The Alien franchise is an interesting one. The first two films were huge box office hits but the later sequels in the 90s were flops. In the 2000s, they tried to reboot the franchise by combining the Alien with another monster, The Predator. The two films didn’t exactly set the box office on fire. Then, Ridley Scott came back to the franchise in the 2010s with two prequels but again, those two films didn’t set the box office on fire or reignite the public interest in the franchise. Yet Fox never gave up and we now have another Alien film hitting the big screen.

The timeline in this film is between Ridley Scott’s Alien and James Cameron’s Aliens. Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and her “synthetic” brother, Andy (David Jonsson) are the residents of the Jackson’s Star Mining Colony. Rain is under contract as a worker for the Weyland-Yutani Corporation and believes her contract is coming to an end. Dreaming of moving to another planet with better living conditions and seeing the sunrise, so it’s a crushing feeling when she learns that her contract has been extended and she’s stuck at the Mining Colony for many more years.

She’s offered a shot to relocate to a brighter planet, with her ex-boyfriend Tyler (Archie Renaux) planning to take command of a decommissioned ship. He’s joined by his sister, Kay (Isabela Merced), Bjorn (Spike Fearn), and pilot Navarro (Aileen Wu). Tyler informed her that he needed Andy to access the ship and cryo tubes needed for the nine-year-long journey.

At first, Rain is reluctant but the thought of spending many more years at the dark and gloomy Jackson Mining Colony has changed her mind. Once the gang arrives at the decommissioned ship, which is named Romulus, they awaken the menace inside it and must battle the nasty creatures to survive.

The screenplay is credited to Fede Alvarez (who also directed the film) and Rodo Sayagues and the duo didn’t have anything new to say about this franchise. It’s a basic setup that we’ve seen in previous films. A group of people go to a place that’s full of the Alien creatures and they get picked off one by one and the main hero must battle the main Alien creature in the climax. Unlike the excellent reboot of Predator with Prey, Alvarez and Sayagues just did a bunch of callbacks to all of the Alien films. They even included an element from Alien: Resurrection that I thought was terrible, fans of the franchise will know what I mean when they see it. With Scott still heavily involved in the production of the franchise, including this film, I think Alvarez can’t inject his own vision into this film.

Despite the lackluster storyline, Alvarez and his production team created a film that looks much more expensive than its “low” budget. It looked more expensive than any of the $200mil production from Marvel or Netflix. He also staged some nifty action sequences and with an experience in the horror genre, he didn’t skim on the gore either.

The performances by the actors were fine, they didn’t have much to do but look scared and run around trying to survive the attacks from the creatures. It appears that Hollywood is trying to make Spaeny the next big star and she’s fine here. Obviously, they tried to make her into Ripley, but the script was very weak, and she didn’t have much to do except look scared and worried. Then out of nowhere, she becomes an action hero, and it just wasn’t as smooth of a transition as the first two films when Ripley must take charge and be the hero. Heck, Ripley’s arch of becoming a hero in Alien 3 was better than Rain’s in this film.

I didn’t have too many expectations for this latest chapter of the Alien franchise, but I was expecting something new or a fresh take on the story. Sadly, it’s more of the same as what we’ve seen in previous alien films.

So have you seen ALIEN: ROMULUS? Well, what do you think?

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