Alien: Romulus (REVIEW) | Projector | The most conflicted I've ever felt about a film
[Ad - Sponsored by INTOTHEAM] The Alien franchise bursts out of it's egg again, away from Ridley Scott's direction, but this new entry does a lot of things right, a lot of things a bit wrong in a pandering way, and one absolutely terrible thing.
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00:00This video is sponsored by Into the AM.
00:03Hello and welcome to Projector, and on this episode, Kaylie Spaney finds out that in space,
00:08no one can hear you scream in Alien Romulus.
00:12RAIN
00:29RAIN, played by Kaylie Spaney, hopes to escape the desolate mining colony she lives on with
00:33her android brother Andy, played by David Johnson.
00:37She gets her chance when ex-boyfriend Tyler, played by Archie Renaud, invites her into
00:41a scheme to steal Cryopods from an abandoned twin space station, Remus and Romulus, using
00:46Andy to access it so they can journey to a better world.
00:50Along with Tyler's sister Kay, played by Isabel Merced, their cousin Bjorn, played
00:54by Spike Fern, and Bjorn's girlfriend Navarro, played by Eileen Wu, they travel to the twin
00:59station, but once there, they soon wake the facehuggers on board.
01:05You probably know this already, but I am a big fan of the Alien franchise, especially
01:10the first three movies, they're all done by really iconic directors, and they're
01:15all doing something quite different to each other, yes, I'm even going to stick up for
01:19Alien 3 in this debate, but genuinely, these movies are iconic and scary, and Sigourney
01:26Weaver's Ripley remains one of the great screen heroines.
01:30She blasted onto the screen in 1979, and she really was a landmark, something that many
01:37us compare to still to this day, but you also probably already know that I was not
01:42a fan of Prometheus, Ridley Scott's return to the franchise that made his name, and Prometheus
01:48was billed as being an auteurist movie, as being a work of genius, and on a visual level,
01:56Prometheus looks absolutely fantastic, it's a gorgeous looking movie, and I don't hate
02:02Prometheus because it was trying to do something different, I actually praise it for it's
02:06ambition, but I also wish it wasn't an Alien movie, because the best parts of Prometheus
02:12are when it's not trying to be an Alien film, but in general, I just found it to be
02:17very poorly written, with incredibly stupidly written characters, and also, just not particularly
02:25scary, which is a massive failing for an Alien film.
02:29And then that was followed by Alien Covenant, which was a nasty, mean-spirited sequel that
02:35almost seems like it was made out of spite because people didn't like Prometheus, and
02:40then doubled down on it even further by making David the creator of the Xenomorph, which
02:47is one of those twists that I personally found at the time to almost kind of retroactively
02:52taint the original film.
02:54Alien Covenant was so poorly received, especially by the fans, that it effectively put the series
02:59on ice for several years while the Disney-Fox merger happened, but now the franchise is
03:04back in a big way.
03:06There's a TV series called Alien Earth, which is coming out next year, but in the meantime,
03:11we have Alien Romulus, which was originally set to be a Hulu movie, but just before production
03:16was turned into a full-blown theatrical release, and Ridley Scott is again back for this movie,
03:22but this time he's stepped back into a producing role, and Romulus is set between the original
03:28Alien and Aliens.
03:31Stepping into the director's chair this time around is Fede Alvarez, who helmed the Evil
03:35Dead reboot and Don't Breathe, both of which managed to bring real horror to the proceedings,
03:42but were also fun and entertaining rides.
03:45He brings that energy to the Alien franchise, and I think he actually brings the horror
03:52back to the series, something which has been missing for an awfully long time.
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04:41It's pretty clear early on that this is a massive tribute to the whole Alien saga.
04:46When the 20th Century Studios logo pops up at the beginning, it holds the note in the
04:50same way that Alien 3 does, but also the opening credits replicate the font and style
04:56of the original 1979 film.
04:59The film is absolutely loaded with callbacks and nods to the earlier films, both big, stinking
05:05obvious ones, but also small ones as well, like the shoes that Rain wears, the Reeboks
05:11that Ripley wears in Aliens, and so on and so forth.
05:15You could spend the entire movie looking for them.
05:18This especially applies to the production design, which is absolutely fantastic.
05:23It does a phenomenal job of replicating the look and texture of the original Alien.
05:27It feels like it's set in that world.
05:30It has that kind of working class, grimy, grungy feel that was so important to that
05:37movie.
05:38It makes it feel like it's a really inhabited world.
05:42And that even includes little details like graphics on the monitors, which are intentionally
05:47dated.
