Alien: Romulus (2024)

The seventh feature film in the Alien franchise was directed and cowritten by Fede Alvarez. Alvarez, 47, has proved himself in the horror realm (Don’t Breathe) and inserting himself into ongoing franchises (the 2013 Evil Dead). So maybe he was a natural for making the best Alien movie in nearly 40 years. In fact, part of his shtick here is drawing skillfully on the first two movies even as he gleefully careens around a barrage of excellent original SF predicaments. He uses the spooky confines of decrepit spaceware floating in space, as in the first picture, and he composes a closeup shot of our hero Rain (Cailee Spaeny) confronting one of the creatures in profile, as in the second. Rain’s android friend Andy (David Jonsson) saves her from one attack saying, “Get away from her. You bitch.” But my favorite hark to the past is reviving Ian Holm from the first picture as the android Ash. They had to obtain permission from the estate of Holm, who died in 2020, to use his likeness (from the Lord of the Rings shoot). The rest is busy-busy special effects. It closes a neat circle in the larger enterprise. Ash is just as deceptive and manipulative here as he was in 1979. Romulus also gives us a new word for the alien (or at least new to me), mostly replacing “xenomorph” with “parisitoid.” Whatever. The picture runs nearly a full two hours but rarely flags. Romulus is intense and can be scary and it was a relief that Alvarez never goes jokey on us, which would probably not be hard with this “perfect organism” we know so well now that we could likely pass a pop quiz with ease on its properties: the face-hugger stage, the chest-bursting stage, the unstoppable acid for blood, the speed and cunning. There might be a little more biology to Romulus, as some cross-breeding happens between alien and human, which I’m pretty sure is new. The result is suitably horrifying, though weirdly too reminiscent of Terminator CGI to truly enjoy. I liked Romulus nearly as much as the first two pictures in the franchise, Alien and Aliens, which is not a low bar. Forget 3, Resurrection, Prometheus, and Covenant. Romulus should be your next stop after the first two.