Alien: Romulus
- Colton Gomez
- Aug 23, 2024
- 4 min read
Updated: Dec 28, 2024
Review
By Colton Gomez | 08/23/24 | 6:58 P.M. Mountain Time
Horror, Sci-Fi | Rated R | 1 hr 59 min | "Alien: Romulus" Release Date: August 16, 2024
“Alien: Romulus” is under two hours but feels much longer. What you’ll get from this film is perhaps a good nap despite all of the explosions and yelling. I hate to say that I was severely disappointed with this film. My theater was practically empty, save for a couple, a man and woman, who seemed to seriously consider leaving about halfway through the film. I can’t say I blame them as I was also despairing sitting through the rest of the film that couldn’t seem to end.
Rain (Cailee Spaeny) is a miner for the infamous Weyland-Yutani corp. Her brother (David Jonsson) is a synthetic human, programmed by her father to spout off increasingly unbearable dad jokes. Along with the two peas in a cryo-pod, there are two more duos of a brother/sister and boyfriend/girlfriend but they function more like Rain’s body armor than characters.
Fed up with Weyland-Yutani, Rain and friends steal a ship and fly to an abandoned outpost in orbit, looking for cryo-pods to use while they fly for nine years to another star system. They discover havoc wreaked upon the outpost, and while searching for fuel, accidentally free hundreds of face-huggers who are much less aggressive and coordinated than those of the other films. The rest of the film is alien encounter after alien encounter with the group being picked off one by one until only the film’s decided hero manages to escape and kill a bunch of acid-bleeding aliens with relative ease, yada, yada, you’ve seen all this before.
This is probably the loudest film in the entire franchise. It seemed to want to use the classic sound effects of the original film but quickly strayed from that path and opted for uninventive foley and a cartoonish score. I found myself quietly laughing at an operatic sting that reminded me of a SpongeBob episode in which the characters are primitive cavemen and discover the uses of fire, punctuated with a cutaway of a live-action barbershop quartet that sings a very similar operatic melody.
There is nothing that matters in this film. There was a moment where I thought the synthetic would chauffer the human characters into a more logical state of mind than their extremely emotional ones (they are teenagers or something after all), but that too, decided not to commit. There was nothing done by the characters to win me over to their efforts and root for them. I can’t say for any moment in the runtime that I felt a shred of suspense or fear for the characters. They are either going to survive this dangerous encounter or not, and frankly, I really didn’t care which it was.
The egregious amount of cliches and imbecilic decisions the characters make made this film a chore to sit through. Had it been developed as a video game, I think the reception would’ve been immensely more positive and far less painful to endure. I kept thinking that these set pieces would be very fun to navigate myself instead of watching it.
It really is a shame to see an Alien film serve as the background for a nothing story. The world created by Scott is highlighted here but lacks all of its intrigue.
I can't say the film was altogether mush. Some of the performances, notably from Cailee Spaeny and David Jonsson, were exciting to watch. Spaeny's intelligent acting chops were on display but unfortunately none of them were really able to help the movie from being a sad slog. Jonsson's range in playing a synthetic human who ranges from meager to assertive was my favorite performance of the entire film. He is definitely the standout of this film and could continue to be in his future projects.
The production design looked great, the makeup was convincing, and the cinematography was interesting; unfortunately none of them really matter when the script isn’t up to snuff.
Overall, the film doesn't offer much. It doesn’t comment on AI any more than the other films. It doesn’t build the world any more than the other films. It doesn’t do anything that the other films haven’t already done. There’s a love plot that goes nowhere, a synthetic whose character development depends on a chip insert but ends up not mattering, and of course, expendable characters who add nothing. This is certainly not of the caliber of Scott and Cameron but more to the tune of the franchise’s worst.
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Review by Colton Gomez
Colton Gomez earned his BA in Film Studies from Weber State University. He owns and operates ColtonGomez.com. Here, he covers new releases in theaters and on streaming. For short versions of his reviews, check out his LetterBoxd
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