#55: ALIEN ROMULUS

 

STARRING: Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn and Aileen Wu. Written by Fede Álvarez and Rodo Sayagues. Directed by Fede Álvarez. Budget #80 million. Running time 119 minutes.

And so we come to the 9th film in the Alien franchise after Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, Alien: Resurrection, Alien Vs. Predator, Alien Vs Predator: Requiem, Alien: Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. Well, you know what they say, 9th time's a charm.  

Chronologically speaking this takes place between Alien and Aliens, thus successfully ignoring the failed majesty of Alien 3 and the rest. 

Ditching the gross idea of characters who are, you know older than 30, in favour of a group of young diverse young people as it's cannon fodder is a shrewd move for Generation Z crowd this film is aimed at and who don't seem to be able to cope with ideas, films, or actors older than themselves. And it's much nicer for us Babyboomers, brought up on the first Alien film in 1979 as we get to watch these young snots getting the living shit ripped out of them. 

We meet our plucky band of young people, living on a mining colony blighted by perpetually night-time who are planning to borrow a spaceship and plunder a completely abandoned space station that is drifting above their miserable planet of its cryo-chambers so they can use them to survive the 9 light years of travel they have to do to escape to somewhere better.

What they find isn't a spaceship but a semi derelict research station called Romulus hurriedly abandoned and partially damaged after whatever those pesky scientists were experimenting on got loose. 

Through a series of stupid decisions, our band of hapless kids find themselves trapped onboard a crashing space station and separated from their spaceship and forced to navigate deep dark corridors filled with a veritable army of alien face-huggers and the occasional xenomorph to escape. Jeez, Mondays, am I right?

WARNING. WHILE THIS REVIEW CONTAINS NO ACTUAL SPOILERS, THERE IS ENOUGH INFORMATION SUBTLY ALLUDED TO IN THIS NEXT SECTION OF THE REVIEW THAT MEANS KEEN FANS OF THE ALIEN FRANCHISE MIGHT LEARN TOO MUCH. 

The crew feature Cailee Spaeny as Rain, our Ripley substitute - young orphaned, resourceful, but also small, and vulnerable – David Jonsson as Andy, Rain's surrogate brother and synthetic human, who's old and obsolete and as glitchy as fuck (I wonder if that'll play a part later on?) Archie Renaux as Tyler, heroic hunk and also ex-boyfriend of Rain, Tyler's pregnant sister Kay (Isabela Merced) whose pregnancy will obviously play a big part of later on, for obvious reasons, namely she's pregnant (great telegraphing guys), on and then there's Bjorn (Spike Fearn) who just so happens to be Tyler and Tay's cousin with synthetic issues and finally there's Navarro, the pilot (Aileen Wu), so obviously her card is marked.

This starts well and the build up is good, the exploration of the Romulus is gripping, and intriguing! Good grief, you think, have they got it right? Then the action starts and that too is good. Deaths occur and those too are gruesome, although nothing will ever compare with John Hurt's death in Alien. Taking elements from the first two films Fede Álvarez gives us an carefully sampled movie filled with bits we loved and then the third act roars into view, and sadly, dear reader, the whole film reveals itself to be nothing more than a remake of Alien: Resurrection, and goes from a solid 9/10 to a 'what the actual what' 7/10.

This gets so much right, the scares come courtesy of the facehungers who number in the hundreds and we get to learn a little bit more about those frisky little French kissers, that is before the aliens start emerging from the ceilings, floors and walls to whittle our band of cannon fodder down to the last girl standing, in this case Cailee Spaeny, doing her best Sigourney Weaver, right down to the now obligatory third act vest and kegs showdown.

Channeling both Alien and Aliens to the Nth degree and featuring a rather surprising, uncanny valley extended cameo, this film offers a great set up and a fantastically tense middle section, which sadly all comes undone when the whole film spins down into extreme nonsense in the final act. You can see what went wrong. Having scared the crap out of audiences for the whole film with aliens and face hungers, where else could you go?

There's also the need for the WHOLE franchise and it's lore to be codified and the re-introduction of ideas that featured in Alien Prometheus and Covernant just muddy the waters. The great thing about the first Alien movie was that we didn't know anything, the creature was 'alien', now because modern audiences need to be told everything we have to have all this lore, it's what killed Star Snores. Continuity and story baggage   

It's great to see so many practical effects on offer, and practical sets, the design is classic retro-futuristic, blinking lights and switches, cathoray tube TVs and watching real people interact with real environments is a definite plus. It's got scares, action, horror and it moves at a good pace.

At the end of the day, this was a cleverly sampled remixed mix-tape of a movie, with nothing new, but with enough hints at past greatness to keep you sweet. 

7/10