ALIEN: ROMULUS
(director/writer: Fede Alvarez; screenwriter: Rodo Sayagues Mendez; cinematographer: Galo Olivares; editor: Jake Roberts; music: Benjamin Wallfisch; cast: Isabela Merced (Kay), Cailee Spaeny (Rain Carradine), David Jonsson (Andy), Archie Renaux (Tyler), Aileen Wu (Navarro), Spike Fearn (Bjorn); Runtime: 119; MPAA Rating: R; producers: Walter Hill, Michael Pruss, Ridley Scott; 20th Century Studios; 2024-UK/USA)
“Though competently made, it’s not offering anything new in the alien world — preferring to play it safe.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
The seventh entry in the Alien franchise is directed by Fede Alvarez (“Don’t Breathe”/”Evil Dead”) as a horror story in outer space. Though competently made, it’s not offering anything new in the alien world– preferring to play it safe. But to its credit is a throwback to the great original Alien (1979) and the outstanding second film. Its CGIs are marvelous, even if it’s dialogue is only serviceable and its supporting characters are only thinly developed. Alvarez co-writes the sci-fi thriller with Rodo Sayagues Mendez as if stuck in the past and not willing to get unstuck.
The exploited space colonist, the 20-something Rain (Cailee Spaeny), lives on an inhospitable corporate owned mining colony planet with no sunlight, with her friendly android “special needs” bad pun telling brother Andy (David Jonsson). Her ex-boyfriend Tyler (Archie Renaux) and his sister Kay (Isabela Merced) are escaping from this corporate prison with the rebel space colonists Bjorn (Spike Fearn) and his girlfriend pilot Navarro (Aileen Wu), to a more livable and brighter planet, Yvaga, and invite her to take with them the year-long flight. But before taking off, they must fly to an abandoned space station that has drifted above their planet to steal its hypersleep chambers, needed to secure the flight to Yvaga. But they are confronted by the sinister Xenomorph aliens and creatures called facehuggers, as things turn into a nightmare.
In a powerful scene, with jump scares, the group is chased through the space station’s corridors by a bunch of leaping facehuggers (creepy creatures we have seen before in other sequels).
The pic offers superb visuals and maintains enough shock & awe violent sequences to be entertaining. But the franchise has lost some of its power to move the story forward–which is a sign it should probably call it a day (even if it won’t). It ends with a fight for survival between the evil corporate created aliens and its sympathetic but bland human heroine.
REVIEWED ON 7/25/2024 GRADE: B-
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