ACIDIC
Alien: Romulus is a nasty, eye candy-filled movie, a pile of grossness you can't look away from. Its story, well it's an interquel I tell you, a gap between Alien and '86's Aliens. You have these young space colonists, somewhat misfits if you will, venture to an unknown spacecraft looking for stasis chambers to get them to another, better planet. I bet you can't guess what happens next. I'm kidding. I mean why do we go to these Alien franchised flicks in the first place? We go to see those unpleasant facehuggers and xenomorphs get their proverbial kill on. "Should be in and out in thirty minutes." Uh-huh, yeah whatever.
Now is Alien: Romulus a chartered, Alien greatest hits collection like the other critics have been saying? Well yeah, everything minus an actual, working space crew aboard the big-arse vessel. I mean let's look at the evidence shall we: there's a chestburster homage to the original installment from 1979 (check). There's an underwater alien homage to Alien: Resurrection (check on). There's that Engineer persona homage to good old Prometheus (check mark). Finally, there's a POV, tracking shot homage to Alien 3 (checkmate). "Whatever comes, we'll face it together". You ain't kidding boss. You ain't kidding.
John Hurt hurting and albino humanoids aside, Alien Romulus is clearly not archetypal but it's got a lot of energy and keyed up suspense to boot. Starring the likes of unknowns Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, and Spike Fearn, "Romulus" is sci-fi potluck, somewhat disjointed, somewhat ceaseless, but never boring. I mean it might lack James Cameron's knack for fixed in the mind characters and it may hinder Ridley Scott's reveling in having the viewer feel a million miles a way from home ("in space, no one can hear you scream"). Oh well. "Romulus" is worth a watch anyway, and it actually has that grainy, dirtied-up look and feel of something that was released in the early-to-mid-80s (revert back to first paragraph). Resident "alien".
Written by Jesse Burleson
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