Alien: Romulus

I didn't expect a groundbreaking film from Fede Alvarez that would push the boundaries of the genre and elevate the Alien theme to a new level. However, I secretly hoped he could rely on solid craftsmanship and create a functional genre film that would pay homage to the original series and overcome the bitter taste left by Ridley Scott's ambitious yet unfortunate attempts. With several reservations, I believe that as a summer genre flick meant for entertainment, Alvarez's work holds up. His approach clearly targets a young audience that drives movie theater attendance, and this is reflected in his choice of characters. The actors certainly don't perform poorly, but their characters are bland, and the chemistry between them is lacking. Alvarez doesn't attempt to bring an original auteur style, but instead continually winks at the series' fans, trying to evoke everything that once worked on screen. He successfully builds horror tension, particularly during the phase where a group of desperate individuals infiltrates an abandoned base, navigating through debris and exploring the unknown spaces of a giant wreck. However, since Alvarez is making a film for teenagers, he needs to accelerate the plot, even at the expense of basic logic and the legacy of the first installment. Facehuggers gain the speed of a racing motorcycle, and a human mutant transforms from a newborn into a giant creature within two minutes. Nevertheless, as an adventurous action sci-fi with good production design, the film reliably works. If I were to measure the film by the standards I apply to smart, top-tier productions, my rating would drop. But for what Romulus aims to be, it fulfills its purpose. Since my initial expectations were low and, not least, because film fans have very few reasons to visit the movie theater nowadays, I raise my final verdict to four stars and a 70% overall impression. (08/19/2024)

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. (08/19/2024)

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. (08/15/2024)

A passable genre best-of remix that lacks the factor of being significantly memorable, which was a feature of the worst films in the franchise. FedEx delivered a commemorative aesthetic parcel wrapped up in the skilfulness that one would expect from it after Don’t Breathe. However, it’s impossible to shake off the impression that all of the really distinctive moments merely comprise a derivative of the better instalments in the Alien franchise. (08/23/2024)

Trip to famous waters, which I really didn't want to go on. I didn't believe in Fedem Alvarez that he would deal with the legend of these dimensions, I didn't believe in the genre setting of the announced pure-blood vampire, but when critics, viewers and revenues laughed at Scott's misunderstood Covenant years ago, there was probably no other way. But it works and the combination of modern editing with dirty and oily technique is aggressive and beautiful from the first minute. The aggressive creature is given enough space, the human crew makes mistakes that are understandable and can make clever and logical decisions at key moments. There is so much winking at the past that I was daydreaming, knowing that with a bit of exaggeration I was watching Alien 1.5. Not to mention that finally, after years of waiting, the lines drawn from the classic quadrilogy and the mythology of Prometheus are finally combined, which is a gift that I never expected to receive. Thanks to this enrichment, Romulus is truly not just a fun horror, not a side chapter that the series could do without. It's a reward for those who never completely gave up on Alien (and who can see beyond the first turn and don't mind that the script plays a bit subversively with them using iconic lines). I understand the arguments about the polarizing final chapter, without it I would be happier than I am with it now. On the other hand, I must applaud the courage that was not even held by the brave and genre visually disintegrated Resurrection almost thirty years ago. The fact that the result of such an experiment did not meet my expectations is my struggle. Everyone who sees the saga as a whole and not just as a space for eternal (and today really endlessly tiresome) argument about which of the first two parts is better should also try such a fight. (08/16/2024)