05:48They intentionally look like 70s CRT graphics, which is something that really annoyed me
05:53about Prometheus, which is meant to be set decades earlier, but they're running around
05:57with these complicated 3D graphics.
06:00It's almost like going from Prometheus to Alien, somehow the technology regressed.
06:06It's an important thing in terms of continuity.
06:09It's a small detail, but it means a lot.
06:11And the fact that that was actually recognized in Romulus actually brought me quite a bit
06:16of goodwill.
06:17It feels like we're back in the world of Alien in a way that we haven't been in an
06:21awfully long time, since probably Alien 3 in fact, since even Resurrection feels like
06:27a very different movie to the three films that came before it.
06:32But moreover, it feels like Alvarez is a celebration of Ridley Scott in general, because there's
06:37so many echoes of Blade Runner in here as well, which of course makes sense, because
06:43those movies share so much of the same DNA.
06:46But still, the opening scenes on the overcrowded mining colony that is in permanent darkness
06:51with no sunlight that Rain and Andy are trying to escape from, it feels like something that
06:57could have come from the world of Blade Runner, even though those films are not in the same
07:02continuity as each other.
07:04It is worth noting though, while we're talking about that mining colony, the sound mixing
07:09in Romulus feels off in the first 20 minutes.
07:12And I thought that might have been just me, but I've seen several people talking about
07:16it at this point.
07:17It clears up once they reach the twin station, but the crowd noise in those early scenes,
07:23and especially because they do a lot of subjective sound, like filtering it through microphones
07:28and so on and so forth, it makes the dialogue really hard to hear, especially because that's
07:33actually quite important character dialogue.
07:36We're meant to be trying to connect with these characters very early on, but we're struggling
07:41to actually hear them, and I found that to be a bit of a frustration.
07:45I thought for a moment my cinema speakers were broken, but then there was an exposition
07:50scene and suddenly it was pin sharp dialogue, and I suddenly realised, no, that's not the
07:55cinema's fault, that's the mixing's problem.
07:59Luckily though, that largely clears up for much of the rest of the movie, aside from
08:03one sequence much later on.
08:06But while this is definitely trying to evoke a loss of Ridley Scott, this is undoubtedly
08:10a Fede Alvarez movie that has a loss in common, in my opinion, with Don't Breathe.
08:15The setup in particular of a group of thieves breaking in somewhere so they can try and
08:18steal their way to a better life is very similar between the two films, it just has a sci-fi
08:24twist this time around.
08:26Even Kaylee Spaney's Reign feels quite similar to Jane Levy's character in Don't Breathe,
08:32and I'm not saying that as necessarily a criticism, but more as an observation in general.
08:36It feels like Alvarez is taking what he knows works, and applying it to this franchise.
08:42And if you saw Don't Breathe, or his Evil Dead movie, you know that Alvarez knows how
08:47to stage a proper haunted house movie.
08:50It's just one of those, but with a slimy alien skin over it.
08:55And in many ways, this takes the franchise back to basics, as a scare machine.
09:01Prometheus and Covenant were all about the big, lofty existential questions.
09:06Who are we?
09:07Where did we come from?
09:08Who are our creators?
09:11And Romulus really isn't caring about that.
09:14What it wants to deliver is rollercoaster thrills, really put you on the edge of your seat.
09:20It's great to see an alien movie that genuinely feels scary and unsettling again, skilfully
09:24building tension with some real jolts.
09:27I've jumped in my seat several times, and I don't usually do that in horror films these days.
09:33In fact, Alvarez is particularly good at that classic alien moment, where you're watching
09:39one character in the foreground, and then you just look slightly beside them and you
09:43realise, oh, the xenomorph has actually been there the entire time.
09:48It's been hiding in the darkness, in plain sight.
09:52And that is particularly unsettling in a darkened cinema, where you feel like it could pop out
09:56behind your seat at any time.
09:58And Alvarez is particularly fixated on the facehuggers in this movie, which, truth be
10:04told, have absolutely terrified me since childhood.
10:08They really creep me the hell out, those little buggers.
10:12And so, of course, Alvarez puts them front and centre in this movie.
10:16There are several set pieces built around them.
10:19There's one in a rapidly flooding chamber that is particularly jumpy in both senses,
10:25with the facehuggers trying to latch onto people's faces, and you get really tight
10:29close-ups of the legs trying to wrap themselves around them and force their way down their
10:34throats that really play up the yuck factor.
10:37Again, completely unsurprising if you saw Don't Breathe or his Evil Dead movie, which
10:43both try to push the envelope, both try to go against good taste.
