Hurrah! The Alien series gets back on track and back to its roots with this terrific SF horror. Whilst I absolutely loved Prometheus and kind of enjoyed Alien: Covenant enough (and rewatching them this last week generally confirmed both responses), it's nice to get away from the creatures' backstory as favoured by Ridley Scott and throw the saga back to a bunch of variously sympathetic types picked off by the supremely scary monsters as in the first four films. Alien: Romulus is littered with callbacks to those films - some subtle, some not so - and while much of it works magnificently, there's more than one colossal legacy callback which feel distracting and entirely unnecessary. The signs are promising right from the start - the film immediately looks like it was shot back in the 1980s, you can hear the flutes in Benjamin Wallfisch's score, and even the titles and credits font is identical to that of Alien.
While Prometheus and Covenant (and even the first Alien Vs Predator movie) centred around experts and scientists, Alien: Romulus goes back to the first four instalments, using regular characters who have absolutely no idea what they're suddenly dealing with. Rather than space hauliers or prisoners, they're basically youngsters stuck on a miserable mining colony, with no hope of passage to any other planet where there might actually be sunlight. Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and her companion Andy (David Jonsson), a damaged synthetic, reluctantly agree to help raid a suddenly discovered spaceship, to steal the cryogenic pods that will enable them to hypersleep long enough to reach another, better world. But, inevitably, the craft is not entirely deserted...
From there on it's ticking most of the expected boxes: armies of facehuggers skittering like spiders, rotating lights and clanking metal corridors (the production design is a glorious recreation of the original Alien look), people trapped in rooms with the monsters, a strong female lead (even standing in a Ripley pose at one point), physical effects rather than digital (the CG is mostly reserved for the exteriors and the planet's rings). Much of this is exciting and enormously enjoyable, spectacularly mounted, solidly put together and well played (David Jonsson's android gets an upgrade halfway through and becomes a completely different character). And, unlike Fede Alvarez' earlier Evil Dead movie, it's actually scary in places.
Skip this paragraph if you don't want the really big spoiler. What lets it down is the use of callbacks, many of which are mere background touches and perfectly good fun, such as another appearance of that drinking-bird toy, or musical nods to the earlier scores (Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner are both included in the end credits). Others are more serious, two in particular. Much has already been said of the other synthetic on board, a CG simulated Ian Holm pasted in a la Rogue One, reprising his sinister android role with several lines of verbatim dialogue. This makes no narrative sense: Rook is not Ash, and is never suggested to be Ash, so given that Ash didn't look like Bishop or Call (or indeed David or Walter), why should Rook look like Ash? And if Rook and Ash were the same android model, then why didn't the original Nostromo crew recognise him/it immediately? Secondly, the iconic Aliens line "Get away from her, you bitch!" is dropped in, but out of context it's just taking a sledgehammer to the fourth wall for no logical reason beyond fan service.
To be honest I could have done with a little less of the council estate swearing and a little more depth to the characters besides Rain and Andy. You could also ask why no-one other than the Double Deckers has noticed this massive spaceship that's suddenly appeared out of nowhere. And perhaps it starts to flag a little in the last stretch with a new creature suddenly introduced, that to be honest the film didn't really need. Or you can put all that aside and just enjoy the movie for what it is: a gory (15-certificate) horror romp with scary monsters big and small, and enough Big Ideas to engage the brain without getting in the way of the thrills. I had a great time watching it and whilst I still do like the previous two films, I'm really happy that the Alien saga has gone back to basics and back to what it does best.
****
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