'Alien: Romulus' Achieves Thrills, but Doesn't Slither New Alien Routes

If you see anything, run away.

Alien: Romulus is a 2024 sequel to the Alien franchise. A group of young space colonists escapes from their planet. While scavenging a dilapidated space station, they come face to face with a terrifying life form. Survival is slim as they search for an exit.

When movies sense your doubts, they do a good job of making you eat your words. Alien: Romulus is a chilling addition to the iconic Alien franchise. I will forever remember jumping out of my seat in terror! While it successfully terrifies audiences, Alien: Romulus struggles with character development and making this sequel its own original story.

Alien: Romulus cast a remarkable group of actors. They committed to the suspenseful ambiance, selling expressive terrors. Some cast members noted difficulty in performing certain sequences, elevating genuine fear.

Cailee Spaeney tracked her inner Sigourney Weaver as she kept the crew together. Credits include David Johnson, Archie Renoux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn, and Aileen Wu. They did a great job in their interactions, but their characters lacked depth.

The film prioritizes terror, graphic kills, and aliens over delving into the characters' deeper backstories—a contrast to what made the original Alien so influential. With more backstory, I would have been more invested in the characters.

A frightening creature returns to the screen. The alien lurks in the dark corners, dripping saliva and growling. Several alien creatures (AKA Facehuggers) crawl along the floor. One cast member had a rather taxing experience working with the ‘alien co-stars.’

Director Fede Alvarez chose practical effects, instead of CGI. Filmmakers, please keep using practical effects! Alvarez worked with the special effects team from Aliens (1986) to help build physical sets, creatures, and miniatures. It brought out the terrors.

The cast enjoyed working with Alvarez who shot the film in chronological order. I agree that he was knowledgeable about the Alien franchise. He matched the quality and tone of its predecessors. Sometimes Alvarez jumped out and startled the actors to get them in a frantic mindset.

My heart was pounding as characters walked through dark and silent hallways. One scene is so grotesque, involving a painful birth scene. It made me want to curl up in a ball and it wasn’t even me experiencing it! The cast actually averted their gaze when viewing it on the director’s iPad!

Here’s what I mean when I say this movie is terrifying. My friend and I SCREAMED and jumped a foot out of our seats at the scariest jump scare! It was a thrilling and fun time that had us laughing and grasping our racing hearts.

The alien is not the only monstrous nemesis. The moment this inhuman creature appeared, I gasped. Its shape is so grotesque. Robert Bobrocskyi (who is 7 feet 7 inches tall) plays this inhuman shape. It only appears in the film's last fifteen minutes, but what if it had a more prominent appearance?

Alien: Romulus blends elements of suspense from previous Alien films, but this film is more of a rehash of the original, only with a different set of characters. The beginning starts fresh with the characters escaping from their unjust planet.

Once they arrive on the spacecraft it’s like the writers ran out of steam and wrote the new characters into the original Alien script. Think of all the potential of what this film could have been! Alien: Romulus should have followed a different pathway and been more original.

If only I had a camera so I could have recorded our wild scared reactions. The theater makes an effective movie-watching experience for Alien: Romulus.