My Review of "Aliens: Romulus"

Aliens: Romulus is the hotly anticipated new entry into the Alien franchise this year. It finally came out and I couldn't wait to watch this one. The trailers looked absolutely amazing. I thought the cast and aesthetics from the trailer looked amazing as well. Even though the trailer looked amazing the movie could be utterly trash. I have been fooled many times and I was really hoping this was not the case with this movie.

The movie starts out with a young character named Rain. She has finally fulfilled her company quota of employee hours to be free and move to a new planet finally. Unfortunately for her, she was working for the Weyland-Yutani corporation. We all know that they're the worst from all of the previous movies that came out. The company apologizes to her because they have to increase quota. So she's forced another few years.

Frustrated, she and her robotic brother Andy have no other options other than to go back to work. Though her youthful co-workers aren't exactly thrilled to be forced to work on this sunless planet as well. Unbeknownst to Rain they have hatched a plan to steal some cryo-chambers from a Wayland-Yutani ship that is being decommissioned. They plan to use these chambers so that they can go into hyperspace and find another planet to live on.

It's a risky plan but they assure her that it should be pretty simple and easy. The only thing they need is Andy because he's a Weyland-Yutani robot. He has the ability to access parts of the ship. Desperate, Rain reluctantly agrees because she wants off the planet.

This is when the craziness starts. The horror broods when they start to discover some of the horrors of this decommissioned ship. There was definitely a good reason for such a huge ship to be decommissioned. Things start to go awry when they find out that they need to get some power sources to power up the cryo-chambers that they steal. They inadvertently awaken the demonic alien creatures on board and all hell breaks loose.

In some ways, this movie feels like a mix between the first two alien movies that I know and love. That's probably why I love this movie so much. The last half of the movie feels very identical to Aliens and I guess some would give that negative points but they did it in a different enough way that I appreciated it. There are some nods to the Prometheus movie they made back in day. I love that they did that because it made sense at the end and explained things int he middle.

The tension and action in this movie are really well done. I thought having the younger cast sort of made this feel like a teen slasher movie at times. Each of them making stupid decisions and getting themselves killed. In some ways that was really fun but in a way it was very predictable as well. We know people are dying just with their personalities, their dialogue and so on. They even created a little story in the beginning with one of the characters to help us understand his dumb decision later and foreshadow things to come.

The art direction was top notch. There were practical effects so things don't look too cartoony with CGI all over the place. It felt on brand with the franchise. They continued with the original aesthetics of the first two movies which is probably a really big take from fans. There are a number of homages and throwbacks to the first two movies. One in particular kind of made my laugh because it felt really corny but I still appreciated it.

Overall, I thought everything about this movie was great. It is definitely a movie that should be appreciated in the theatres because of the amazing sound effects and visuals. It also helps if the crowd is into it. I had a blast but I couldn't tell you it's perfect. There are certain things in this movie that had my head scratching and laughing in the wrong way. Despite that, I would definitely watch this again and that's why I have to give this movie an 8 out of 10.