Movie Review: ALIEN ROMULUS is gross, action-packed, fun

“That thing’s hunting us.”

The Alien franchise came roaring back into theaters this past weekend with ALIEN ROMULUS after a 7-year hiatus with a thrilling new entry in the space-horror saga directed by Fede Alvarez (Don’t Breathe, 2013’s Evil Dead) and produced by Alien godfather Ridley Scott.

ROMULUS follows a group of young space scavengers on the space colony Jackson’s Star who thing their big ticket out of a life of grueling labor is stealing the contents of the abandoned space station “Romulus” decaying in orbit just above their heads.

Rain (Cailee Spaeny) our lead, assembles a rag-tag group of her friends including the strapping young Tyler (Archie Renaux), the foul-mouthed Bjorn (Spike Fearn), Tyler’s cousin Kay (Isabela Merced) and Rain’s childhood friend and guardian-figure, the synthetic android Andy (David Jonsson) to board the Romulus Station and make out to a better world beyond the stars.

The catch?

The Romulus Station is a derelict research ship for the Weyland-Yutani corporation, a megacorp conducting insidious research on the preserved corpse of a deadly black creature called the Xenomorph which was recovered from the wreckage of the spaceship Nostromo from the events of the 1979 original ALIEN film.

Our young heroes now face off against a hive of deadly creatures as they attempt to escape this nightmarish hellscape in space before the station crashes into an asteroid belt below.

ROMULUS, written by director Alvarez and frequent collaborator Rodo Sayagues , is a melting pot of all that came before, essentially acting as a “reboot” of sorts to jolt life into a franchise that has been in development hell for years.

The film also marks another hit from Disney and their 20th Century Studios, who inherited Alien along with a slew of other high-profile properties from 20th Century Fox after a 2018 buyout.

Through 20th Century Studios, Disney has revived the Predator franchise with 2022’s PREY followed by “The First Omen”, “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes”, and “Deadpool & Wolverine”, now adding ALIEN ROMULUS as another winning notch on their belt after the film’s spectacular opening weekend.

As a die-hard Alien franchise fanatic, I understood the want or need by Disney and Alvarez to play it safe here and was completely fine with this relatively routine Alien adventure…until the last 30 or so minutes when the movie became the wild beast that I feel like Scott and Alvarez were wanting it to be the entire time. The entire film is like eating a delicious meal that you’ve had before, topped off with a special surprise that made you really appreciate it.

The film doesn’t spend too much time on the motivations and backstories of the main characters, all that matters is the relationship between Rain and her android buddy Andy, and boy do they work wonders.

Cailee Spaeny, whom audiences might know from this year’s Alex Garland-directed CIVIL WAR, is every bit of the badass final girl that newcomer Sigourney Weaver was as Ripey in the 1979 original that we saw develop into one of sci-fi’s most kickass action heroes.

Her co-star David Jonsson (HBO’s Industry) absolutely kills it as her android guardian Andy, and it is a testament to his performance as a defunct android-turned-super genius that cements him along the franchise’s Mount Rushmore of great androids that came before with the likes of Ian Holm, Lance Henriksen, Winona Ryder, and recently Michael Fassbender, the latter being the one Johnson seems to channel most.

One controversial choice the film makes is the digital resurrection of a deceased actor which I won’t get into much as far as story content is concerned, but the decision was done with the blessing of the actors family and a voice actor to imitate the deceased’s voice, which is less egregious than the initial online claims of ghoulish AI technology.

ALIEN ROMULUS will likely require several rewatches from me to really pick apart and appreciate it the same way I did for the rest of the franchise, but on it’s own two legs ROMULUS is an awesome, gory, and welcoming return to form for this space-faring series.

I highly recommend you see it.