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THE COLLECTION / 2024
Worth watching · proposed 119 min

Alien: Romulus (2024)

A younger crew gives an old franchise fresh legs.

Directed by Fede Álvarez · Written by Fede Álvarez and Rodo Sayagues · Approximately 119 minutes
Starring: Cailee Spaeny · David Jonsson · Archie Renaux · Isabela Merced

Owner-informed draft. Incorporates the Letterboxd note dated 22 August 2024. Verdict and advisories are proposed; numerical Corny DNA ratings remain unscored. Explore the Alien collection.

I liked Alien: Romulus. It might be my third-favourite of the films that actually have Alien in the name. That is a tentative personal ranking, and the reasons are more useful than pretending it is a settled league table: the colony gives the world texture, the young cast gives the franchise a welcome generational shift, and David Jonsson is terrific.

The original film moves more patiently; this one is more action-oriented. That change is part of its appeal. A franchise with this many years behind it benefits from giving younger people an immediate stake in getting somewhere else.

The young people in Alien: Romulus are trying to get out of a bad employment arrangement. Their company controls work, travel and the calculation that decides when they have earned a different life. Scavenging an apparently abandoned station looks like a way to acquire the equipment for an escape. In this series, an abandoned company facility is rarely a promising alternative to the company.

Fede Álvarez brings the scale back towards a small group moving through dangerous rooms. The official synopsis identifies the scavenging mission; the story sits between Alien and Aliens. The strongest sequences make familiar organisms into specific physical problems. The weakest moments appear more interested in reminding the audience that it recognises the property.

Before you watch

Severe creature violence and body horror: choking and invasive face attacks, bloody injury and burns, plus graphic pregnancy and birth horror. The later reproductive material is particularly distressing and should not be hidden behind the label “creature action.” Strong language is frequent. The BBFC also flags flashing images for photosensitive viewers. Exact birth and character outcomes are behind the disclosure.

Specific content details (contains spoilers)
  • Kay injects the experimental fluid and gives birth to a rapidly growing human–alien hybrid, which kills her.

The company is already the problem

The opening gives the attempted theft a persuasive purpose. Escape depends on equipment, and equipment belongs to an institution with no interest in making departure easy. That is an efficient way to connect a young ensemble to the series' older workplace concerns without requiring them to repeat the Nostromo's job descriptions.

Cailee Spaeny gives Rain a practical watchfulness. She is trying to think her way through conditions designed to reduce her choices. The relationship with Andy supplies more than a companion to protect. His status as a synthetic person makes the question of who gets to leave—and who can be treated as equipment—immediate.

David Jonsson was the standout for me, and he is the film's strongest resource. He makes Andy's changing behaviour legible through voice, posture and attention. A shift in priorities can be frightening even when the face remains familiar. The performance also allows the relationship with Rain to feel particular, with habits and vulnerabilities that matter before the threat arrives.

The film gives the remaining group less depth. Their conflicting pressures are understandable, but several relationships become clear mainly when an argument or a crisis requires them. The central pair carries more emotional weight than the ensemble as a whole.

Good suspense needs a practical obstacle

Álvarez is effective at turning environmental conditions into constraints. Heat, sound, air, access and gravity give a creature encounter a shape beyond “run away.” A plan can be understandable enough that the viewer anticipates the point where it might fail. That anticipation produces tension without requiring another explanation of the franchise's biology.

The facehuggers benefit especially from that approach. Their speed and small size make them a different threat from the adult creature. Concentrating on how to cross a space can restore danger to an image the audience has seen many times.

The same principle improves the later action. Acid blood has consequences for the room around a fight; shooting something is a decision with an environmental cost. The best staging lets the viewer hold more than one danger in mind. The film earns its machinery when equipment solves one problem while exposing another.

These are substantial strengths. They also establish how much the film can do without asking its predecessors to supply an emotional response on demand.

The references become an interruption

The trouble comes when recognition seems to be the point of a scene. Familiar language and repeated images can connect stories, but a quotation can also pull attention away from the person speaking it. A line that belonged to another character's hard-won moment does not automatically acquire a new reason to be said.

The digitally reconstructed likeness used for a returning model of android is similarly distracting. The film introduces a face with so much external history that it risks becoming a demonstration of franchise continuity. The artificiality is especially conspicuous beside Jonsson's precise physical performance. Detailed identification is left to the spoiler section.

This draft uses the theatrical presentation as its baseline. The release account records later home-video revisions to that effect, so this particular visual judgment should be checked against the edition being watched.

The final expansion of the creature material is more divisive. Its willingness to become horrible gives the film an abrasive identity beyond the callbacks. It also returns a woman's body to the role of spectacular franchise experiment. The intended disgust does not remove the need to ask how much attention the character receives compared with the transformation imposed on her.

A legacy sequel can make room for someone new

The mining-colony opening is a small addition with a substantial effect. It gives the characters a life they want to leave, rather than supplying a disposable location before the familiar creature appears. That social context is one of the reasons the younger cast feels like a useful renewal.

Blade Runner 2049 and Prey are useful wider comparison points: different series finding reasons to return to familiar worlds through a new generation or perspective. They are references for the approach, not additional chapters of Alien or automatic related-film recommendations.

Corny DNA

There is inventive grotesquerie and some consciously oversized spectacle. The callbacks sometimes feel clumsy, but that does not turn the whole film into accidental comedy. Its most persuasive pleasures remain tense staging and a strong central performance. Numerical ratings remain unscored.

Verdict

Worth watching — proposed. The positive recommendation follows the owner’s supplied reaction: energetic creature action, a useful glimpse of colony life, a welcome young cast and an exceptional performance from David Jonsson. The existing draft’s reservations about callbacks and supporting-character depth remain arguments to review, alongside severe reproductive-horror advisories. They should qualify the enthusiasm rather than displace it.

Spoilers from here

Reveal the ending and detailed analysis

The useful person and the useful body

Rook's control chip changes Andy's priorities towards the company. Rain eventually restores his earlier programming and returns for him. Kay injects the experimental fluid and gives birth to the hybrid that kills her; Rain ejects the creature, then leaves with Andy in stasis. The scene account corroborates these events.

Rain's return for Andy supplies the film's clearest answer to the company's logic. A person treated as expendable machinery is worth taking a risk for. The action has an ethical direction rather than being only another route through a dangerous room.

Kay receives a much harsher dramatic function. Her hope of survival becomes the mechanism for a new organism. The sequence is frightening, but the imbalance matters: the film invests more spectacle in the result than character development in the woman whose body produces it. That is a criticism of the framing, not a claim that depicting reproductive horror endorses it.

Rook's likeness recalls Ian Holm's Ash, though he is a different character. The conspicuous recognition works against the film's otherwise convincing material world. It is telling that the central synthetic feels more persuasive through Jonsson's performance than this returning face does through technological reconstruction.

Sources

The owner's Letterboxd note confirms viewing on 22 August 2024. The tentative series ranking and positive response are theirs; the expanded criticism and formal verdict classification remain proposed.