Romulus Includes One Small Detail From Alien: Isolation

Alien: Romulus looks to be a terrifying love letter to the first film in the series, released back in the late ‘70s. But that sci-fi horror classic is not the only thing Romulus is drawing from, so as you watch the movie later this week, keep an eye open for the emergency phones first seen decades later in Alien: Isolation. And then be prepared for a scare.

Alien: Romulus, out later this week in theaters around the country, is primarily pulling inspiration from the original film by Ridley Scott. It ignores a lot of the wider universe that was developed in later movies and is focused mostly on a small crew dealing with a deadly, hard-to-kill alien that is hunting them down. However, as revealed in a new interview, the director behind the upcoming sci-fi horror flick also revealed that the fan-favorite video game Alien: Isolation, released in 2014, also inspired Romulus, possibly leading to its entire creation.

In an interview with Inside Total Film podcast, Romulus director Fede Alvarez explained that the horror game convinced him that the Xenomorph could be scary again after multiple sequels and cameos in other games, movies, and comics.

“Alien: Isolation was kind of what made me see that Alien could truly be terrifying and done well [today],” said Alvarez, as reported by GamesRadar.

“I played it a few years after it came out. Don’t Breathe was coming out. Or was I waiting for Don’t Breathe to come out, and I was playing the game. That’s why, at the time, I was like, ‘Fuck, if I could do anything, I would love to do Alien and scare the audience again with that creature and those environments.’ I was playing, and realizing how terrifying Alien could be if you take it back to that tone.”

Save Stations from Alien: Isolation appear regularly in Romulus

However, Isolation didn’t just inspire Alvarez to make a new, scary Alien movie. The survival horror game is also directly referenced in the film in a neat detail involving Isolation’s save stations, which appear as emergency phones dotted around the game. Players have to stop what they are doing, walk up to one, and activate it to save their game. As such, these are important devices that tend to appear in areas where you might get attacked or killed. And Alvarez did something similar in the movie.

“The movie is set up in a way [that] every time something bad is about to happen, you will see [an emergency] phone,” the Romulus director and co-writer explained.

“In the game, every time you knew there’s a phone you’d go, ‘Fuck, I’m about to go into some bad set-piece.’ It’s the same thing here. You’ll see they’re planted strategically throughout the film. When you see the phone, it’s like: Brace for impact.”

Alien: Romulus arrives in theaters on August 16. I’ll be watching out for emergency phones and preparing to scream.

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