Dr. K's Waiting Room

Released: 16 August 2024
Director: Fede Álvarez
Distributor: 20^th Century Studios
Budget: $80 million
Stars: Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn, Aileen Wu, and Trevor Newlin

The Plot:
Trapped on a backwater Weyland-Yutani world, young miner Rain Carradine (Spaeny) and her android “brother”, Andy (Jonsson), are roped into investigating the drifting Romulus/Remus space station, only to unwittingly awaken a crop of Facehuggers and begin the Xenomorph threat anew.

The Background:
In 1979, director Ridley Scott brought to life  Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett’s long-gestating concept “Jaws (Spielberg, 1975) in space” with Alien, a critically acclaimed sci-fi horror classic that unexpectedly spawned an entire franchise. While its sequel, Aliens (Cameron, 1986), was equally influential in its own right, its third and fourth follow-ups were divisive, to say the least, and the franchise was all-but dead in the water after the overall lacklustre reception of the two vs. Predator crossovers (Various, 2004;2007). After much deliberation, Ridley Scott returned to the franchise with two prequels; while Prometheus’ (Scott, 2012) $400+ million box office made it a financial success, both it and Alien: Covenant (ibid, 2017) divided critics and talks of a third film soon stalled. While the franchise was kept alive by the critical success of Alien: Isolation (Creative Assembly, 2014), a survival/horror game that returned to Ridley’s original movie for inspiration, the acquisition of 20th Century Fox by the Walt Disney Company saw talks of new Alien movies begin anew. Fede Álvarez came onboard to direct a standalone “midquel” that was originally scheduled to release on the Hulu streaming platform before being quickly upgraded to a cinema release. Inspired by Alien: Isolation and having consulted both Ridley Scott and James Cameron, Álvarez sought to bridge the gap between Ridley’s prequels. As of this writing, Alien: Romulus has been met with considerable success; its $121.8 million box office made it a financial success and reviews have been largely positive, praising Caliee Spaeny’s performance, and the return to the franchise’s horror roots. Despite criticisms the “resurrection” of Ian Holm in an antagonistic role, audiences were impressed by the film and Álvarez expressed his desire to collaborate with Prey (2022) director Dan Tratchenberg on reviving the Aliens vs. Predator franchise.

The Review:
Honestly, a proper throwback to the roots of the Alien franchise has been a long time coming. I appreciate the idea and sentiment behind producing prequels that laid the foundation for a larger world and added some additional context behind the Xenomorphs, but the execution of Ridley Scott’s preludes was strangely and uncharacteristically flawed. In their efforts to tell a deeper, philosophical story, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant ended up mudding the waters and taking a lot of mystique away from the Aliens, reducing their terror and aura in favour of convoluted, sci-fi clap-trap. Alien: Romulus immediately addresses these issues with is stunning set design, atmosphere, and attention to detail; unlike the previous movies, all the technology feels very grimy, dirty, “lived-in”, and reflects the sci-fi aesthetic of the late-70s and 1980s. One thing that really bugged me about the prequels was how clean and slick and sexy all the technology was; although it made sense that Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) would have better technology than “space truckers” like the Nostromo crew, it just didn’t have that same gritty feel as the tech seen in Alien and Aliens. Here, everything feels lovingly recreated and faithful to the style of the original film, including those disturbing circular vent doors, the big, chunky buttons and CRT monitors, and the design of all the consoles, corridors, doors, and environments on the Romulus/Remus space station. Add to that the decidedly Blade Runner-esque (Scott, 1982) design of the desolate Jackson’s Star mining colony and you have a film that looks, feels, and fits much more organically into the decidedly bleak, corporate-controlled sci-fi future depicted in the first two movies.

Jackson’s Star is a hellhole of a backwater world that’s constantly battered by storms and bathed in perpetual darkness. The colonists work themselves to death in dangerous mines, mining some kind of ore or precious metals for “The Company”, the malicious and profit-obsessed Weyland-Yutani, fiddling contracts to force their downtrodden workers to stay on-world until they die. This is the life young Rain has been resigned to; orphaned and left to care for her malfunctioning android “brother”. Rain dreams of accruing enough work hours to get off-world to the virtual paradise of Yvaga, a dream the Company destroy by constantly changing the terms of her contract. Despite her desire to escape her life, she’s hesitant to her ex-boyfriend Tyler’s (Renaux) plan to take the hauler Corbelan up to the drifting Romulus/Remus space station and steal the cryosleep chambers stored within to escape to Yvaga with their friends, Tyler’s pregnant sister Kay (Merced), Bjorn (Fearn), their android-hating cousin, and his girlfriend, Navarro (Wu). Since Andy is the only one who “speaks MU/TH/UR” and can thus get them access to the station, the crew need Rain and Andy to succeed. Considering how poorly Bjorn treats Andy, Andy’s awkward and child-like disposition, and the risk involved, Rain is reluctant to go along with the heist but ultimately agrees when Andy states his wish to help as part of his directive to “do what’s best for [her]” even though he knows he won’t be welcome on the anti-synth Yvaga colony. Though young and adding little to the crew, Rain is essential to the plan since Andy will do anything she says, and she comes to acquit herself well when their presence powers up the station and releases the Facehuggers stored within. She’s practical and adaptable while also being vulnerable, and extremely protective of Andy, standing up to Bjorn whenever he treats Andy badly (which he does constantly).

Although Tyler’s initially dismayed to find the cryopods are low on fuel, he quickly leads Bjorn and Andy to a larger cryochamber to retrieve the fuel they need for their journey. However, powering up the ship reactivates the long-dormant systems and unleashes a slew of Facehuggers, which attack the crew, causing Rain and Navarro to rush to their aid, upgrading Andy to access the station’s systems. This results in Navarro being incapacitated by a Facehugger and a dramatic change in Andy’s personality. Where he was once docile, stuttering, and unsure of himself, compensating for his awkwardness with lame Dad jokes, he’s now confident, self-assured, and logical. Though his knowledge hasn’t increased, the chip alters his personality and his objectives to align with those of the Company and the station’s resident science officer, Rook (likeness of Ian Holm, voiced by Daniel Betts), a heavily damaged synthetic who delivers exposition regarding the station, the Xenomorph, and the Facehuggers. Rook’s influence changes Andy’s prime directive to serve the Company and sees him operate on cold logic, assisting the crew but only by proxy; he almost shuts Rain and Tyler out when they’re being chased by Facehuggers, acts suspicious and cagey about their odds and plans to avoid the creatures, and refuses to open a door for Kay, leading to her being abducted by the Xenomorph (Newlin). Andy thus becomes something of a secondary antagonist, seemingly willing to allow the survivors to escape to Yvaga only after they’ve completed Rook’s mission and gotten the mysterious, alien goo to safety. This gloop, referred to as the “Prometheus fire”, will be as instantly recognisable to long-term fans as Rook as it’s the same substance that caused all the aggro in Ridley Scott’s prequels. It turns out that the Company retrieved the Xenomorph from the first film from the Nostromo’s remains and managed to extract the goop, and a crop of Facehuggers, from its body before it came back to life and slaughtered the crew. Although it was taken out and the Facehuggers were kept in cryostorage, the station was left as damaged as Rook and adrift, set to crash into Jackson’s Star’s planetary rings, which isn’t in the best interest of the Company.

As surprising as it was to see the original Xenomorph’s corpse hanging in Romulus/Remus, it was equally surprising to see Alien: Romulus place so much focus on the Facehuggers. There are a lot of these skittery little things and they’re extremely aggressive, flying at people’s faces in a desperate attempt to impregnate them. Andy explains that the creatures, though blind, hunt by sensing body heat and sound, leading to a tense scene where Rain, Andy, and Tyler sneak past a room full of them by raising the ship’s temperature. Persistent and hostile, the Facehuggers are a constant threat not just in their number, but in one attaching itself to Navarro. Although the crew manage to safely remove it and get her back to the Corbelan, the egg it implants quickly (and I mean quickly) gestates into a Chestburster and breaks free, soon forming an extremely unnerving and sexually suggestive cocoon. When Bjorn attacks it, he’s summarily melted by the creature’s acid blood and an all-new Xenomorph emerges. Aesthetically similar to the original creature, this tall, humanoid hunter stalks the survivors throughout the ship, filmed very much like a horror monster and using vents, the shadows, and its bio-organic appearance to blend in wherever possible. One thing Alien: Romulus excels at is making the Xenomorph scary again by mirror its behaviour and depiction in Alien and Alien: Isolation. Largely defenceless save for a cattle prod, the crew are picked off one by one not to be killed (with the except of Tyler) but to be taken to a rudimentary nest deep in the station, where they’re impregnated and add to the growing hive of Aliens lurking down there. The creature’s acid blood means Rain and Tyler’s options to use their pulse rifles are limited, save for manipulating the station’s gravity controls to render them (and their blood) weightless and easy pickings. Still, the Xenomorph is effectively return to its horror roots here, shot in glimpses and framed as an unsettling sexual, aggressive creature that can strike at any time and hunts its prey relentlessly.

The Nitty-Gritty:
It really cannot be overstated how pleasant it is to watch Alien: Romulus and be transported back to the 1970s-era of sci-fi/horror filmmaking. The aesthetic of Alien has been so perfectly recreated that it legitimately feels like it was made around the same time, as a “lost sequel”, with the murky, lived-in nature of the technology contrasting nicely with the clinical, sleek tech seen in the space station’s science lab. Not only that, the film uses elements of the scores from Alien, Aliens, and Prometheus and recreates certain elements from the first two movies as fun callbacks. For example, there’s a scene where Tyler teaches Rain how to handle the pule rifle that’s similar to the one from Aliens, Andy utters Lieutenant Ellen Ripley’s (Sigourney Weaver) iconic “Get away from her, you bitch!” line, the space station’s AI is called MU/TH/UR (“9000”, no less), and the filmmakers saw fit to use Ian Holm’s likeness for Rook, as opposed to bringing back Lance Henriksen or even Michael Fassbender. And Rook has quite a substantial role; he offers exposition, manipulates Andy, and acts as a tertiary antagonist, deceiving the survivors and forcing them to act in the best interests of the Company to get to safety. Normally, I have a bit of a problem with resurrecting dead actors like this, but it was a real thrill to see Holm “back” in his role and expand upon his android’s programming, which is geared specifically towards protecting the alien goo (and the Xenomorph itself) to benefit Weyland-Yutani.

Alien: Romulus really brings the tension and the horror back to the franchise; by explicitly returning to the series’ roots, the Alien is scary and formidable again and reasserts itself as one of cinema’s most grotesque and memorable monsters. The use of darkness, flashing lights, and smoke all build a great sense of foreboding atmosphere, one only compounded once Andy’s programming is skewed and he’s no longer trustworthy. The horror of Alien: Romulus isn’t just related to gore (though there’s a fair amount, with Bjorn being melt and Tyler taking a mouth to the face) and once again on the uncertainty and persistence of the Xenomorph, and the uncomfortable sexual connotations of its appearance and nature. A snarling, drooling beast, it slinks about offscreen or just out of sight, looming behind characters, skewering them with its tail, and cocooning them to forcibly breed more of its kin. The Alien nest is a disturbing, slimy environment where every shadow appears to be moving or hiding another Alien. Unexpectedly, the additional Aliens aren’t the ridge-headed drones like in Aliens but similar in appearance to the first Xenomorph, though they die just as easily once Rain deactivates the station’s gravity. This leads to an incredible scene where the Alien’s acidic blood is floating around in zero-g, keeping the station from decompressing but serving as a veritable minefield for her and Andy to navigate through. Furthermore, Aliens: Romulus impresses with its extensive use of practical effects; animatronics, suits, and potentially even model shots are all incorporated to provide a reality to the horrific events and make everything seem so much more tangible. The Facehuggers, especially, benefit from this, proving a surprisingly effective threat throughout the film, but the attention to detail in the sets and the Xenomorph design are beyond impressive and certainly crafted as a love letter to Ridley Scott and James Cameron.

