Alien: Romulus

Alien: Romulus doesn’t begin with a spirit of discovery, but with the desire to get away. Rain lives on the mining colony Jackson’s Star, a place with no daylight and no discernible future. When Weyland-Yutani abruptly extends her employment contract, it becomes clear that she won’t simply start a better life there someday. Together with her synthetic “brother” Andy, she therefore joins a group of young colonists who have found a risky way out: an abandoned space station is drifting within reach, and on board are cryostasis chambers that could make a years-long journey to another planet possible.

From the very beginning, this gives the film something that many later installments in the series lacked: a very simple, tangible goal. Rain, Tyler, Kay, Bjorn, and Navarro aren’t flying into the unknown out of scientific curiosity. They need something. They want to get it. After that, they want to get out of there.

Consequently, the station isn’t a mysterious place that the film relishes exploring. Rooms are judged by whether you can get through them. Doors by whether they can be opened. Technology by whether it still works. The first few minutes on board therefore feel almost like a break-in. Flashlights sweep over old consoles; systems must be reactivated, paths improvised, and obstacles circumvented. The fact that something is amiss in this seemingly abandoned complex initially only alters the conditions of an already risky plan.

Alien: Romulus thus finds a compelling way into a world where people have long since learned to view themselves as part of a machine. Even Jackson’s Star is not a home, but a workplace that consumes its inhabitants. The space station carries this idea further. There, too, research was conducted, production took place, and resources were exploited. Even Andy fits into this system. To Rain, he is family. To others, he is an artificial human who can be used as long as his abilities are needed.

David Jonsson turns this tension into the film’s most interesting character dynamic. At first, Andy seems vulnerable, sometimes awkward, and in a peculiar way younger than Rain, even though, technically speaking, he should be the more capable of the two. His slight hesitations, his uncertain demeanor, and his poor puns give him a distinctly human quality. Rain doesn’t treat him like a machine, but like someone for whom she is responsible.

This becomes important as soon as the station forces the group to make decisions under time pressure. Suddenly, Andy’s technical status is no longer a mere footnote. A device that was just being ridiculed one moment can be indispensable the next. The film doesn’t need to turn this into a grand philosophical discourse. It’s enough to observe how differently the same character is treated depending on who needs something from him at any given moment.

Cailee Spaeny’s Rain, meanwhile, is deliberately portrayed as uncomplicated. She doesn’t come across as a natural-born action heroine, nor does she get any showy moments in which the film would have to explain her strength. Her motivation is concrete: she wants to escape a life over which others have control. Spaeny plays her accordingly—alert and focused, with a certain toughness that stems more from habit than from self-confidence. The fact that Rain must later act with increasing resolve therefore feels like a natural progression within the situation rather than simply checking off a familiar franchise role.

The horror, too, initially arises from very practical problems. Paths are blocked. Temperatures change. Doors don’t respond. Something is right where you’re supposed to go. The Facehuggers, in particular, work exceptionally well in this environment because the film doesn’t define their threat solely through sudden attacks. Their mere presence alters how people are allowed to move through a space. Speed, sounds, and distance suddenly take on new significance.

At the same time, the technology feels delightfully tangible. Monitors flicker, switches must be pressed, and doors have a sense of weight. The station doesn’t look like an abstract vision of the future, but rather like an industrial facility that was once built for specific tasks and is now slowly falling apart. This also makes the familiar elements of the series feel more dangerous again. A Xenomorph doesn’t need a new ability when a narrow corridor and a locked door are enough to turn its presence into a problem.

Not everything about it feels equally fresh. The further Romulus delves into the world of its predecessors, the more clearly the film wants to show that it knows their story. Some images, motifs, and allusions are so conspicuous that the otherwise very immediate tension briefly gives way to a kind of franchise nostalgia. Precisely because the film is at its strongest when six young people are simply trying to escape a catastrophic situation, it hardly needs this reassurance.

After all, its best scenes don’t need to reference earlier films. They work through movement and constraints: Who is on which side of a door? How far away is the next safe room? What must be taken along? Who can even move forward?

As a result, what was planned as a brief foray doesn’t turn into a grand adventure, but rather an ever-tightening sequence of problems. The characters merely wanted to find the technology at the station that would secure their future. Instead, they find themselves in a place where people, machines, and bodies have long been judged by their utility.

Rain wanted to escape a system that views her life as a resource. On Romulus, she discovers only its most extreme form.