The famous tagline from the movie Alien returns this fall with the new installment to the Alien franchise: Alien Romulus.
Alien Romulus follows our protagonist named Rain, who journeys alongside her synthetic, adopted brother Andy as they join a crew of people trying to escape a mining planet by scavenging an abandoned space station where they encounter the most terrifying life form in the universe.
Similar to other Alien movies, it revolves around people on a spaceship in peril due to the “Xenomorph” aliens.
This movie in particular takes place 20 years after the first Alien and 17 years before the movie Aliens which starts after Ripley of Alien wakes up from Cryosleep.
Similarly, the movie Alien depicts a graphic scene of a baby Xenomorph emerging from a human chest, breaking it open in the process.
Because Alien (1) was made in 1979, CGI had not been used and instead, practical effects were used.
Due to this, with the assistance of modern-day technology, the alien emerging from the chest scene was created as a much more dire and gruesome result than the original movie; similarly, Alien Romulus pays homage to this by attempting to use as many practical effects as they can.
Ridley Scott returns to direct his 4th Alien movie where he skillfully utilizes CGI and practical effects to create an authentic illusion of space and blend the two in an awe-inspiring way.
One of the most impressive uses of practical effects was the use of Romanian Basketball Player Robert Bobroczyki.
Bobroczyki is a 7 ‘7 basketball player who made his film debut as the Alien’s offspring where he towers over Rain, who stands at 5′ 1, making for a very cool panning shot of the stark differences in their heights creating a frightening image.
The sound design, while nothing to go crazy about, does a decent job of creating an intense atmosphere and highlighting moments of absolute silence creating a sense of anxiety within the audience.
The writing of the characters can be lazy at times.
Attempting to pay homage to the first Alien movie, Andy exclaims Ripley’s iconic line from the first Alien movie “Get away from her you B***h!” in a forced awkward way that induces eye rolls from the audience.
Aswell, all but one of the characters are written in a way that would cause the audience to care for them; so, when they do eventually die, it’s only an inconvenience in the grander scheme of the movie not affecting Rain or Andy in any major way.
The one character that does affect the plot is Kay, because in her own stupidity, she created the offspring after being deliberately told not to inject herself with Alien DNA while pregnant creating the Alien Offspring.
Speaking of the Alien DNA, this is introduced in the 2nd act of the movie serving as a very oblivious Chekhov’s Gun (a famous narrative tool) that if the average viewer used their context clues would see the use of said DNA on Kay as a no-brainer.
Overall, Alien Romulus provides one of the most impressive and frightening visual spectacles of the year, while being a predictable milquetoast story following characters you gain no attachment to.
Alien Romulus was released on August 16 and you can find Alien Romulus at your local movie theatre such as Harkins and AMC, and will be on streaming services soon.
