Alien: Romulus

In space, no one can hear you scream. Ridley Scott’s original 1979 masterpiece Alien has probably the greatest tagline in the history of movies. Terrifying, elegant, sleek, it mirrors H.R. Giger’s toothy phallic killing machine’s ruthless efficiency.

John Hurt’s chest exploded, a bunch of elite, grouchy, rumpled character actors got munched, Sigourney Weaver saved the cat, and cinema was changed forever. Several years later, James Cameron swaggered into 20th Century Fox, wrote the word ALIEN on a whiteboard, paused to bask in his own genius, then added an S. Not satisfied with the presumably cacophonous applause this received from the bigwigs, he drew two lines down that S to create a dollar symbol. It was a moment of typical humility from Big Jim. Luckily, he went on to make one of the best action/horror films of all time that raked-in stacks and stacks of those dollars and was watched endlessly on VHS by the latchkey kids of the early 90s. This time, it’s war.

Then the bitch was back, we witnessed the Resurrection, and whoever won, we lost. Ridley eventually came back with some alarmingly dumb scientists who went looking for our beginning, but what they found could be our end. Two Michael Fassbenders bonded over who was doing the fingering, but the path to paradise begins in Hell. These taglines, like the movies they plug, are of varying quality. But what they all do is tell us something about the movie, something of the narrative or themes.

The tagline for Fede Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus, the ninth film to feature the legendary xenomorph and in wide release now, is: In space, no one can hear you. You see what they did there? They took something iconic, ingenious, something you love, and… changed it a bit. But… what does it tell us? What does it even mean? What’s the point? They kind of took the important bit out. The care. The flair. It’s not a tagline, it’s just… describing a vacuum. A cold, black, empty void that sucks the life out of anything unfortunate enough to wander into it. Hmmmm.

Romulus has been sold as a stripped-down return to gooey thrills and spills following the much more ambitious, mediative Prometheus and Covenant, which, though they have their defenders, were no one’s idea of a perfect Alien movie. Nothing like the visceral, heart-pounding terror of the first two. Enter Fede Alvarez, a man whose good movies are all about hot young people finding themselves in a place they shouldn’t be then getting horribly brutalised by unstoppable evil forces. Whether that’s the malevolent, cackling Deadites of his excellent Evil Dead remake, or Stephan Lang’s blind, turkey-baster-toting maniac in the frankly deranged Don’t Breathe, Alvarez is a master of menace and tension. He makes lean, muscular and, crucially, really fucking disgusting midnight movie catnip for sickos. A perfect choice to return one of the great horror franchises to past glories. Unfortunately, he’s taken that task a bit too literally.

Set between Alien and Aliens on the mining colony of Jackson’s Star, we begin with exploited worker Rain Carradine (Cailie Spinney) and her surrogate brother Andy (David Jonsson), a salvaged synthetic (he prefers the term “artificial person” himself, because of course he does) who has degraded considerably from his original capabilities, desperate for a way out. Rain’s friend Tyler (Archie Renaux) thinks he has the answer: an abandoned research station has drifted into their orbit, and they plan to break in to steal the cryo-sleep tubes that would enable them to make the long journey to a much more pleasant world called Yvaga. This station is a Weyland-Utani (remember them!) vessel, so Andy, made by the same company, should be able to access the onboard computer and disable the security system. Rain agrees to the heist and they’re on their way, along with Tyler’s pregnant sister, Kay (Isabela Merced), his cousin, Bjorn (Spike Fearn), and Bjorn’s girlfriend, Navarro (Aileen Wu). This being Weyland-Utani, however, the lads who labelled the crew of the USCSS Nostromo expendable in their quest to capture and profit from the first alien, you can bet they’ve been up to shenanigans on that space station and there’s some horribly brutalising surprises in store for our hot, young space-pirates.

And that’s a pretty good set-up for an Alien movie. The production design is exceptional, Jackson’s Star a grim and grimy mass of browns and ghastly lighting and howling winds taking the barely working tech of the 1979 original and creating a convincing hellhole for the heroes to escape. Similarly, the Romulus/Remus station they break into is tactile, dilapidated, spooky. This is where a devotion to the earlier movies is helpful, we recognise these environments, remember the junky vibes, and it’s nice to be back.

Spainey and Jonsson are terrific, too. The former, continuing a break-out year after Priscilla and Civil War, weaponises the naivety and vulnerability she tapped into with those other performances. There’s a steel to Rain, you believe she is a survivor, but, like the other great lead performances in the franchise from Weaver and Katherine Waterston, there is a reluctance and initial lack of skill in fighting giant, slavering, multi-jawed beasties that is extremely compelling.

Jonsson, so effective as the erudite, catty Gus in BBC’s Industry, makes the most of what becomes a dual role after Andy receives an upgrade. The rest of the cast make less of an impression. Indeed, for the first 40 or so minutes this is the main problem, supporting parts with little to do and little to define them. It’s a fool’s errand to compare them to their equivalents in the other films – some of the greatest screen presences of their generation have played third to tenth fiddle in this series – but, still. Oh, if only that remained the main problem with Alien: Romulus.

There is a decision made in this movie, around a character and the remainder of the narrative, that is so egregious, so offensive, so ghoulish, that it never recovers. It might have recovered if it were a brief moment, an idea, a brainfart wafted at the audience then hastily moved on from. But it isn’t. And all sorts of other awfulness follows, because it is the catalyst for everything in the next hour, and I do mean everything, to be a reference or rehash or nod to something that has happened in the Alien franchise. All of the Alien franchise.

Lines are repeated, shots reconstructed, scenes echoed, plot points regurgitated… and the film delivers it all with utter contempt for its audience. This is not a couple of knowing, loving treats. It’s an assault. We have nostalgia rammed down our throat as the movie screams, “This is what you want, isn’t it? ISN’T IT?!?!” As such, it’s impossible to enjoy even the successes of the back half. Alvarez has constructed three fabulous extended set-pieces, one involving zero-gravity that makes excellent use of the xenomorph’s acid blood. But however inventive the icing on that particular cake is, it’s a re-baked scene from the Special Edition of Aliens. For no reason. A scene not even in the theatrically released movie.

Later a character gets to deliver the most iconic line from the same film, but it doesn’t really make any sense in context and even the poor actor seems faintly embarrassed. There is no meaning to any of this nonsense. There are nods to the finales of Alien, Aliens, Alien³, Alien Resurrection, Prometheus AND Covenant. If you’re going to do that, you might as well throw-in a Predator/Alien hybrid too, you cowards. “This is what you want, isn’t it? ISN’T IT?!?!”

More brazen than even The Force Awakens, more morally affronting than Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Alien: Romulus is a nadir in the trend for fan service sequel slop. Alvarez introduced a screening the other day by saying he wants people to love this film but, if they don’t, he wants them to hate it. It’s a strange plea. One would assume he’s referring to the level of violence and gore, which is certainly high. He’d feel he had been successful then, if people were disgusted by what they saw, fleeing for the exits and sick bags, screaming their lungs out. He’d escape with his edgelord credibility intact if it was that. But what if people hate it for a different reason? What if they just hate it because they took something iconic, ingenious, something you love, and… changed it a bit. And they’re fucking sick of that, because that is insulting and boring and shit. In space, no one can hear you…