Alien: Romulus

After the excellent trailers, it wasn't hard to become excited for Alien: Romulus, but there was still a little red light in my head. It subtly reminded me that behind the camera was Fede Álvarez, a man who certainly has a lot of talent, but not for the horror genre. I suffered through his Evil Dead, and Don’t Breathe was fine at best. And unfortunately, I should have listened to that red light, because while Romulus has its merits, it disappoints in the most fundamental way, it doesn't work as a genre film. Alien: Romulus looks great, and I enjoyed the analog computers, the grey metals, the industrial atmosphere full of hissing pipes, likewise with unexpectedly good actors and interesting characters who behaved surprisingly smart. But that’s not enough when Álvarez can't build a scary atmosphere and his scares are dull and uninteresting. Part of the problem is that this is more a game of referencing and quoting old films, leaving little room for the new. As a result, it's a nice fanservice from someone who knows how it should look, sound and work, but he just can't quite put it together into a workable horror film. Álvarez may be a good producer with an interesting vision, but unfortunately he's not a good director or executor. (14/08/2024)

Fede Álvarez, director of the best Evil Dead and Don't Breathe, one of the best original modern genre films, delivers for the third time (I’m ignoring the existence of The Girl in the Spider's Web). But flawless perfection it is not this time. He does well what he does best: offering an intense horror ride full of attractions that slowly makes it impossible to breathe. But what I have the biggest problem with regarding the new Alien is time and space. Once it gets going, it feels insanely fast-paced. For one thing, the development of the monsters is absurdly fast, and for another, I would have liked the human characters to have time to pause for a moment and let it sink in how much shit they've got themselves into. And the space, I found the action awkwardly cut at times in terms of orientation. Especially the elevator scene and its ending I didn't get at all, maybe a chunk of the film had to be missing there (?). The much criticised fanservice didn't bother me, or rather I didn't pay much attention to it and it didn't actively distract me – though I have the "advantage" in this that I very rarely watch films repeatedly, so I certainly don't know any of the Alien movies by heart and can't quote from them. I found all but one moment (at the end of the aforementioned elevator scene) unworthy. The criticised digicam is totally fine, I really don’t know what the problem is, it looks completely appropriate given the state "it" is in right now. The final ten minutes are easily the best part of the film; and the main pair of characters realistically have a lot more charisma than anyone who came after Ripley in the franchise. 8/10 (16/08/2024)

I must say that I feel a little disappointed. I had hight expectations for Alien: Romulus, as it was expected to be the horror film of the year and the experienced Fede Álvarez with his spectacular trailers had a promising start, but unfortunately it didn't deliver. Admittedly, if I let go of expectations, this is solid sci-fi horror, the likes of which hasn't been around for a while, with some very impressive elements. But there were a few things that bothered me. The actors didn't wow me all that much, David Jonsson as the Android is the most interesting character, but the vaunted Cailee Spaeny didn't grab my heart. The opening is quite slow and by the time the Alien appears half the film is gone. Audiovisually it's great, the ship looks awesome and the music is also very effective, the cramped atmosphere is good and the gravity/acid scene is a highlight for me. The final monster was a bit over the top for me, though, I could have done without it and the Alien was perfectly fine. But what I see as the biggest problem and disappointment is that we get almost no gore. Álvarez made one of the most brutal horror remakes with Evil Dead, so I was expecting a proper Alien carnage, but the body-count is too low for that and most of the deaths are out of frame or simply don't stick in the memory. I didn’t expect Ridley Scott's Alien: Covenant to have twice the carnage of Alvarez. Even compared to Prey, Alien: Romulus falls far short. That I would leave the cinema feeling that seeing it once was enough is something I really didn't hope for. Four stars it deserves without a doubt, but the expectations were simply elsewhere. 7/10. (19/08/2024)

It is necessary to make full use of resources obtained at great cost, even if the result is only some kind of bastardised mutant. This is true for Weyland-Yutani and its real-life equivalent, The Walt Disney Company. The most surprising aspect of Alien: Romulus is its anti-originality. This time around, the Disneyfication of the franchise doesn’t have the feel of a refresh with new characters (as was the case with Star Wars: The Force Awakens), nor does it work as cultish fan-service along the lines of the serial clones from Marvel. Fede Alvarez and Rodo Sayagues wilfully turned out a CGI remix of the Alien franchise’s greatest hits, which lends itself to a game of bingo on the theme of “which cult scene, popular one-liner or iconic shot from the preceding films will be paraphrased in the next scene”. The charm (and uniqueness) of the original Alien tetralogy consists in the fact that it comprises diametrically different and stylishly and supremely distinctive films (I won’t even say anything bad about the fantastically crackpot fourth one. Alien: Romulus is only a derivative, or rather the film equivalent of an Alien-themed ride at Disneyworld – we passively pass by a series of well-known scenes that are impressively yet lifelessly rendered and something occasionally amuses or scares us, but we walk away completely unmoved at the end. Though Prometheus was silly nonsense and elicited exasperation and hatred, it is still better than this precisely crafted definition of the term “content” from the vocabulary of media corporations. (15/08/2024)

A pop horror flick that appeals to Generation Z and won't offend the oldies. On the positive side, I'll take the superb and highly talented Cailee Spaeny and the fantastic last half hour, and on the negative side, the simple fact that the other teens are all interchangeable, I didn't find my way to them at all and didn't care if the monster made a sandwich out of them. Yes, it's nice to look at, it has the hallmark of the 70s technique Ridley Scott established in his masterpiece, the atmosphere is nicely depressing and claustrophobic, but for the first two-thirds the film painfully lacks in any kind of tension, because apart from Cailee I - as I've already written - hadn't built up any rapport with the characters and consequently didn't experience the threat of the facehuggers as such at all. Fortunately, there are enough references and allusions to previous episodes, and as a connoisseur I appreciate how "disjointed" it is in that respect: the first third is slowburn old Alien, the second the warlike Aliens, and the last one is a return to the first one, with Fede Álvarez literally quoting it. So yeah, I actually had a decent time, and since Álvarez unloaded a few scenes I hadn’t seen in this genre before, I give the film four spits of acid. (19/08/2024)