When the crew first dock at the space station, they have about 45 hours before it crashes into the planetary rings. However, Navarro’s condition and the birth of the Chestburster cause the Corbelan to careen off course, cause some damage to the station, and reduce the ticking clock to just under an hour. With the Alien stalking them and Andy only assisting them to complete Rook’s mission, Rain and Tyler desperately make their way across the station to their ship to escape, only to wind up in an Alien nest, Tyler being summarily executed by a Xenomorph. Although they rescue Kay, she’s left severely injured and, losing blood quickly, decides to take a chance with the alien goo, injecting it into herself to heal her wounds while Rain goes back for the discombobulated Andy, finally removing the Weyland-Yutani chip and restoring his original personality. Safely back on the Corbelan, the survivors watch as the space station, its Alien cargo, and Rook are destroyed and prepare to make their long-awaited trip to Yvaga but, surprise, the alien goo accelerates Kay’s pregnancy and gives birth to perhaps the most disturbing Alien creature ever. This “Offspring” (Robert Bobroczkyi) is a disgustingly horrific mixture of human and Alien DNA, something akin to the Engineers and the Newborn, a spindly, gangly, warped creature that feasts upon its “mother” and stalks Rain throughout the desperate last moments. Thanks to her adaptability, Rain lures the creature into the cargo hold and blasts it into space. Though it proves as persistent as its Alien forefathers, the Offspring (truly a sickening malformation of life) is eventually blasted out to a fiery end, leaving Rain to record one last log before heading to cryosleep with Andy, who was damaged during the creature’s attack.

The Summary:
as a long-time Alien fan, I’ve hoped for a throwback sequel for years, especially after being disappointed by Ridley Scott’s later efforts. There’s so much potential to tell stories between the existing films, with new characters and Alien offshoots, and Alien: Romulus is a fantastic step in the right direction in that regard. By returning to the franchise’s horror roots, recreating the aesthetic and feel of the first two movies, Alien: Romulus easily fits between the first two movies, expanding and paying homage to the accepted lore and bolstering its story with some fun and unexpected cameos and references. The cats, though largely unknown to me, could be said to be a negative of the film but everyone did their job well. Sure, Bjorn is needlessly antagonistic and Kay, Navarro, and Tyler might be a bit underdeveloped, but Rain and Andy more than make up for this. This is their story, a coming-of-age trial for Rain and an exploration of a damaged android’s divided loyalties with Andy, who’s motives appear conflicted throughout. It was a joy to see Ian Holm recreated and get another turn as a tertiary antagonist, and to see the Facehuggers featured as such a formidable and persistent threat. But the true highlight here is the titular Alien, once again returned to a monstrous, terrifying sexually-charged predator, the Xenomorph is aggressive and disturbing even when it’s not onscreen as its threat looms over every action the characters take. The Offspring was truly sickening to behold, offering a new variant in the Alien gene and bringing to life Rook’s dream of infusing the Alien DNA with humans. Ultimately, this was a fantastic viewing experience; it’s just such a thrill to watch and be transported back to the peak of this sci-fi/horror world and see the franchise done right, with the right level of fan service and innovation working hand-in-hand with traditional filmmaking and a true love for the source material to revitalise the long-dormant franchise.

My Rating:

Fantastic

Did you enjoy Alien: Romulus? Were you also impressed by the aesthetic similarities to the first two movies? What did you think to the cast and the relationship between Rain and Andy? Were you surprised to see Ian Holm recreated and “back” as Rook? What did you think to the references to the greater series lore? Were you happy to see the Xenomorph made scary again, and equally disturbed by the Offspring? Where would you like to see the Alien series go next? Whatever your thoughts, please share them in the comments and be sure to check out my other Alien reviews.