Calling Romulus the best Alien sequel since Aliens is like calling Dark Fate the best Terminator sequel since Judgement Day. It’s not saying a lot and this is coming from someone who liked Alien³, Prometheus and Covenant. I will say that Romulus is the most consistent of all the Alien films to come out in the last 30 years. It knows what it is. The problem is, what it is is another shallow member berry-filled reboot.

Desperate to escape their industrialised colony, a group of workers take off into space to raid an orbiting derelict of its cryostasis chambers. As they board the vessel and venture into its cavernous interior, they discover the deadliest lifeform in the universe.

The Worldbuilding

Within the first 20-minutes, Romulus sets itself apart from all the Alien films to date. Despite being set in a universe that’s said to consist of a variety of worlds and environments, the series is very fond of cramped mazes.

Excepting the director’s cut of Aliens, Romulus is the only sequel to show us a fully populated colony. We see streets, vehicles, buildings and, looming over it all, an atmosphere processor.

The production design is beautifully retrofuturistic; the technology we see on the colony and aboard the derelict resembles that of the Nostromo in the original Alien. It’s always charming when sci-fi gives up on predicting the future and looks to what the future was instead of what it is for inspiration.

The Horror

Of the sequels that have followed Aliens, Romulus makes the greatest effort to be an elegantly scary film. That’s not to say it doesn’t have its fair share of jump scares and gore, however tension and suspense are clearly the aim in certain sequences.

Most of this can be attributed to the facehuggers, which are utilised brilliantly. Any arachnophobe will tense up at their spidery movements. Another standout in Romulus is its reveal of how facehuggers can detect nearby targets. The reasoning is sound, in line with what we’ve seen before and enhances their threat.

The xenomorph, in all honesty, is no scarier than it has been in the last 30 years. It’s no more intimidating than it is in Covenant or any of the AVPs.

However, like with the facehugger, we learn some new things about the creature. One highlight for me was seeing how the xenomorph evolves from a rat-sized parasite to a man-sized-beast, a big progression the other films barely addressed.

Despite its efforts though, Romulus is very much like Evil Dead Rise in that it shows that this series is past its peak. Facehuggers, chest busters and acidic blood just aren’t as shocking as they were in 1979. Everyone knows what a xenomorph looks like hence it’s hard to feel any trepidation when one is around.

Alien, like Evil Dead, just can’t be scary anymore.

The References

I could’ve classed Romulus as a sincere but flawed reboot if it weren’t for the gratuitous callbacks. If you thought the third act of Covenant was derivative, you’ve seen nothing yet.

I say ‘seen’ when a more accurate verb would be ‘heard’ as most of the references are to classic lines from the first two films. Hearing them recited, word for word, by the new cast is painful. They put Romulus in the same infamous league as The Predator and Dark Fate.

There are noteworthy contributions to the series in Romulus but they pale in comparison to what the film regurgitates.

I give Alien: Romulus a mediocre 6 out of 10.