Álvarez taking Romulus back to basics and it couldn’t be more true. And not just the use of practical effects and sets, he’s brought back folks who worked on Aliens, and even used miniatures whenever possible to keep everything grounded. Romulus also takes us straight back to the franchise’s horror roots. You could almost call the film a slasher film, until it arrives at its gonzo ending where things take a turn to some grisly body horror. Spaeny makes for a fantastic final girl—something relied on since Scott’s original—unfortunately, most of the rest of the cast are Xeno fodder.
It’s been almost 40 years since we were provided a proper entry and Alien: Romulus is the one we’ve been waiting for. Small on scale, huge on suspense, stay tuned for a full review on the next episode of Big Movie Mouth Off as we do a bit of a deep dive into the franchise. So much so, that I was tasked with suffering through the AVP universe since those are the only two I hadn’t seen yet. Let’s just say, I wasn’t missing much. As for Romulus, make sure to see it on the biggest screen possible. Formatted for IMAX, cinematographer Galo Olivares frames some amazing shots that just wouldn’t look anywhere near as good in its standard scope ratio. It’ll look phenomenal once it hits 4K, but there’s absolutely no reason to wait.
