Alien: Romulus
Hey everyone and welcome today we will be talking about the film Alien: Romulus. Fun Fact, Artist H.R. Giger created the Xenomorph design for the first alien which obviously is still used today. This film came out in 2024 and stars Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, and Archie Renaux and was directed by Fede Alvarez. So without further ado let’s get right into it.
Alien: Romulus follows a group of friends who sneak onto an abandoned Weyland Yutani ship to steal some stasis chambers so they can leave the crappy planet that they are on. Once onboard this ship they inadvertently wake up creatures that they will have to get through to escape.
Alien: Romulus is a Science fiction horror film. It has similar vibes to Alien, Prometheus, or Raised by Wolves.
The Alien franchise has been a favorite of mine and one of the main reasons why I love Science Fiction as a genre and the franchise going back to the horror roots had me even more excited. This film is an interquel, which is a new word I learned, meaning it takes place between two previous movies so a prequel and sequel, in this case, Alien and Aliens but if you haven’t seen those films you’ll be fine but it’s more fun if you have seen them. When I found out this film takes place between the first two films I thought it would focus on the crew they go to find in Aliens but I was wrong but my god this story they created had me fully invested. In relation to this movie, the name Romulus refers to the hangar that they must get to because they are in Remus which is another hangar and both are named after some Romans.
Cailee Spaeny stars as Rain in this movie who doesn’t really want to get involved but with the promise of going to a new world after getting screwed by Weyland Yutani she joins. She shares many characteristics with Ripley in Alien, the most noticeable for me being that she is not really a fighter and gets thrown into this but she is smart and makes decisions that ensure that she will survive and truly helps the others. She is accompanied by Andy who is an android left by her parents whom she treats like her brother and he tries his best to protect her. She uses Andy to make it easier to navigate the ship which kind of backfires. She was a character who thought outside the box and tried to survive even if she had very limited experience with aliens.
There is an android in every Alien film and this one we have Andy played by David Jonsson and he was hands down one of the best parts of this film. He normally is super sweet and is just trying to save Rain but when they put the chip from the other robot in him he becomes more cold and calculated with the goal of extracting the science experiment to pass off to the corporation. In the alien movies, I feel like most androids are good or bad and I loved having one that experienced both in the film. The knowledge they got while they were on the ship was extremely helpful and helped them navigate through all the craziness. I was worried Rain would leave him behind but I’m glad she didn’t because they needed each other.
When they put the chip in Andy he communicated with Rook who has the voice and likeness of Ian Holm who played Ash in the 1979 film and I hated him just as much as I hated Ash. I must also point out the CGI for that did not look good and I will say a different choice should have been made, im really not a fan of using dead people’s likenesses in films. Luckily, Andy eventually gets the chip removed and turns back to his normal calm self. I loved how with the chip while he was cold and calculated he was able to get them through the spaceship and make very smart decisions and outsmart the creature and then once the chip was removed he was able to just say Dad jokes that made something click in Rain’s head that made her remember about the zero gravity stuff. Andy was the real MVP of the movie and it was so rewarding to see him deliver Ripley’s iconic line, Get away from her you Bitch.
Archie Renaux plays Tyler who is Rain’s love interest and the one that convinces her to come so they can use Andy to get into the ship. He takes on this kind of protector role throughout the film often putting himself in harm’s way to ensure others don’t get killed. While the mission was risky simply because they didn’t know what was onboard, he is the one who seems to come up with this plan which I thought was kind of great to ensure that his friends and family can survive and get off the planet. I was sad that he ended up dying but he died protecting the ones he loved.
Isabela Merced plays Kay who is Tyler’s sister and unbeknownst to him is pregnant. To be honest, while watching the movie I was shocked that this girl didn’t either lose the baby or have a concussion because she was getting thrown like a ragdoll. I loved seeing her reaction to the chest-bursting because, to be honest, I think many of us would have that same reaction. She gets taken by the Xenomorph and we think she is killed but come to find out she is just being held until the crew comes and saves her but she loses a lot of blood. She injects herself with the black goo that will save her life supposedly which ends up creating a weird human/xenomorph hybrid from her unborn child. I felt like her character was perfect to show how sometimes in stressful moments you do what you think is best but how that could severely backfire.
Kay gives birth to this hybrid as I stated and 1 that thing was so ugly and secondly, I thought it would behave as if Kay was its mother and protect her and nope it killed her. I thought things couldn’t get worse after the hall of horrors they went through before the birthing scene, wrong the Slenderman alien child comes and starts taking out the few who are left. Rain makes a last-minute decision to get rid of the cargo pod and along with it this weird hybrid and we are to assume it’s dead but I wonder if it is considering we thought the alien from the first one was dead.
Spike Fearn plays Bjorn who is Tyler and Kay's cousin and he was so mean to Andy becuase an android killed his mom which I understand but he took it to another level which let me know he was not going to make it. He finds this cattle prod while walking around the ship and when the alien makes a cocoon in the ship he tries to use it and it obviously backfires. Two things I was thinking during this moment were one, when did the aliens start making cocoons because I don’t remember that at all, and two isn’t that prod going to melt if the xenomorph bleeds? Well, he zaps and zaps but his little weapon is no match because the alien does not even have to come out. The acid gets on his hands which causes him to understandably freak out and while he’s in pain from that more acid shoots out and gets on him and it looks like the one that kills him is on his heart area and it goes straight through his body. I was like dang brutal and I wanted him gone for treating Andy like that but not dead even though I had a feeling most of them would die.
