Lately, I don’t trust myself much when it comes to writing movie reviews. I once raved about Batman Begins when it first came out, only to have a friend/co-worker read it, check the movie out based on my thoughts. He returned with a look of disgust on his face…”That was terrible! Grumble grumble Batman, I could barely understand him.”, he said.
I dance around it, when I can. I’m almost Fifty, at an age and a point in my life where I’m easily amused by almost anything, particularly in a world where everything’s in a doomscroll. Sitting in a darkened room, watching a story play out just feels good, even if the story isn’t great. Add to this the notion that everyone will have a film of the week screen captured and spoiled by Saturday Morning (if not already), and sometimes there doesn’t feel like a need to write about these things. You don’t need me, but I’m happy to be here. I’m not helping anyone in making a decision on whether they should see a film, I’m simply cataloging my experience. That’s the beauty of it. No two experiences are similar, and it’s a joy to read how others felt about a movie while discovering my own viewpoints through my writing. This is all still fun to do, I’m finding.
So what does any of this have to do with Fede Alvarez’s Alien Romulus? Not much. I just needed to get thoughts on the page so I could rev up to writing about the film. I also wanted to warn you that I could be high on the euphoria of going to the movies. My take might not be yours, but I’m also playing Devil’s Advocate in trying to weigh what I thought they could have improved on.
Living as miners on a world where sunlight is rare, life is hard for Rain Carradine (Cailee Spaeny, Priscilla, Pacific Rim: Uprising) and her brother, Andy (David Jonsson, HBO’s Industry). When her friends discover a discarded ship called Romulus near an asteroid field, they decide to loot it for the tools they need for an extended hypersleep to a better destination. This becomes a problem when they discover they’re not alone on the ship they targeted. Can they escape these threats before meeting their end?
I was really impressed by Alien Romulus in a number of ways. One, I argued that the last trailer gave away too much information on the plot. I was terribly incorrect. For all that was shown, it barely touched the surface of the entire story. I found that pretty refreshing in this day and age where movie trailers rarely leave anything out. Two, there are a number of practical effects used in this film, from the animatronic, jumpy facehuggers that get more up close and personal than one would ever want to the classic Xenomorph scaling walls and dripping acid. I felt like it learned a bit or two from Alien Covenant (of which I’m not a fan) and considerably toned down the CGI where it could. The results are damn good, given this is the 9th go around in the Alien Franchise (if you want to include the two Alien vs. Predator films). Alvarez really gets the atmosphere right. Hallways are creepy and dimly lit, feeling much like Creative Assembly did with Alien Isolation (which of course built theirs from the original Alien). The space station, flight sequences and the asteroid belt are all on par what with we saw with Prometheus. The film even manages to travel in some new directions with both Xenomorph development and by the end will have you wanting to rewatch the series again. Is it all perfect? No, but I can’t say anything like that about Alien Resurrection.
From an acting standpoint, this movie clearly belongs to both Cailee Spaeny and David Jonsson. They easily carry the film with their performances. With the exception of Isabela Merced (Dora the Explorer), I can’t say much about the other characters. I can at least say her character and performance here was far better than what she did in Madame Web earlier this year. Those three are only ones that are given any true character development through the course of the film. This isn’t to say that we don’t get good performances from Archie Renaux (Tyler), Aileen Wu (Navarro), and Spike Fearn (Bjorn). They just weren’t as memorable to me. We know the others want to move on to better things, but we never really get to know them well enough to root for or against them.
For the horror aspect, let’s face it. After so many movies, it’s a little difficult to be afraid of the Xenomorph. And yet, more with the facehuggers than with the human sized aliens, Alien Romulus does find a way to make the monsters creepy and amazingly quick. I had a few moments where I did my usual “watch the corners”, and avoided looking at the screen directly. There aren’t too many jumpscares, though they are there.
If Romulus suffers from any problems, it’s that the cast was too small for all of the elements thrown at them. I understand that it’s more of a personal story, so you’re not having a group of decimated Marines like in James Cameron’s Aliens or even a number of dead prisoners such as you had with David Fincher’s Alien3, but it was easier to get a feel of how dangerous the Xenomorphs when people were hunted left and right in different ways. The death sequences in Romulus all felt interesting, but there just weren’t enough of them for my taste. Another problem I had with the film was that it tried too hard in the last act to pay homages to other films in the series. Some of them worked well (particularly one introducing some to weapons) , and others kind of didn’t. At one point, you’re finding that the movie pulls lines and or whole sequences from the other films, which doesn’t make sense in some situations given where Romulus sits in the Alien timeline.
Imagine watching a fight in space between two Green Lanterns and one says to the other “Do you bleed?” as a reference to Batman v. Superman. Sure, it might be nice to hear, but who bleeds in space? It’s somewhat similar with Romulus in that fashion. Is that all Nostalgia is now, just re-spitting lines from older films that were more effective back then? Sitting in the front row on the sides (my favorite area), I want to say there were at least 4 walkouts during my showing, with one person coming back with drinks.
Musically, Benjamin Wallfisch does a good job here. He doesn’t try to recreate Jerry Goldsmith’s score the way Jed Kurzel did with Alien Covenant, though there are some wild heavy beats that could work better in a trance song. The sound in the film is also pretty nice, with the skittering and screeching bounding off the walls perfectly in the Regal RPX setup.
Overall, I really enjoyed Alien Romulus. While there are some elements I would have fixed (particularly with characterization and moving away from trying to reference the other films), I feel It’s a solid entry in the series, especially when I compare it to Alien Covenant or Alien Resurrection.
Through the Shattered Lens 