10:48There's another sequence later on where the characters have to try and walk through a
10:50corridor that is infested with facehuggers that is very suspenseful in its own right.
10:57The corridor is heated to match the characters' body temperatures to try and obscure them
11:02from the facehuggers, but they still have to try and control themselves and make their
11:06way very slowly through.
11:09The characters may be trying not to sweat, but I most certainly was, and it feels like
11:14the temperature in the cinema is also rising at that particular moment.
11:19Alvarez keeps upping the stakes and upping the danger, in the same way that he does in
11:24his previous movies, and it's all really well directed.
11:28However, Romulus replicates some of the problems that Alvarez has had in the past, in that
11:32I think that he's a great horror director, he knows how to handle that stuff, but he's
11:37not a great storyteller, and he's usually quite weak with characterisation.
11:42You see this in the movie, especially with the supporting cast.
11:46Deep Breath had a very small cast, it had, what, four main characters?
11:51Stretching that across six characters now means that you get several that feel quite
11:56underwritten.
11:57They largely feel functional, they feel like they're there for the sake of the plot.
12:01Like Isabella Merced, she's got a character that is just simply there to be pregnant,
12:06because that's a plot point, and to scream the entire time.
12:10And the other characters largely get the one note to play.
12:14In some ways, an Alien movie can feel a bit logistical, like, oh, these are the people
12:18that are going to die, you need this person because they're going to get facehugged,
12:23and so on and so forth.
12:24But it really does stand out when you compare it to Alien, where everyone in the cast was
12:29memorable and felt developed.
12:31You know, you think back on the original movie, and you think of all the great character actors
12:35they had there, like Harry Dean Stanton, Yafat Koto, and John Hurt, and Ian Holm.
12:40They all stand out, but I do think the movie is working against them, both in terms of
12:44the script, but also because the opening of the movie feels a little bit choppy to me.
12:49It feels like the movie rushes its way to get off that mining colony and get to the
12:54proper story, get to the Alien, but that comes at the expense of the characters.
12:59Still, it would have been nice to give them a bit more of a sense of who they are before
13:04this all happens.
13:06There's a long build-up and set-up here, but it's not really given to the characters.
13:11Of course, by far the most fully developed characters in the film are Rain and Andy.
13:14The relationship between them is the heart of the film.
13:17And Kayleigh Spaney, who's been having an absolutely terrific year between this, Priscilla,
13:23and Civil War, she is very much the designated Ripley in the role of Rain.
13:28That's something that's been in all of these movies ever since Weaver passed the torch,
13:33but she actually stands up to that mantle.
13:36She has that Sigourney Weaver energy, that resilience and toughness, even though she
13:41is absolutely frightened out of her wits.
13:44She's been orphaned at a very young age, and so she has to be self-reliant.
13:48She has to be self-sufficient.
13:50She knows how to handle herself, and she knows how to try and get herself out of trouble
13:56and engineer solutions.
13:58And Spaney is very likeable, and she carries so much of this movie, but also she carries
14:05the emotional moments that are occasionally offered.
14:08When they first leave the mining colony, there's a really wonderful moment where they actually
14:13see the sun for the first time, and Rain's reaction in particular is beautiful.
14:19There's a brief passing moment of genuine happiness and exploration that the world feels
14:26open, and that again feels like it's sort of in keeping with the Alien franchise.
14:33And again, we're getting this recurring thing that seems to be very common in Alien movies
14:37now where the most interesting character in the movie is the android character.
14:42We had this with David that Ridley Scott was very fixated by, and David Johnson absolutely
14:49steals the whole film.
14:51He clearly has the best part here.
14:54Certainly, it's the most complicated character.
14:57Andy is a very old model of android that was programmed by Rain's father to serve as
15:03her protector, to serve as her brother.
15:06Andy has a very sympathetic characterisation that evokes something like Lance Henriksen's
15:11performance as Bishop in Aliens, but he's also a quite childlike character.
15:17He is someone that's meant to be looking out for Rain, but often it feels like Rain is
15:21looking out for him.
15:22It does feel like he's a vulnerable character that's almost being exploited, and then the
15:29character takes some unusual turns over the course of the movie where suddenly the character
15:35gets competent, but also starts showing a darker, more complicated side that adds a
15:41bit of tension to the relationship between Rain and Andy.
15:45And you can feel Johnson slipping between the two modes of this character, and the way
15:51that he does so is so brilliantly handled, I was absolutely compelled by his performance.
15:58He's someone that you genuinely are rooting for, but you're also kind of rooting against
16:03at the same time.
16:05It's definitely the character that feels by far the most fleshed out.
