I’ve seen so, so many Alien movies by now. Previously on this site, I’ve rated the first Alien movie, one of only two movies to ever receive a perfect score on this site, Aliens, which got a rating of Pretty Good, and Alien 3, which scored only a lowly 3 on my 10-point scale, making it one to Avoid. Alien Resurrection was a bit of a recovery with an Okay score of 4.5. I’ve also reviewed the Alien vs. Predator films, which were too depressingly bad to even link to. But I knew as soon as I saw a preview for Alien: Romulus earlier this summer that my son would want to see it, so there we were in the theatre. Let’s see if this is one of the good, scary Alien movies or one of the bad ones.
Rain is a young woman in her early 20s who lives on Jackson’s Star, a mining colony where it rains non-stop and the sun never shines. She dreams of living on a sunlit world. Her parents have died and she lives with her brother, Andy, a synthetic human who has been programmed to protect her. After years of labor in the mines, she has earned enough credits to buy her freedom and take a ship to another planet, only to discover that the Weyland-Yutani corporation has arbitrarily raised the time necessary to serve before leaving. She’ll have to serve years more before being able to go.
A group of Rain’s friends have jobs flying a mining hauler from the planet’s surface to waiting ships above. Tyler is Rain’s ex-boyfriend and Kay is his sister, who’s pregnant. I won’t bother identifying the others as they’re not well-defined and basically exist to be killed by the Xenomorphs.
Anyway, Tyler and Rain’s other friends have noticed that there is an abandoned ship orbiting on the far side of Jackson’s Star. They have determined that the abandoned ship contains cryostasis chambers that can be used for years-long hibernation without aging, allowing a slow trip to another planet. They propose to board the ship and steal the cryostasis chambers, put themselves to sleep for years, and travel in their mining hauler to a new planet that’s recently opened for colonization. Despite the danger, Rain doesn’t want to stay another day on Jackson’s Star, so she agrees to join her friends. They need her because Andy, as a synthetic human, will be able to access the ship’s computers.
On board the abandoned ship, they discover dead human bodies and signs of struggle. They locate the cryostasis chambers but their cryogenic batteries are low, requiring a trip deeper into the ship to retrieve new batteries. Only, in the laboratory where they find the cryogenic batteries, it turns out the batteries were maintaining the room at a bitterly cold temperature to trap several frozen face-huggers, the larval stage of the Xenomorphs we know from the first movie. When they remove the batteries, the lab warms and the face huggers thaw out and start chasing Rain’s friends. The lab’s computer, sensing the aliens have woken, locks the door so Rain’s friends can’t escape.
Andy and Rain, who are outside the chamber, take a computer chip from a broken android, Rook, and insert it in Andy so that he’ll be able to override the emergency security protocols and open the door. It works, but only at the cost of releasing face huggers from the lab into the general ship. Rook explains that the original crew was studying the xenomorphs until one escaped and killed them, and the station was abandoned so it could be placed in deep freeze until the Weyland-Yutani corporation could figure out how to deal with it. At Rook’s insistence, they take from the lab vials of experimental serum with mixed human-xenomorph genetic material known as Prometheus Fire, the result of a process to create “improved humans.” Moreover, unbeknownst to the humans, the chip Rain inserted in Andy also has overridden his programming so his main goal is no longer to protect Rain but to advance the goals of the Weyland-Yutani corporation.
At this point, the face huggers have managed to lay their eggs in one of Rain’s friends and there’s a chest exploding scene similar to the first Alien movie. Kay tries to undock the mine hauler, only to crash it in the abandoned ship’s hangar and shifting its orbit, so there is now only an hour until the abandoned ship crashes on the surface of Jackson’s Star, with the mining hauler still in it.
Meanwhile, the adult xenomorph is hunting Rain’s friends to use them as incubators for young aliens, like in the second movie. It’s not long until the only ones left are Rain and Andy, armed with rifles, but they come across Kay in an alien cocoon and rescue her and take her to the mine hauler, ready to escape. Despite the rescue, Kay is fatally injured. On Rook’s advice that it’s the only way she’ll survive, she injects herself with the Prometheus Fire from the laboratory. The genetic mixture also infects her unborn baby and dramatically speeds up its maturation process. As the mining hauler is about to exit the hangar, Kay gives birth to the human-xenomorph hybrid in a totally disgusting scene.
Now Rain and Andy are trapped on the mining hauler, trying to fly out of the hangar of the abandoned ship before it crashes on the planet’s surface, with the intelligent and angry hybrid after them. Moreover, Andy is now loyal to the Weyland-Yutani Corporation and may not even want the creature to die. Will he help or hinder Rain as she attempts to survive and escape the crashing ship?
Alien: Romulus (2024)
Story/Plot/Characters— Tautly paced and intelligently plotted. However, there is basically no effort put into defining the characters except Rain and Andy, and to a very limited extent the pregnant Kay. The other characters are ciphers who exist only to serve as victims of the xenomorphs. Dialogue is functional at best (1.5 points)
Special Effects— Top-notch, with tons of great imagery. We get the usual xenomorphs, which by this point in the franchise we’ve seen plenty of, but the movie really goes above and beyond what was necessary. The space shots, with the abandoned ship hovering just inside the rings of Jackson’s Star, are truly beautiful, and later in the movie, the ship actually crashes into the icy rings in an amazingly well-done scene. Full points. (2 points)
Scariness— The plot and the xenomorphs are a little too familiar by this time to be as truly scary as either of the first two movies, but the execution is good enough that there are lots of tense moments. (1 point)
Atmosphere/Freakiness— Kay giving birth to the horrible alien-mutant hybrid is almost enough to make this completely freaky in and of itself, but the eerie abandoned ship, with its lab littered with evidence of experiments gone horribly awry and the lower levels taken over by the queen’s cocoon birthing chamber ensure this category gets full points. (2 points)
Total=6.5 points (Pretty Good)
If this were the first movie in the franchise, the well thought-out plot, the care put into the special effects, and the overall freakiness and atmosphere would have made this one of the best horror movies ever. Unfortunately, that first film has already been made, and though well-executed, this one suffers from not offering us anything new. Indeed, Alien: Romulus intentionally calls back to numerous scenes from earlier movies. It’s been described as a “back to basics” Alien movie, and I suppose that’s true enough, but then why not just watch the first one instead? But if you do find yourself watching this one, it’s expertly crafted enough to rate as Pretty Good.