The seminal sci-fi horror franchise returns to its roots with a new director and cast, but inspired by the original. Survive the horror in our Alien Romulus Review!

Romulus and Remus, two ancient brothers that had a miracle uprising by a mother wolf. Legend states that after arguing over the new location for their city of Rome, Romulus kills his brother, Remus. This mythology story is a foreboding tale to fans and newcomers in the next incarnation of the 45-year-old sci-fi epic franchise, Alien Romulus.

Scary yet moist!

Horror director Fede Alvarez (Don’t Breathe, Evil Dead) has taken the helm with the first main entry into this series since Covenant in 2017 which received mixed reception. He aims to take us back to the roots of the original film whilst keeping things as fresh as the inside of a face-hugger egg. So will this new horror hatch a new era of Alien or will it blow a hole in the hull of this sequel? Find out in our Alien Romulus Review!

Alien Romulus Review – Story

WARNING: major spoilers ahead.

It’s been 20 years since the destruction of the Nostromo as the film opens to a Weyland-Yutani ship finding the wreckage. They collect a large Cocoon floating in space and proceed to slice it open. Whilst not showing what’s inside, we do get the ominous outline of a xenomorph that forebodes what is to come. Jumping ahead 6 months, we meet our first characters/victims on a mining colony. Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and her “brother” Andy (David Jonsson), a dysfunctional synthetic, are trying to find out why they have been denied travel visas. This colony is essentially a labour camp for Weyland-Yutani, as the company officer informs Rain she has to work another 1200 hours due to “worker shortages”.

Oh dam, I left my sunglasses at home.

Luckily an old friend shows up, Tyler with his sister Kay, cousin Bjorn and the pilot of their cargo ship, Navarro. They have an interesting proposition for Rain and Andy, revealing they discovered an abandoned space station named Romulus, that has fallen into orbit around the planet. They need Andy to use his synthetic access codes to enter the station to steal a few stasis pods. As with the other Alien movies space flight takes a long time, so pods are necessary to make it to other planets, which this group of young friends aim to do in order to reach a more sunny locale.

Who knew a mining colony could look so nice?

Cue the first hurdle that Tyler didn’t mention to Rain, the station will collide with the planet rings in 36 hours. Whilst this job seemed easy at first, the situation worsens still when they find out the stasis pods only have 3 years of fuel. In order to get more, they need to head deeper into the dark and creepy hallways of Romulus. Once Tyler, Bjorn and Andy enter the room with extra cryo fuel, they soon discover it was being used for another purpose, to keep face-huggers in stasis. Removing the canisters has some unwanted side effects by waking these slumbering critters and locking them inside. Rain and Navarro must rush to their rescue with an upgrade chip they find in a half-melted synthetic lying on the floor.

Pro tip: Hide and seek with an Alien is no fun.

Andy receives this upgrade to open the door as the team bat away flying face-huggers in all directions. Unfortunately, Navarro is the first to succumb to the hug we know so well. As Andy has upgraded and internally fixed his ailing parts, he becomes smarter and more confident, losing the child-like persona he previously had. He states that the crew may be able to get help from the same android that gave him the upgrade. Surprisingly it’s the same type of android from the very first Alien, Rook who has been re-created in CGI to look like the legendary Ian Holmes. Informing us of what happened 6 months prior and the intention of the facehugger, Rain has the brilliant idea of using the cryo gun to freeze its tail off which works a treat.

On your left!

After a few dramatic twists, Romulus gets knocked off course and the crew of this doomed mission now only have 40 minutes to escape before certain annihilation. All they have to do is avoid the Xenomorph hunting them, the dozens of facehuggers roaming the halls and who knows what other horrors lurk within. From this point on we get familiar yet scarier scenes of facehuggers chasing Rain and Tyler, the classic Alien chest burst and a few more shocking scenes that viewers won’t expect.

I hope these two do another movie!

The combination of Ridley Scott’s franchise with the skill of horror movies behind Alvaraz is what Alien was in dire need of and this does not disappoint. Even toward the end of the movie, when you think it’s all over, a subplot that Prometheus fans would enjoy comes to fruition in one of the most visceral and petrifying ways imaginable. Whilst there were a few slow parts that allowed for character introduction and tension build up, overall this is definitely one horror sci-fi movie that cinemagoers will not forget.

