Alien: Romulus Review
I went to see Alien: Romulus last week with some friends. I hadn't been to the cinema in years, and we went to an Odeon Luxe with reclining seats which was fun. The only Alien film I'd previously watched was the first one, and I had seen absolutely nothing about Romulus so I went in completely blind. I have been playing a lot of horror games recently though, so I was properly in the mood to watch a horror film.
The film starts are you are introduced to the cast which all look like teenagers. I thought this was a really weird choice - especially considering that none of the later events in the film depend on the cast to be young. In Alien 1 you knew something terrifying was happening because even fully grown, experienced adults were scared. I don't think using teenagers has anywhere near the same impact because you expect them to be making dumb mistakes and being scared and confused by minor things anyway.
The film starts with all of these kids trying to escape from the planet, where they manage to sneak onto a giant spaceship and then are able to steal it and fly away perfectly, which I felt was completely unbelievable. As I said, I went into this film completely blind, so at this point I was really dreading that the entire movie was just going to be teenagers acting completely unrealistically. Fortunately though the rest of the film got much better after this point.
When trying to find some cryo-fuel the crew accidentally removes cells from pods keeping facehuggers in cryo storage. The facehuggers wake up and start attacking the crew, and the action suddenly begins. I won't describe everything else that happens in the film, but it was definitely weighed way more towards action than horror. Everything moves too fast and there's too much shooting and running and explosions for there to ever be any suspenseful moments building tension. Alien 1 was the complete opposite - I don't think the crew even had guns.
Overall the film was full of action, a bit of gore, and it was scary at times, but I never felt any real fear. The cinematography was decent, and most of the special effects were good (apart from the CGI where they brought that dead actor back to life which just looked a bit freaky). The ending of the film was basically just a copy-and-paste from Alien 1, and I didn't really come away from the film feeling like there was any kind of message or new ideas. But it was fun to watch.