Navarro who is played by Aileen Wu is unfortunately the first to go and while I did see the trailer I forgot about it so when she found the handheld x-ray I was like this is cool. It later comes into play in one of the coolest scenes to me which is her actually seeing that something is inside her when the Xenomorph starts hatching in her chest. Like can you just imagine the horror of just having a face hugger on your face, this android trying to stop you from boarding a ship, then you feel a sharp pain in your chest and can see that something is in there. While her time was short Aileen was able to display the horror she faced so well with all this and knowing your time is up. It kind of mirrored Alien how the first victim gets infected by a face-hugger and comes back onto their ship and puts the rest of the crew in danger.
The way that this started was interesting because most alien movies start on a spaceship ship and this one does start on a spaceship but the main characters start on a planet working for Weyland Yutani and they eventually go to a spaceship. This was a welcome change showing how whatever planet they are on looks awful which I don’t know if we really get to see in the other movies and how sneaking off is the best option. I love how instead of them going to explore a world that has these creatures or responding to a distress call, they are just tryna escape their predicament and accidentally let loose these creatures and they are just in the thick of it. The movie still drives home though that this company sucks when we see Rain trying to leave as she has met her quota and they said that’s nice well now we are gonna double it so good luck. With someone on their ship getting impregnated, the wreckage being full of a variety of creatures, and the ship heading towards a collision with the belts surrounding this planet, there truly is nowhere that is safe. This feels like it ups the tension because they don’t really know their way around the ship, They are not scientist or experts in space exploration, and more importantly, they don’t know what else they will encounter. We are aware of the crazy amount of face huggers and one Xenomorph but as we watch we come to find out there’s a lot more on this ship of horrors.
While you can go into this film with no knowledge of the Alien films and still enjoy it and while I have seen them all I rewatched Alien, Aliens, and Prometheus before and I was happy to see some cool callbacks. We see the black goo that comes from the canister in Prometheus, obviously, the line Get away from her you bitch from Aliens, Kay is taken to a nest instead of being killed also mirroring Aliens, The overall horror vibes and Rain being like Ripley really reminded me of the first movie and obviously the Xenomorph from that movie surviving space with the remnants of the Nostromo and making an appearance just to name a few.
There are some things we learn from many of the other films in this franchise and this one uses the android’s knowledge to explain these things to the human characters so we can move past that. I love how we were able to just hear an explanation of what happens when there is a face hugger on you or about the alien blood instead of everyone acting surprised when it happens. I loved it in other movies in this franchise but for this movie, it was great to explain it quickly and move past that and really immerse us in what else was going on in the film. The film also shows how one might survive if they have knowledge of these creatures which led to some cool scenes like them avoiding the face huggers by increasing the heat of the room.
While the movie looks beautiful something small that I don’t know if it is intentional when they’re looking at screens in the movie that are showing what is on a camera somewhere in the ship they looked like the ones from Alien or Aliens. Like you can see what is going on but the quality isn’t the greatest it’s very grainy or nosey. I thought this was cool since the film would have taken place around the same time.
Before this film came out I kept seeing talks about the film using practical effects and I was like I wonder how that will make more of a difference. In case you are wondering Practical effects are when they use actual models or figures recorded on a camera instead of computer-generated imagery but sometimes movies use both. Shane Mahan is one person who worked on the effects in this film and he actually worked on the effects in Aliens as well which I thought was cool. With practical effects, it makes the reactions from the actors more genuine but also it adds to the suspense and the horror because the Xenomorph is slowly lurking and hiding and you never know when it might pop up compared to the CGI creatures in other films which are scary but I felt like we see them so much and they move so fast which makes them less of like a jump scare and more of like I would be scared if I were in that situation but I’m not so I’m not scared watching this. I feel like with the practical effects the Xenomorph moves a little slower and makes it more stressful and because of that, we can see how the Xenomorph hunts and lures or attempts to lure them into a trap. One of my favorite scenes showing this is when they are trying to figure out where to go and there’s a dark hallway and Rain sees one of them hiding even though no one else does and is like hmm maybe that’s not the best option but they had limited options anyway but that thing was definitely waiting.
My Favorite part of this film was the zero-gravity xenomorph killing scene. The dilemma in that scene is that they are locked in that hallway, the acid blood would create a vacuum if it penetrates the hull, and they need to get to the other side for a chance of survival. All seems lost until Andy makes a gravity joke and Rain remembers the anti-gravity and disables it which lets her go to town on the Xenomorphs and the face huggers. She proceeds to get through the acid blood and in one scene where we think they might get some on her she uses her gun to emit some force to push her away. I just thought it showcased her smarts by thinking outside the box and remembering hey we are in space and killing these things with gravity on would kill me too but if I turn it off it will prevent us from dying while I shoot them.
Alien: Romulus is a great way to pay homage to your predacessors while paving your own way forward. The cast was small but all did so well and the film delivered the horror and was enjoyable as someone who loves the franchise but can see that if you haven’t seen anything in the franchise it would still be enjoyable to you as well.