Alien Romulus Review – Acting

Usually in the horror movie scene, the actors a fresh faced, sub-par and generally here for the gory slasher action. It is a delight to see these characters get introduced in an efficient yet likable way, except for maybe Bjorn (Spike Fearn), who treats Andy unfavourably. Speaking of, David Jonsson portrays the two sides of Andy to perfection. His mild-mannered, childish and malfunctioning performance is bettered only when Andy upgrades to a more intellectual but menacing version of himself. The film’s sub-plot about Andy is also fantastic, delving into the argument that AI is a person whilst doesn’t get slammed into your face but rather an interesting thread to think about.

Great another android, but is he friend or foe?

Cailee Spaeny as Rain (who you may know from Civil War) also portrays a great main character that provides some emotional weight. She doesn’t hold back towards the final act much like her famous influence, Ripley (Signourney Weaver) and even pays homage to one of her greatest lines from the movie Aliens. The rest of the cast do a believable job with a humorous quip here or there however the screams of Isabela Merced as Kay (known from Madame Web) are as spine-tingling as the Xenomorphs themselves.

I’m not in another bad movie am I?

Alien Romulus Review – Visuals

You can’t have a good horror without some gore and you can’t have a good sci-fi without great set design, luckily Alien Romulus has both. The space station and cargo ship take on the retro-futuristic look from the older movies which is incredible. With the added new technology of 2024, the set pieces, control panels, view screens and even guns look like they belong in this universe. Another cool inclusion is the emergency telephone booths that can be spotted in the background occasionally. These are directly from the critically acclaimed game Alien Isolation which stars Ripley’s daughter. Alvarez stated in a recent interview that a lot of his ideas for this movie actually came to him when he played Isolation, so he had to add them to the movie, which should make fans very happy to hear.

They made a reference to Colonial Marines in this scene, we aren’t supposed to talk about that…

This is not one of those movies where you see everything in the trailer and this is the same for the Xenomorphs. There are some gory scenes you may have previewed but there is a lot more waiting to shock you. The creature design has also never looked better, with the production team utilising animatronics for a lot of scenes rather than the CGI approach which makes it feel all the more realistic.

Come on give mama a kiss.

The CGI that they do use here is fantastic with the planet and ship scenes however strangely enough the recreation of Ian Holmes as a torn in half android looks terribly fake it’s almost polarising. Fortunately, this is only for a few scenes and can be quickly forgotten, especially with seeing a version of Rook returning to this series.

Alien Romulus Review – Audio

Silence is golden and the spectacular audio design utilises this idea with great effect. The beginning of the movie contains not one sound for a minute or two creating some intense tension. Alvarez uses this trick a few times but sparingly enough to make sure it’s still effective each time. The contrast to this is the ridiculously loud sounds of an alarm or door to rip you out of your seat and give you a good heart attack. Some of the more frantic action scenes do contain some great hype soundtracks with a touch of heavy metal like the track below.

Alien Romulus Review – Conclusion

Fede Alvarez has done the unthinkable by creating a new entry to a 45-year-old franchise that combines the best parts yet never undermines or detracts from the original. He uses excellent sound design to build the perfect amount of tension and integrates some incredible ideas with sci-fi tropes that produce some jaw-dropping scenes.

My goodness! So many fillings!

The culmination of the movie is where Alvarez truly shines, releasing his own horrific vision of the Alien name to disturb the audience whilst maintaining that iconic line, ‘in space no one can hear you scream‘. This is the sole survivor of the Alien Romulus premiere, signing off.

So, why should you watch Alien Romulus?

• Love Horror and Aliens
• Incredible sound design
• Threads linking the series as a whole
• New ideas with familiar concepts that prove brilliant and horrific

But why shouldn’t you watch Alien Romulus?

• Easily Scared
• A few slow parts
• One CGI element is a bit poor

A preview screening was kindly provided by 2oth Century for the purpose of our Alien Romulus review. If you enjoyed this review, be sure to check out our review for Borderlands and join the Qualbert Discord to chat with us about all things Xenomorph!