Director – Fede Alvarez – 2024 – US – Cert. 15 – 119m
*****
A group of young people escape from a planet housing a repressive, corporate mining colony in search of something better … only to find something worse…– latest SF horror franchise entry is out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 16th
The Alien franchise, after quite literally bursting onto cinema screens with Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979), then having lost its way somewhat on Alien3 (David Fincher, 1992), picked up again somewhat on Prometheus (Ridley Scott, 1979), and now settled title-wise into the sensible enough format of Alien: Ship’s Name, delivers a new entry made by a writer-director, Fede Alvarez, who understands the franchise enough to both put in everything required of it and throw in some innovative ideas without compromising its essence.
The first 20 or so minutes, arguably the best thing here, could equally easily have opened a science fiction epic unrelated to the franchise. A young woman Rain (the terrific Cailee Spaeny from Civil War, Alex Garland, 2024) is trapped on a planet where the sun is permanently hidden owing to pollution caused by the corporation’s mining operation. The mining colony is run with unethical employment practices which to all intents and purposes amount to slavery: when anyone saves the amount of credits required to buy their freedom to leave the planet, the company (or at least one of its unscrupulous counter admin staff, played by Rosie Ede) simply increase the amount to put it out of their reach for the immediate future.
Day-to-day survival in this dark hellhole is complicated by Rain’s having to care for her warm-hearted if none-too-intelligent younger brother Andy (David Jonsson) who is not only adopted rather than blood-related but also an android salvaged from the rubbish and repaired by Rain’s late parents to be raised as a member of their family. He is programmed to look out for his sister’s best interests. He also tells a lot of corny jokes, a device handled very effectively to make him endearing when it could so easily have been mishandled and make him annoying, like the wisecracking robot in recent car crash release Borderlands, Eli Roth, 2024).
A group of Rain’s peers have access to their own, fully functioning spaceship (this ownership is never adequately explained, although we’ll let that pass) – they seem to live in it rather like a large caravan – but they lack the cryogenic fuel necessary for the deep space travel needed to get away from the planet – until they spot an abandoned space station in a decaying orbit which will soon cause it to crash into the planet’s rings (think: Saturn). The station is constructed in two, semicircular parts, one called Romulus and the other, Remus. If they can take their ship up to the space station, get in, and retrieve what they need before it crashes, they have a viable escape plan.
However, because the ship is owned by the company, getting access to doors and airlocks could be a problem. That’s where Rain – or rather Andy – comes in, because as a company android, he can stick one of his fingers into a hole by any door on the station, have his identity verified, and open it. At least one member of the group, the permanently miserable and angry Bjorn (Spike Fearn), who swears a lot, has decided that Andy is expendable once he’s done his job; it turns out that Bjorn holds a grudge against androids because they killed his parents. The less emotionally damaged Tyler (Archie Renaux) is constantly trying to hold him in check. Also in the group are two more young women, Kay (Isabella Merced) and Navarro (Aileen Wu); the former confiding to the latter that ** SPOILER ALERT (ALTHOUGH YOU CAN PROBABLY GUESS WHAT’S COMING) *** she’s pregnant.
So Rain – as Andy’s carer – is talked into their escape plan. If you know the franchise, you can probably guess the main thrust of what’s coming next. Yes, the ship is full of aliens (or, at least, face-huggers) cryogenically frozen in a storage facility, which start to warm up as our human intruders activate the station’s life support system and raise the temperature. Once this is set in motion, that leaves six young people on a space station where time is running out with lots of aliens running about or descending off walls or through aerial shafts. It’s basically variations on cat and mouse, but orchestrated with considerable skill and some very clever touches.
The first of these, is something you might not expect.** FURTHER SPOILER ALERT **. The escapees find a clone of the first film’s android, here renamed Rook (Ian Holm, or rather a scan of the late actor, possessing his voice, performed by living actor Daniel Betts) similarly programmed to prioritise the preservation of any xenomorph aliens for company research and development purposes above the survival of any humans unlucky enough to be present. Oh, and that makes it six humans and one android, the same number as in the original film.
The franchise has a history of androids and clones, and the script further plays around with this by having Rain switch Andy’s programme disc with that of another android so that he reboots (as in Mars Express, Jérémie Périn, 2023) with the same corporate prime directive of alien preservation as Rook, which means that he’s both more knowledgable about the aliens and acts differently from Rain’s expectations. The narrative gets a great deal of mileage out of switching between Andy’s two very different personae, asking lots of deep science-fictional, and, indeed, metaphysical, questions in the process.
Much is made of antigravity, purged at regular intervals by the station’s life-support system to ensure it functions properly in the long term. Not so good in the short term if, say, you’re floating up a lift shaft with aliens floating up after you.
The idea of acid blood, present in the xenomorphs from the first film, is exploited in ways hitherto unseen in the franchise. At one point, it’s pointed out that loaded weapons are for deterrent only, as we are on the bottom floor of the space station and if acid were to dissolve the floor, that would be that. At another, Rain must navigate a corridor where pools of acid blood float in zero gravity.
A feminine aesthetic underlies much of the proceedings, helped no end by the presence of three distinctive, female characters; again, the franchise has a long tradition of exploring such things, going back to the casting of Sigourney Weaver in a role not written specifically as female in the first film. Rain is a nurturing carer looking after her vulnerable brother, while the other two also act out something deeply feminine, in very different ways, as they experience the traumas of birth and early motherhood. A giant vaginal maw puts in an appearance at one point to drip acid blood, as does a human-alien towards the finale.
There are also face-huggers swimming toward people wading around in shallow water, doors that Andy can’t open because he lacks the security clearance, a corporate drug used to harness the ‘desirable’ parts of the aliens’ DNA or its equivalent, lots of cleverly staged, bravura action sequences… and much, much more. It all makes sense and hangs together – it never feels overly complicated, which is a very difficult balance to get right. Kudos to director Alvarez for that.
The film has a not dissimilar overall feeling to Aliens (James Cameron, 1986) in that it completely understands everything about the first film, then constructs a terrific action movie using creatures and characters from that same world.
The young age of the cast – another factor that could so easily have been mishandled but is very cleverly deployed – riffs off the company’s exploitation of people to play out as a fable about a generation let down by corporate culture. That idolatry of the company and its profits above all else has, again, been present in the franchise since the first film, but the cast’s age emphasises a young generation that has been badly let down by corporate culture, and by inference allows the aliens to stand in for the corporate-induced evils of global warming. When you’re in the mining colony at the beginning, and when the ship later bursts through the atmosphere, allowing Rain to see the sun for the first time ever, such issues are never far from the back of your mind.
This is one of the better Alien franchise entries over the years. It’ll stand up pretty well on its own for anyone who has never seen an Alien movie, but if you watch the original beforehand, you may get a lot more out of this one, as there are a lot of elements that riff off the opening film with considerable skill.
In short, whether on the one hand you admire either the original film or the franchise or, on the other, you’re coming in fresh, you’re in for a treat.
It was shown to press on the huge IMAX screen at London’s Cineworld, Leicester Square, and, I have to say, that cinema’s peerless presentation made all the difference. So go and see it there or on another, equally well-furnished, big screen.
Alien: Romulus is out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, August 16th.
Trailer: