The Alien Franchise is one that I’ve been affected by my entire life. I watched Alien and Aliens when I was a little kid and they scared the hell out of me. The xenomorphs were like living a nightmare for me. The way they inject themselves into people’s bodies and then hatched was some of the most horrific things I could possibly imagine growing up. As an adult, the movies aren’t as scary, but the new ones in the franchise are quite frightening to me. Alien: Romulus is the latest in the horror franchise and maybe the scariest of them all. I know that’s saying a lot, but I truly believe it.

The Weyland Yutani Corporation is like a lot of enigmatic companies. They have their own macabre ways. They always do things in a shady way. That causes people to go against them to try and better themselves.  Does this remind you of any companies you know of these days? I may have worked for one of them myself.  Due to some shady business dealings, Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and her trusty childhood companion, now fully grown, synthetic,  Andy (David Jonsson) decide to go on their own. They hook up with Tyler (Archie Renaux), a friend of Spacey’s character and his crew. He’s planning a job and needs their unique talents. Little do they know they are in for a hell of a time and this job may not be worth it.

Like most of the Aliens movies, this one has a ship and a crew trying to accomplish a mission when they inevitably run into the face huggers who we know turn into the xenomorphs. That’s a given in these films. Some of them accomplish their goals a little bit better than others in the franchise. Alien: Covenant for example was inexplicably bad from beginning to end. The characters were badly written and so forth. Alien: Romulus on the other hand is the exact opposite.  It’s one of the most intelligently written movies in the franchise. Everything happens for a reason not thanks to a couple of bad decisions of the crew of the ship, but that’s a given in this franchise. This is some of the best-written sci-fi I’ve ever seen by Fede Alvarez and his writing partner Rodo Sayagues.

In the previous Aliens films, there have been synthetics that have proven to be a Thorn in the side of the various Crews in some of the films. Rook (Ian Holm), David (Michael Fasbender), and now there is Andy. Each one has a mission they are trying to achieve at the behest of the Weyland Yutani Corp. David Jonsson is fantastic in this role. He starts out as a joking childlike companion and then turns into something else entirely.  Jonsson puts everything he has into this role. I’m sure you will love him and hate him during this movie. He literally runs the gambit of emotions, I know that’s strange for a synthetic,  but you’ll know what I’m talking about once you see the film.

That brings me to Cailee Spaeny.  She’s had a meteoric rise to her career lately with terrific turns in the Priscilla Presley biopic Priscilla and as a young fledgling photographer in the middle of a war in Civil War. She may have just given her best performance of the bunch in Alien: Romulus. Her character is put through hell in this sci-fi horror franchise. If she didn’t do any of her own stunts I couldn’t tell. She was running, jumping, doing everything you could think of in this very demanding role. She gives Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley a run for her money in this film. I hope she continues to go for and get these all types of roles because she kills them all. I can’t wait for what she’s in next.

The Aliens franchise has mimicked other franchises in the past. Alien was a slasher film in disguise, and this one along with a couple of the others are haunted house films in disguise as sci-fi horror movies. Just when you think the characters are out of the woods something else is thrown at them. It’s inevitable that characters die, but how they die and why they die are handled by a horror professional. Alvarez is so adept at creating tension and cringe-worthy moments that it was hard for me to watch. I wanted to look away but I could because I didn’t want to miss anything crucial to the plot. One scene involving a rat in a cage is a prime example of this. If you look away you’ll miss this key moment. In a year full of great horror films this is one of the best I’ve seen all year. Genre is back in a big way. Directors like Alvarez are a big reason why.

I’ve mentioned a lot of positive things about this sci-fi horror film, but three things I haven’t mentioned are the CGI which is incredible. I felt like this world in the movie was so real and lived in. It looked as good as I possibly could have imagined.  Along with the visuals is the score. This was intense and brought a pulse-pounding nature to what was already an exhausting experience in a good way. Seeing it in Dolby helped especially with the sound. Which was just as good as the other things I’ve talked about. 20th Century Studios spared no expense in giving viewers an experience they will not soon forget. This was everything I could have wanted in a great franchise on a downswing.  Now once again on top.

Alien: Romulus could have taken the same tried and true route as some of the other films in the franchise. Alvarez as a director and writer wouldn’t let that happen though. Like his past horror installments, he takes this genre too seriously. With his co-writer Sayagues, they inject intelligent storytelling and characters that make sense in the context of the story. The cast filled with relative unknowns besides Spaeny and Renaux is very good in their respective roles, with Jonsson, as Andy the synthetic, as the standout. Overall, the techs including the CGI and the score by Benjamin Wallfisch are both amazing with the sound as a bonus being phenomenal.  This is one of the best films in the Alien Franchise. It does what the previous two movies could do. Keep me engaged throughout. That’s all I’m asking for in an Aliens movie. This one does it in spades.

4 ½ stars

Dan Skip Allen