16:10But around the time where that shift happens, another one is happening as well with the
16:14film in general, in that it starts getting much messier in its second half, especially
16:20because you can start to feel the influence of Ridley Scott on the proceedings.
16:24It almost feels like he's kind of tapping his fingers on Alvarez's shoulder, dictating
16:29what story points there are, because while this is billed as being a throwback Alien
16:34film, it also turns out there's a bit of Prometheus DNA creeping in as well, and depending
16:40on your feelings about that movie, that might not necessarily be a good thing, especially
16:45as it tries to connect that with the original Alien films.
16:49And while largely it's using elements from those films more as just catapults for more
16:55horror set pieces, it's still something that I didn't really want out of this movie personally,
17:01because I'm not a big fan of Prometheus or Covenant.
17:05But it's also around this point where I feel like Alvarez starts to lose control of the
17:09references and callbacks to the earlier films, because while they're fairly fun and subtle
17:14at first, by the time the second half of the movie rolls around, they start becoming really
17:19overt.
17:20I feel like the film gets very carried away with itself with calling back to earlier Alien
17:25films in a way that I think is quite distracting and a little bit detrimental to the film's
17:30own identity.
17:31At times, it feels like a highlight reel of previous Alien movies, especially because
17:37there's a chunk of the film blatantly restaging entire sequences from Aliens, which in the
17:43continuity of this film hasn't even happened yet, but that's purely there for the sake
17:49of the audience.
17:51Those kind of callbacks and references, they start becoming very self-indulgent and just
17:56so pronounced that you can clearly tell it's just there for the fanservice, for the fans
18:01to recognise them.
18:02It takes you out of the moment, and unfortunately, Romulus does that at several points.
18:09In Alvarez's defence, what I will say is that there are moments where he deliberately evokes
18:15callbacks to earlier films.
18:18There's a lift shaft sequence which evokes the certain moment from Aliens, but then Alvarez
18:25puts his own spin on it.
18:26He puts a twist on it.
18:27He escalates it and builds it even further so that it becomes its own thing, and that's
18:32how you do this.
18:34That's how you make a callback and reference into something new.
18:38You add to it, but unfortunately, for every time that Alvarez does something a bit fun
18:44with the mythology of the franchise, he'll then do something incredibly clumsy, like
18:49calling back to one of the most famous lines in movie history, said by a character that
18:55makes absolutely no sense for him to say that, and also, why would he even say that?
19:01Has he seen the movie Aliens?
19:04What on earth?
19:05You can just almost feel the audience groan as he delivers the punchline.
19:10You know, you just could have left it.
19:12You just could have left it as just that reference there.
19:15No, you have to finish the rest of the line.
19:17Oh great.
19:18That was really awful.
19:20The final 20 minutes of the film were a bit of a disaster in my opinion.
19:24It does a lot of choices that I don't think really work, not least of which because it
19:29all feels unnecessary.
19:32It feels like the film is wrapping up by that point.
19:35The story is effectively over.
19:37The audience is expecting the credits to roll at any moment, but then it turns out that
19:41Alvarez brings a whole other scare sequence on top of it, and this is meant to be the
19:47climax of the movie, but it just feels like extended epilogue.
19:52He's trying to do something unique and original, but really he's stepping in the footsteps
19:57of alien resurrection, but it also evokes one of the most distasteful sequences from
20:02Alien vs. Praetor Requiem.
20:05Both films that you probably shouldn't be evoking the memory of, and the finale is technically
20:11well executed by Alvarez.
20:13Again, he knows how to handle horror set pieces, but on a story point of view, it feels gross
20:20in a bad way.
20:22It's confusing for the audience, and I feel like it's going to repulse audiences more
20:27than actively scare them.
20:29It's a poor choice in my opinion, and it ends the movie on a sour note.
20:34Okay, spoiler warning for the next part of the review, because there is no way of talking
20:38about a major issue with the film without just outright saying it, and I'm not going
20:43to bat around the bush with regards to this particular thing, because it's not a small
20:47part of the movie at all.
20:49So if you want to go in cold, skip ahead to this time, but I think most people probably
20:56know exactly what I'm talking about.
20:59So about a third of the way into the film, they revive the science officer android on
21:03Remus named Rook, who as it turns out is the same model as Ash, which means the film effectively
21:11revives in turn the late Ian Holm, who died in 2020.
21:16Now Rook is created as being played by Daniel Bette, with Holm being created as reference
21:22both vocally but also visually, and I believe that this is an amalgamation performance in
21:28that they've obviously done some digital synthesis where they've put Bette's voice with Holm's
21:33and merged it together.
