Alien: Romulus is an imperfect but serviceable prequel-sequel

Ask five different Alien fans what their favorite movies from the franchise are and why they love them, and you’ll likely get five different answers. Still, it all but goes without saying that every subsequent entry in the series gets measured by its level of similarity to one of two films: Ridley Scott’s 1979 original and James Cameron’s 1986 sequel Aliens. In Alien: Romulus, the latest installment in the series, writer-director Fede Álvarez and frequent co-writer Rodo Sayagues (Don’t Breathe) wear their love of Scott’s and Cameron’s films as proudly as any fans of the franchise would, to the film’s visual merit and narrative detriment.

Set 20 years after the events of Alien, Álvarez’s film centers on Rain Carradine (Civil War’s Cailee Spaeny), an orphan living on Jackson’s Star, a mining colony light-years away from Earth that’s shrouded in an unending dark storm. Her mother and father are dead; her only companion is Andy (David Jonsson), a malfunctioning synthetic android she cares for as a surrogate sibling. Desperate for a means to escape the colony — and the grasp of the Weyland-Yutani corporation, the Alien franchise’s true central villain — Rain agrees to join a group of friends as they break into a derelict station that’s drifted into their planet’s orbit. What they find aboard is not salvation, but a threat beyond their wildest imagination.

“Is it as good as Alien or Aliens?” is the obvious question franchise fans will ask when weighing whether to see Alien: Romulus. Álvarez and Sayagues seem to have been uncomfortably aware that this question was coming. They anticipated those five different answers about what Alien fans love from the previous films, and tried to split the difference between all of them and more. Like the Romulus and Remus stations, which serve as the film’s setting, Alien: Romulus is made up of roughly two parts: a haunted-house story in outer space à la Alien, and a crowd-pleasing horror-action spectacle like Aliens. The former element is stronger than the latter in this case, and the imbalance is one of the reasons Alien: Romulus feels like a by-the-numbers retread of the franchise defining it, rather than the resuscitative breath it so desperately needs.

There are gratifying aspects to this movie: Alien: Romulus’ set and production design easily place it as one of the most visually impressive sci-fi movies to come out this year, fastidiously replicating the cassette futurism and tactility of Scott’s original film while introducing “new” technology that still feels like it fits in the setting. Benjamin Wallfisch’s score is another high point, echoing Jerry Goldsmith’s iconic orchestral music from Alien while introducing discordant, abrasive notes of industrial sound when shit really hits the fan.

Spaeny and Jonsson inarguably deliver the strongest performances in the film’s ensemble. Rain is obviously coded as Alien: Romulus’ answer to Ellen Ripley, though she’s far from a one-to-one facsimile of Sigourney Weaver’s character. Rain isn’t a hardened space trucker with a do-or-die knack for survivalism, she’s a scared young woman trying to claw her way out from under the crushing weight of corporate debt bondage.

When her love for Andy is pitted against her chance to leave Jackson’s Star, she has to weigh the consequences of that fateful decision along with the moment-to-moment choices that mean the difference between her survival and certain death. She’s trying to make the best of a shitty situation that only gets worse as more and more of her friends die. And the only way out of hell is to go through it and come out the other side.

Jonsson’s turn as Andy is one of the most affecting performances in the entire film. Andy isn’t Alien: Romulus’ answer to Ash, the first Alien’s android science officer turned antagonist. He’s more like a mirror reflection of Michael Fassbender’s David from Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, if someone had ever bothered to teach him love — or anything, for that matter, apart from deference to his creator and Weyland-Yutani’s goals.

Just as Rain has to decide whether to leave without Andy, he faces the choice of abandoning Rain and her friends in service of the Company’s interest in the Xenomorph, or fighting for their survival, while knowing they very well might not do the same for him. The answer he lands on, while predictable, speaks volumes about his resolve and strength of character in the face of both overwhelming terror and the inner moral battle raging between his better angels and his company programming.

How do you make the Xenomorph scary again after so many movie outings, all copying the original two films? In the case of Alien: Romulus, the answer is simple: You don’t. Álvarez never fully nails how to make the franchise-defining aliens feel threatening in a way that moviegoers haven’t already seen in the past 40 years. Despite some cross-species evolutionary chicanery in the film’s final act, Alien: Romulus never brings forward its own answer for why audiences should fear this incarnation of the creature, as opposed to any other previous iteration from the franchise. Some inventive sequences make use of Xenomorphs in entertaining ways, including one standout scene featuring zero gravity. But this isn’t a movie that depicts the franchise’s most iconic monster as a singular, inscrutable, acid-spewing apex predator — it’s just a swarm of colonial marine rifle-fodder.

For those worried that Alien: Romulus might skirt around the psychosexual imagery the franchise’s earliest entries were known for, don’t worry; it’s present here, though in short supply. We literally see a character stab an electric stun prod into an unambiguously vaginal cocoon before facing what can only be described as a clitoral talon. Later, as acid seeps from a cocoon’s mouth down onto a victim’s writhing body, a Xenomorph stirs from its gestation, shucking its amniotic carapace like an erect penis protruding from the folds of its foreskin. Don’t look at me like that: This is another H.R. Giger-derived film, after all.

Fede Álvarez and co. spliced together DNA from the original Alien, Cameron’s sequel, and Scott’s more recent prequel films to see if something new could be born out of them — but they don’t introduce any new genetic material of their own. The result is a technically impressive but narratively rote horror thriller that leaps at every opportunity to ape its forebears, while curiously contributing very little of its own to that legacy. That’s fine if you’re looking to re-experience a couple of your old favorite scares with a brand-new coat of paint slapped on them. But for everyone else, Alien: Romulus is a serviceable yet underwhelming entry in a franchise that’s otherwise known for its relentless evolution.

Alien: Romulus debuts in theaters on Aug. 16.