Fede Álvarez understands that there’s a thin line between an homage, a follow-up and a rip-off. His first film, a remake of Sam Raimi’s “The Evil Dead ,” leaned more heavily into the grueling horror of the 1981 low-budget original than its more comical 1986 predecessor, revitalizing the franchise in the process. After launching his own series with “Don’t Breathe,” he cowrote and directed “The Girl in the Spider’s Web,” a sequel to David Fincher’s “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” which met with less success than his earlier work (or Fincher’s) but further established him as a versatile stylist capable of infusing a film with personality while adhering to studio boundaries.
Álvarez further puts that skillset to use on “ Alien: Romulus ,” the seventh film in the “Alien” franchise (without pitting xenomorphs against Predators, anyway). In a franchise better defined by prequels, digressions and canonical side quests than a clear and straightforward timeline, he has conceived an installment that takes place approximately 20 years after the events of Ridley Scott’s original film, which puts it another few decades ahead of James Cameron’s propulsive follow-up. Drawing from a seemingly endless — certainly well-documented — reservoir of world-building, Álvarez splits the difference between Scott and Cameron for his aesthetic, while delivering a story, and crowd-rocking thrills, that feels fully modern.
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