21:34I believe they've also included some animatronics that are meant to look like Ian Holm.
21:39It also feels like they've applied a CGI deepfake on top of Rook, which is never remotely convincing.
21:47It is super distracting throughout the entire film because it feels like Rook's face isn't
21:54actually attached to his face, it feels vaguely like it's floating off of it.
21:59But even if it had the best CG in the world, again, why do we have to resurrect dead people
22:07in legacy franchises?
22:10This is very much in the tradition of Harold Remus in Ghostbusters Afterlife, which I was
22:15absolutely fuming about, and Peter Cushing in Rogue One.
22:19And every time I bring something like this up, some will come to the defence of it going,
22:23well, it was done with the involvement of their estate, but that doesn't make it any less bad taste.
22:28It just means they've done the bad choice in the most ethical way possible.
22:33But there's so many better ways of doing something like this that doesn't require digital necromancy
22:40to try and bring an actor effectively back from the dead.
22:44And yeah, they've tried to excuse this in interviews, saying, oh, well, Ian Holm felt
22:47shunned by Hollywood after his Parkinson's diagnosis, but the man is dead.
22:52He should be left to rest in peace.
22:55This performance, it's a hollow facsimile.
22:58It's a hollow facsimile of what he might have done in the past, and it's a hollow facsimile
23:03of work he did in a movie back in 1979.
23:07Even if you wanted to evoke the character of Ash, there are so many better ways they
23:13could have done this.
23:14Like, the fact the android is already damaged means you could have the face be damaged,
23:19so it resembled Ian Holm, but it didn't look totally like him, and that could be kind of creepy.
23:24But also, Daniel Bette looks a lot like Ian Holm.
23:28You could just apply facial prosthetics and it would look far better.
23:32It would certainly age a lot better because the effects aren't even good now,
23:37let alone in a few years' time.
23:40Look, we've been recasting actors since time immemorial.
23:43Audiences are familiar with it, they accept it, and they understand the reasons for it,
23:48especially in cases where people have died.
23:51There is absolutely no excuses for bringing people back from the dead.
23:56None.
23:57It's just there for cheap nostalgia.
23:59It's a solution to something that wasn't even a problem in the first place.
24:03But even if recasting was an argument at any point, it has been settled so many times over.
24:11You look at what they did in Doctor Sleep.
24:12Doctor Sleep did recasting on a just seamless scale.
24:17No CGI whatsoever, just good casting and makeup.
24:22But also, it's an android, so it doesn't even have to look like Ash.
24:25It could be a totally new character just running the same software that Ash was,
24:30or maybe it could be another variant of Walter or David.
24:33Although, again, that probably links it more to Prometheus than I would like.
24:38Or it could be another variant of Andy.
24:40There are so many other choices the filmmakers could have taken with this particular character.
24:46This is not a small role.
24:48This is one of the main antagonists of the movie that isn't the alien.
24:54He is a big, big part of the movie.
24:56He's delivering whole chunks of exposition in scenes that are fairly lengthy.
25:01He has a substantial amount of screen time and that only adds insult to injury
25:08because you've not only revived a dead man,
25:11you've also made him a major component of the entire movie.
25:16The other examples like Harold Ramis or Peter Cushing, at least they were in maybe a scene or two.
25:22Whereas this is actively building an entire performance around someone that has passed on.
25:31I feel like that particular choice is really unforgivable.
25:36Alien Romulus is the most I've enjoyed a film I felt so conflicted on.
25:41It does so many things right in how it looks and sounds like Alien and is genuinely scary.
25:46You can tell that Alvarez is a massive fan of these movies
25:50and his passion for it is all over Romulus.
25:53But it also does so many things wrong, especially as it gets overwhelmed by all the fan service.
26:00But that one particular choice really is absolutely egregious.
26:06That is a shameful choice that I wish the film didn't do.
26:12Generally, I think that Alien fans will enjoy themselves.
26:15But I also think it works for a new, younger audience.
26:19These are quite young characters at the centre of this film and that's very much a deliberate choice.
26:24I feel like it's meant to be an introduction to the Alien films for Gen Z.
26:29And I think it'll work in that regard.
26:31It does work as a thrill ride.
26:34I do think it'll invite them to go back and see the older movies.
26:38And if it does that, it has done its job.
26:41And I will begrudgingly say, with all my reservations about it,
26:46it's probably the best new Alien film in literally decades.
26:52And proves there is still life in the old chestburster yet.
26:56If you like this review and you want to support my work,
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27:17Until next time, I'm Matthew Buck, feeding out.