Alien Romulus Review

Alien Romulus is a film which comes directed by Fede Alvarez who some may know for Evil Dead (2013). This film stars Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux and Isabela Merced. The run time is 1 hour and 59 minutes.

This was one of the movies I was most excited to see this year. I love the Alien franchise (both the good and the bad films) and I was looking forward to seeing what this new one was going to be like.

This film sees the franchise return to a more horror feel. The characters in this are all inexperienced kids who decide one day that it would be a good idea to rob an abandoned spaceship of its resources. Unknown to them though, there’s dangerous aliens on that ship and surviving this heist isn’t going to be easy.

Fede Alvarez did a good job with this film. The characters were set up well enough that it was very easy to follow the story. The mystery of the first Alien reveal was done well and the film does have a few jump scare moments.

The special effects are also decent. I liked the set design a lot and I enjoyed seeing all the machines and computers in the spaceships. The Alien itself looked amazing. The practical effects were also very good in the moments where they were used instead of CGI.

There’s some moments in the film which don’t work too well. Sometimes there very small moments where something a character says or doe is clearly there for nostalgia and is a call back to the original films in the franchise, but I thought it was a bit forced. Luckily it’s only a small moment. Aside from this the only other downside in this film is that it suffers from silly horror movie character syndrome where the characters seem to just do really dumb things and get themselves killed.

The actors all did a fine job. The cast are all very young and most of them are new actors that I don’t recognise, but they were all decent with their performances. Cailee Spaeny clearly stands out above the rest and she was the most enjoyable to watch.

Alien Romulus is a film I am happy to recommend to see at the cinema this weekend. It is a film where I have very few things to complain about and my only criticisms are very minor things. Overall it is a great film and one of my favourite action/horror films of 2024. I’d be happy to watch it again at the cinema or when it arrives for home viewing and I hope you enjoy it as well.