Like “Alien,” “Alien: Romulus” begins as the story of a group of company workers who are trying to look out for themselves in a world where the Weyland-Yutani corporation has basically taken over their futures. Rain (Cailee Spaeny), her synthetic brother Andy (David Jonsson), and their friends Tyler (Archie Renaux), Kay (Isabela Merced), Bjorn (Spike Fearn), and Navarro (Aileen Wu) are all workers on the same depressing mining colony out in space, a place where the sun never shines and workers regularly die from lung disease.
They’re all desperate to get away from the company and to a distant, independent world where they can choose their own destinies, but company quotas and contracts keep them tethered, at least until Tyler finds a potential way out. A craft is drifting through space right over their heads, one with cryo-pods that will allow them to drop into stasis and sleep while an autopilot takes them to their new home. All they have to do is fly up there, take what they need, and fly out.
If you’re an “Alien” fan, you can already guess where this is going. The abandoned vessel is actually a secret research facility where scientists were attempting to harness the power of alien creatures, only to fail miserably and leave their lab drifting like a haunted house in space. Suddenly, Rain, Andy, Tyler, and the crew find themselves at the mercy of the ultimate otherworldly killing machine, and racing a ticking clock to get off the ship before it crashes into the planet below.
It’s a setup familiar to any fan of the franchise, and Fede Álvarez makes no secret of his eagerness to play in that particular horror sandbox. The film leans heavily into the pacing of “Alien” in the opening minutes, slowly unfurling its particular terrors as we get to know the characters and their respective conflicts, and Álvarez immerses us in the production design. On that front, cinematographer Galo Olivarez, production designer Naaman Marshall, costume designer Carlos Rosario, composer Benjamin Wallfisch, and the rest of the team rise to the occasion. It’s a world that feels like “Alien” while never feeling like a simple repeat, and when the world of the film expands, it becomes clear that Álvarez is building a tonal, thematic, and visual bridge between “Alien” and “Aliens,” a film set five decades later in the series’ continuity. It’s a remarkable line to walk, but the film does it quite well, particularly when the real horror kicks in.
