Alien: Romulus has the capacity for greatness. If you could somehow surgically extract its strongest sequences, you’d see that beautiful, blood-quivering harmony between old-school practical effects and modern horror verve, still gooey and repulsive in all the ways an Alien film should be. At one point, the camera watches, unflinching, as a phallic Xenomorph crown breaches the opening of an aggressively vaginal fluid sac.
Perfect. Yet there’s an uncomfortable, “canary-in-the-coal-mine” aura to what Romulus signals about Hollywood’s near-future. Now, even the smart movies have to clock in their hours as brand ambassadors and nostalgia vehicles.
Call it naiveté, but I’d hoped the Alien series would be spared such dishonour, seeing as it’s so covered in the sticky fingerprints of its directors, from Ridley Scott to James Cameron to David Fincher to Jean-Pierre Jeunet and then back to Ridley Scott. Not everyone loves every instalment, but every instalment is very much its own, individual creation. The franchise’s newest captain, Fede Álvarez, brings his own distinct pedigree.
He’s a full-blooded horror man, behind 2013’s Evil Dead and 2016’s Don’t Breathe , keen to return Alien to the claustrophobia of Scott’s 1979 original. His script, co-written by Rodo Sayagues, centres on the desperate young residents of a mining colony. Gas leaks and lung disease have decimated their families, and Weyland-Yutani (the corporation behind all things nefarious in th.