Alien Romulus Review

I finally had the chance to sit down and watch Alien Romulus so I thought I might deliver my spoiler free thoughts.

I’d been looking forward to this one for quite a while now and overall, it was an enjoyable experience. There were a few, shall we call them wonky, bits but the good far outweighed the bad. It wasn’t nearly as suspenseful as Alien, Aliens and I might even go out there and say Alien 3, but the story was, I think, a strong comeback. Pacing was fast but never felt rushed and I appreciated that the motivation for our crew wasn’t overly complicated in its setup.

The original film felt much more isolated, and the monster crept up on you in the dark. It made us afraid of what might be lurking in the shadows. The second was adrenaline charged, never gave us the chance to catch our breath. The third felt abandoned and hopeless. This new one (while I do feel was better that everything after Aliens) is somewhere between the first and second. The pacing is fine, the tension is there but it never fully captures the fear of the original, nor does it get your pulse running like the second.

A few of the other strong points in the film were the acting and the effects. The cast felt believable and likeable. I wish they would have explored a few storylines a bit more in depth, maybe spent a little more time getting to know everyone, but the cast did an excellent job.

As for those effects, I loved them. The Xenomorphs and Face Huggers never came off as cartoony, and the gory bits were extremely well done. There was a scene where the Xenomorph emerges from this cocoon-like structure that I felt was extremely well done. We also had a returning character, sort of, and through the use of animatronics and a few digital effects the look was very impressive.

And about those Face huggers, we have never seen them quite like this. Alien Romulus turned these little creepy crawlers into a much more formidable force and I thoroughly enjoyed it!

One of the things that I will say in I suppose a negative light was the music. It was serviceable, completely fine, but it was neither as ominous as Alien nor as hard hitting as Aliens.

I had heard a lot regarding the third act, and people seem to either really like it or really hate it. Without giving anything away I personally thought this was the weakest part of the film and was where those “wonky bits” I referred to earlier came into play. With that said I didn’t hate the third act, but it didn’t quite flow with the rest of the story, and while I did understand it… sort of, it also left me with a few questions that I can’t really get into without spoiling anything., the biggest being the timeline.

I’m going to give this a solid B+. I believe it falls in a respectable place right after the first two as far as quality, and that is saying a lot! It is worth a watch and will likely end up falling into my rotation right in between Alien and Aliens as the timeline has placed it.