The sadomasochistic ordeal of watching any Alien film is the perverse fascination when a new filmmaker to the franchise springs their trap on the unsuspecting human victims. We want to be suitably repulsed as the viscous appendages of H.R. Giger’s biomechanical horrors probe and penetrate our fragile mortal shells. In the truly horrific moments, we watch transfixed as if viewing a nature documentary where one creature devours or mates with another in a fiendishly inventive manner, cruel yet bleakly purposeful.
Fede Álvarez is the latest director to venture into the Alien universe where Lovecraftian cosmic terror collides head on with cassette futurism. Álvarez’s entry, Alien: Romulus, must deftly navigate the deep space between the twin giants of Ridley Scott’s original Alien and James Cameron’s sequel Aliens and Scott’s later entries, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant or face annihilation between their equally destructive gravitational forces.
A key strength of the original films was the sheer eldritch otherness of the xenomorphs. Their form, nature and origin so alien as to draw endless speculation as to their purpose. It seemed right that those questions were never answered so these phallic nightmares never lost their ability for humanity to remain petrified at what other hideous terrors lurked deep within the void.
Paradoxically with Prometheus and Alien: Covenant Ridley Scott resolved the questions we didn’t want answered but those answers were too intriguing to ignore. In those films, Michael Fassbender’s riveting portrayal as the synthetic David, the disillusioned creation of Peter Weyland, creates the xenomorphs as divine retribution against humanity who has shunned his genius, quoting Shelly as he exterminates the Engineers on their home planet, “Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Álvarez, perhaps the most gifted of straight-up horror directors leans into the unique horror elements of the franchise whilst simultaneously acknowledging Scott’s later-stage mythologising of his own creation. What emerges is a gnarly thrill ride interquel set between Alien and Aliens that thoroughly terrorises its Gen Z twentysomething cast with brutal bombast and abject abandon.
The real villain of any Alien film is the monolithic Weyland-Yutani corporation’s obsession with exploiting the xenomorph at the expense of any humans, employees or otherwise. In Alien: Romulus the young group of workers are trapped in servitude on the mining world of Jackson’s Star by the shifting sands of dubious contracts. To take control of their own destiny the group need Rain (Cailee Spaeny, stoic) and her reprogrammed synthetic brother/protector Andy (David Jonsson, magnificent) to access a drifting space station to steal hyper sleep pods so they can escape the fates of their parents, either killed in mining accidents or succumbed to insidious lung disease.
Cruelty by design is already baked into the world of Alien: Romulus a reflection of Gen Z in 2024 and the fears of tyrannical corporations predicted by the science fiction movies of the 1970s and comic strips like Judge Dredd have come to pass. Between zero-hour contacts, the perils of the (H.R.) gig (er) economy, accelerated climate change, fifty-year mortgages, the threat of artificial intelligence, corporate personhood, the overturning of Roe vs Wade, the abusive algorithms of social media, the rise of the far right, not to mention the threat of nuclear war, the young group within the film reflect the cancerous nihilism of our times.
Once on board the space station Romulus and Remus the gloves are off and his young cast do not stand a chance. Álvarez breathes hideous new life into the tried-and-tested tropes. The arachnid facehuggers are once again creatures that instil absolute fear and revolution as they scuttle and skitter, leap and jump in their dozens with their dreaded sole purpose to impregnate human beings. The evolutionary phase of the xenomorphs is rendered even more transgressive as a vaginal cocoon spits acid all over a male character who is forcibly trying to abort the alien inside with an electric prod. The chunky, serviceable technology is equally treacherous, malfunctioning in equal parts by error and design.
There are fanservice decisions that sometimes feel overzealous and one major call back will undoubtedly divide opinion but at its very black heart, Alien: Romulus is an exhilarating, visceral, gut-wrenching escape movie with riveting set pieces that leaves the audience breathless with their hands clamped over their mouths in fear of a slithering tube being inserted deep within their oesophagus.
After all, “In space, no one can hear you scream.”