Alien Romulus (2024)

Alien Romulus (2024)

7/10

Starring          

Cailee Spaeny

David Jonsson

Archie Renaux

Isabela Merced

Directed by Fede Álvarez

 

Alien Romulus is a good film, I tell you. It has been a while since I have seen a good film like this, and it carries its own weight of twists and turns, while doing homage to the franchise. There are ribcage bursting out things. Stabbing with the Alien tail. People running from a monster so huge that you wonder why not just give up. The movie plot is so dark, it is amazing, and director and writer Fede Álvarez did a great job.

It is good to see what modern day graphics can do with these Alien creatures, and it is also amazing to see a familiar face. The moment I saw the late Ian Holm, I was like, “see what CGI can do.” It was nice work, since we cannot get Sigourney Weaver’s character Ripley back into the franchise, thanks to how the franchise has gone with her character.

This movie takes place in space in 2142, and follows the events of the first movie, Alien (1979). The movie plot takes place between Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986).

After the events of the first movie, humans took the remains of the Alien to a secret base to work and see how they could merge the Alien DNA with that of humans and create a better evolved human race. How that played out is something you will have to see, but this was a subplot that did not take hold until halfway in. So, what led to the Alien mounting another assault on the human race?

While they were doing their experiment in space, the Alien got out and damaged the whole space station. The whole thing was abandoned there in space.

Then comes Rain, an orphan miner trying to do enough time mining to finally leave the mining planet and go to planet Yvaga, where only humans live with the hope of a better life. Rain lives with her adoptive brother, Andy, who is a cyborg with some broken motor functions, reprogrammed to protect Rain by her late father. When Rain was unable to leave the planet, her ex-boyfriend called her for a one-time job in space. The reason she was called is that they needed Andy to help them get into the abandoned space station and steal the cryostasis chambers that would allow them to escape to planet Yvaga. This was supposed to be a simple get in, get the chambers, and get out job. But as you know, things never go as planned.

They got in, got the oxygen working, and accidentally turned on the heating. The frozen cloned facehuggers got loose, and as you can expect, things did not go as planned from then on.

I enjoyed the movie more than I expected to.