Review: Alien: Romulus

Official Synopsis: While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonists come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe.

The Alien franchise is one that covers the entire rating spectrum. It ranges from near perfection to absolute flops. But we love those xenomorphs, so we keep throwing money at them. The newest offering, Romulus was probably the most interested I've been in an Alien film in quite some time. 

With a director like Fede Alvarez, I expected him to dial up the gore in this one, but Romulus is no more gory than it's predecessors.  We're again introduced to a small group of characters that include a few we can root for like Andy, (the stand out Jonsson) and others who we root for to meet their end, like Bjorn. (Spike Fern) Rain (Cailee Spaeny) is our main heroine and I was legitimately invested in her and Andy's story. It's annoying that the film suddenly turns Rain into Ripley's doppleganger in the last 20 minutes or so because she was doing just fine without the call backs.

For much of Romulus' run time, the film is awesome. I had a great time with it overall but I just can't ignore the blatant fan service and call backs the film falls into towards the end. I knew it was coming from the trailer. The "iconic" recreation of the Xenomorph and Rain a la Alien 3 with Ripley was all over this film's marketing but I was still surprised how hard they leaned into it towards the end. 

I think Alvarez is a great choice to make one of these films, I just wish they would've re-written the 3rd act into something more original. It pulled me out of the film so much that things that should be scary became goofy. 

Andy is awesome though, and should be protected. I would watch 10 more movies with him.

Grade: B-