“Alien: Romulus” proves that while no one can hear you scream in space, this might be one of the few instances of IP piggybacking that’ll have audiences screaming for more.
The latest installment in the 45-year-old “Alien” franchise, Fede Álvarez’s sci-fi horror skyrockets into theaters this week and takes place between Ridley Scott’s original “Alien” and James Cameron’s much-lauded 1986 sequel, “Aliens” — both anchored by Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley.
Cailee Spaeney, of “Priscilla” fame, leads a group of young space colonists, including her A.I. “brother” (David Jonsson), who find a defunct spacecraft orbiting and attempt to commandeer it to the planet of their choice, only to discover they’re not alone — xenomorphs are aboard the ship.
20th Century Studios
Cailee Spaeny in ALIEN: ROMULUS. (20th Century Studios)
At the time of publication, the film — which Scott returned to produce — boasts an 82% approval rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, with Entertainment Weekly dubbing it “one of the best in the franchise in years.”
While some outlets have definitely taken off points for the film’s unsubtle nods to earlier installments and bemoaned the inability to outrun its predecessors, some critics found the familiarity to be of great comfort.
“Let the callbacks and homages begin — and then never end,” said the Financial Times.
Though “technically competent,” The Guardian found the “fundamental lack of originality … makes it frustrating” to watch.
“It’s fun, tense, and slimy,” said RogerEbert.com. “It’s also nowhere near as ambitious as some of the films in this series deemed failures. We can’t have everything.”
Variety, on the other hand considers the movie “one of the best ‘Alien’ sequels” and deemed it “a grandly efficient greatest-hits thrill ride, packaged like a video game.” This, the outlet wrote, ultimately, proved “confidently spooky, ingeniously shot, at times nerve-jangling.”
Rolling Stone didn’t find the film particularly thrilling though, saying it’s “neither a haunted house nor a roller coaster, but a standard theme-park ride based on a movie” and, at best, “an overly respectful homage.”
While Washington Post agreed it’s “built largely on the bones of the first two movies,” they concluded that “you could do worse for a Saturday night eek-a-thon.”
Álvarez, known for films like “Don’t Breathe” and 2013’s “Evil Dead” remake, “would rather torture his cast than develop their characters” and is, as a result, “much better-suited” to the gore than the “suffocating dread” of the “Alien” franchise, according to IndieWire — which graded the film a C.
That take seemed in line with Bloomberg News, which says the film “ruined what was otherwise a fun, icky trip to space,” and one creative decision proved “an unintentional, chilling vision of the future” — unrelated to the titular monsters.
Slant Magazine meanwhile considers the film the series’ “strongest entry in three decades for its devotion to deploying lean genre mechanics.”
