Fede Álvarez was 12 in 1990 when he pressed play on a destiny-shaping VHS tape. The Uruguayan filmmaker, then a burgeoning cinephile, was about to witness one of the first kills in the original “Alien.” His father, a journalist, had somehow gotten his hands on a making-of home video release with behind-the-scenes footage and clips from the sci-fi-horror classic.
Watching the scene without context terrified Álvarez, who at that age was already obsessed with consuming every nightmare movie he could get. “I remember being completely shocked seeing that kind of black dragon that seemed to be made of chains, hanging from the ceiling without understanding what was happening,” Álvarez, 46, recalls in the Rioplatense Spanish that characterizes both Uruguayans and Argentines, during a conversation in an outdoor lounge area at his airy home in Los Feliz. Several decades after that first encounter with the murderous xenomorph, Álvarez has now co-written and directed “Alien: Romulus,” a new installment in the 45-year-old franchise.
Canonically, his story unfolds in between the space saga’s first two chapters: Ridley Scott’s seminal 1979 kickoff and James Cameron’s action-packed 1986 sequel, “Aliens.” “Romulus,” in wide release Aug. 16, begins on a remote mining colony, from which Rain ( Cailee Spaeny ), a laborer, wishes to escape alongside her synthetic “sibling” Andy (David Jonsson), a robot meant to look after her in the absence of a parent.
The p.