Director: Fede Álvarez
The Alien Romulus follows from previous installations of Aliens films, but it does not aim to copy them or try to re-invent them.
Instead, the story of Alien Romulus stands between the first two films, Alien and Aliens and is a stand-alone film despite following the story of the first film. The connection between this film and other films is in the exploitation of the Weyland-Yutani corporation and a compelling albeit unexplored narrative of children trying to escape the fate of their parents but failing to do so and then going unprepared into the unknown with many losing their lives.
Alien Romulus focuses on the horror aspect, which is executed well but in some ways at the expense of a deeper story that would, for example, tackle the notion of the corporation governing and exploiting humans in space, which is only tackled at the beginning of the film when we hear people saying that on a speaker. But what appears to be a rebellion movement never gets explored. We only see as much as the main character, Rain (Cailee Spaeny) getting her work obligation prolonged because the corporation needs workers, and thus she is not free to leave the planet without any sun and hope. This is what the protesting voice is saying that people are not free and are only exploited and used, but this only appears at the beginning of the film.
The story then goes into Rain and a group of friends trying to steal a spaceship to leave the planet only to discover and release aliens, which naturally kill many members of the group. There is lots of escaping, fighting and a lot of elements of good horror with some gruesome details that horror fans will like. Andy, the android ‘brother’ of Rain, is excellently portrayed by David Jonsson. Other characters have not been so distinguished in the film apart from the fact that most of them have a British accent, which was enjoyable for me, but it felt weird to have such a mix without this being tackled, which could have been done had the story of exploitation in space been done better.
Some fans and commentators also had a problem with the director creating an AI version of the deceased actor Ian Holm to restore a story, which was seen as disrespectful. The director defended his decision and argued he had support from the family, though.
Thank you for reading.