TThe DNA of the earliest Foreigner Movies are as etched into this latest installment in the series as a load of caustic Xenomorph blood making its way into the hull of a spaceship. And in some ways, that’s a good thing. The first two films remain the very best in the series, and Alien: Romulusa standalone story that takes place between the events of Foreigner And Alienswisely pays tribute to its predecessors rather than trying to rework or reinvent them.
But it is also a disadvantage. Directed by Uruguayan genre specialist Fede Álvarez, who with his reinterpretation of Sam Raimi’s The evil Dead is a filmmaker with gleefully gonzo instincts who is never happier than when he is knee-deep in a sludge of guts and blood. But while Alien: Romulus leans on the more gruesome elements of its horror heritage – at the expense of a deeper development of the story – but fails to assert itself as a particularly striking addition to the series in terms of form, tone or theme.
What distinguishes this part, which Álvarez wrote together with his regular collaborator Rodo Sayagues, is the age of its main characters. This is the first Foreigner The film has an almost entirely young cast, a fact that makes up for what it lacks in the lived-in workplace authenticity of the first film with dewy, fresh-faced, photogenic alien fodder. Cailee Spaeny, impressive in Priscilla And Civil Warcontinues her successful series in the role of Rain and Rye Lanes David Jonsson is fascinating but uncomfortable as Rain’s android “brother” Andy. The people around him are less well defined, however. It’s not hard to guess which faces are being hugged and which torsos are being impaled.
There is an immediate risk that the tone will drift towards a typical YA science fiction dystopia by focusing on characters who are in their late teens and early 20s. But Alien: Romulus avoids the exaggerated, pompous pitfalls of something like, say, the Maze Runner Series by alluding to the existing Foreigner World-building while developing a satisfyingly dark backstory for the young group of space colonists. Second-generation residents of a hellish mining community on a planet that never sees the sun, the design team goes all out on gloom, rusted metal, and desperation to create this hopeless future frontier town.
Most of their parents are dead, having perished in mining accidents, lung diseases and one of the many pandemics that regularly ravage the population. The workers are considered expendable by the mine owner Weyland-Yutani, because a system of forced labor reminiscent of slavery prevents the next generation from escaping the fate of their parents. No wonder the children are so desperate to escape that they come up with a half-hearted plan. Their goal is to take over a seemingly abandoned spaceship that hovers ominously over the colony and steer it to greener climes – or at least to a planet with daylight.
Anyone who has even the slightest knowledge of the Foreigner franchise gives you a hint of the unpleasantness that awaits you on the ship. Still, the sheer enthusiasm and graphic detail with which Álvarez slaughters the supporting cast is thrillingly gruesome. The taut scenes are so dynamic, the tension so sticky uncomfortable, the sound design so jarring and full of screeching metal that you barely notice the connective tissue between the action scenes trying to hold them together (and certainly not holding up to scrutiny). Still, the jump scares work, whether the story logic is shaky or not, and the tracheal tunnels coated in sticky alien tissue provide a deliciously unsettling backdrop to the action.
Ultimately, the main problem with Alien: Romulus has nothing to do with the writing or execution. It is the decision to digitally recreate a now deceased actor to recreate a character from the original Foreigner. It’s an uncomfortably misguided decision that was presumably intended to further cement the film’s connection to the original, but instead feels macabre, exploitative, disrespectful, and unnecessary.
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