Alien: Romulus review - game over for the adults

In space no one can hear you scream, but they usually can in a cinema. Wednesday night’s gala launch of Alien: Romulus was awash with the gussied-up cast and writer-director Fede Álvarez, alongside assorted Olympians and influencers walking the red carpet.

A more enthusiastic audience would have been hard to find, but apart from an auditorium-wide laugh at the reprise of a beloved line from Aliens, there weren’t a lot of gasps, and there were no screams at all. Touted as a return to the original film’s grunge aesthetic and practical effects, Alien: Romulus set itself up for comparison and fell at the outset.

It may just have been the acoustics at this particular screening, but for the first 20 minutes or so it was hard at times to follow the expository dialogue. Establishing the characters, backstories, and relationships before the cast starts being picked off is a pretty crucial component in an Alien film, otherwise it’s hard to care about who exactly is being munched by what looks like a penis with two sets of teeth.The original Alien set up its motley crew of experienced character actors over domestic scenes on the commercial cargo ship, Nostromo. Allegiances and feuds, jokes and grudges over rank, class and pay made the cast three-dimensional and their ensuing grisly fates packed an emotional punch. Aliens replaced that crew with soldiers, again jostling with each other but on a new ship. The underrated Alien 3, set on a prison colony, explored the tensions between Ripley (Signourney Weaver) and male convicts. The fourth and widely criticised Alien: Resurrection drew on world-weary mercenaries for its monster fodder.

Alien: Romulus – set between the first and second film – is very much a Disney-style Alien aimed at a young audience. None of the winsome cast are over 30 and are mostly familiar from appearing in romcoms and biopics. While they might act tough and swear a lot, it does feel like we’re watching a bunch of teens without much life experience running around a familiar haunted house.

Frankly, I missed not only Sigourney Weaver but all the other adults. The one older character, a resurrected member of the original cast, the performer who played them long dead, has caused a furore as their role has been generated by AI with all the unconvincing glaze that deep fake tech evokes. I just hope their surviving family are well compensated.

Alien: Romulus opens on a mining town on a planet in perpetual darkness and corrosive pollution. Indentured workers slave for the corporation, hoping to earn enough credits to ship out to a cleaner world where the sun rises. It's all just a bit Blade Runner. Taking over from the Ripley role is Rain (Cailee Spaeny, seen this year in both Priscilla and Civil War). She’s accompanied by her late parents’ devoted "synthetic", Andy (David Jonsson, star of Rye Lane and Agatha Christie’s Murder Made Easy). 

When Rain is told it’ll be another decade of graft before they’re eligible to leave, a plan is hatched with four friends to break into the Romulus, an abandoned space ship. They plan to use the remaining cryopods and fuel and take off for sunnier climes. What could go wrong? While Rain sees Andy as her brother and he’s programmed to protect her, the four friends in on the escape plan regard him with suspicion. It takes a good hour before the action starts and it should have been possible to develop some interest in the central characters in that time but they remain generic.

Instead of being invested in their fate, I was left admiring the work of the effects teams, particularly the animatronic creations. The practical craftsmanship draws on HR Giger’s original designs as well as the later evolutionary stages. All the old favourites are here: invaders of human bodies prone to popping out in a flurry of gore and fancy meat, scuttling multi-legged creatures rampaging down steaming corridors, acidic blood, and sinister bipeds with dripping, monstrous orifices (pictured above) that if described to a sex therapist as a fantasy would give cause for alarm.

Recently, I re-watched the first four Alien movies alongside my 20-year old son and my 95-year-old father. Both found them utterly absorbing even though the latter observed that they deliver the same story with diminishing returns. Alien: Romulus sticks to the familiar narrative and probably won’t offend diehard fans as some of spin-offs have done over the years, but its lacklustre script and indistinguishable characters are unlikely to inspire the devotion lavished on the first two films.  

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