Monday, August 19, 2024

Alien: Romulus (2024) * *

 


Directed by:  Fede Alvarez

Starring:  Cailee Spaeny, Aileen Wu, Isabela Merced, David Johnson, Archie Renaux, Daniel Betts

Alien: Romulus takes place in the Alien universe between the original 1979 film and 1986's Aliens.  It is technically sound, but it plays like Alien for the video game crowd.  The characters use various weapons to kill the creatures only to have a seemingly infinite number more materialize.  They lurk around every corner and hang on walls and ceilings waiting for their prey.  After some are killed, more come out of the woodwork and there is no end in sight to the carnage. 

There isn't much in Alien: Romulus that we haven't seen in previous incarnations of the series that won't die, right down to the gross thing grasping onto someone's face and impregnating the poor soul.  The actors aren't given much to do except to either kill or be killed, including the "synthetic" Andy (Johnson) who is a surrogate brother to the orphaned Rain (Spaeny).  These two and a couple others board a nearby abandoned vessel as a means of escaping the mining planet on which they toil endlessly.  They discover the remains of Ash (likeness of the late Ian Holm), the cyborg from the first Alien who acts as a narrator and then a villain.  

The alien creatures remind us of spiders on steroids.  They are slimy and creepy parasites that exist only to be destroyed and then multiply.  Reproduction is not a problem for these guys.  They're never really dead, just like this franchise which should have been ended after the original film.  Everything after that is superfluous action.   In space, no one can hear you snore.  


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