Alien Romulus is currently the third highest rated Alien film of all time with a rating of 81%. There is a debate among fans as to whether this or Prometheus is better, but I would say Romulus, with director Fede Álvarez at least outdoing Ridley Scott here.

Alien: Romulus goes back to basics: aliens on a space station, shooting down people one by one. Only this time it’s a group of teenagers on the run, trying to escape a doomed life on a mining planet. While trying to loot cryopods from the station so they can make the nine-year journey to a much better planet, they run into some… problems, as you can imagine given the stuff stored there.

The film features absolutely stellar performances from its two leads, Cailee Spaeny (Rain) and David Jonsson (Andy). It’s easy to see that Spaeny is a rising star in Hollywood, fresh off of Civil War and headed for Emmy-winning Beef next season. She ends up going from reluctant escapee to steely survivor, and it’s a convincing transformation.

But back to the undoubtedly most outstanding actor of Romulus, David Jonsson: He plays a Synthetic who Rain considers a brother. He is damaged and has to be led around by Rain, but does everything possible that is in her best interest, which is his first directive. But Jonsson has to completely change his performance at some point, in ways that I won’t give away here, but then you’ll say, “Oh, this guy is Good.”

The film takes a bit of time to finish, but the “stalking” phase is excellent, as is the discovery of some things that later directly relate to the other films. And the finale of this film was received with much enthusiasm by those who saw it, and Isabela Merced said there was a scene so gross that crew members had to turn away during filming. That’s… understandable and not an exaggeration. You’ll know exactly which scene it is, and it sets up a truly crazy finale that is one of the best in the series.

Alien: Romulus has a flaw in that it feels like it’s trying to channel the originals a bit too much with homages and even duplicate lines. The overall structure is very similar to the first film, but it’s OK to go back to the roots. There are mirrored scenes, particularly with Rain’s Ripley-esque transformation at the end. Sure.

But when the film starts to quote several Lines from Alien and Aliens, right, that goes too far. It… doesn’t make sense in the context of the film, because these moments direct winks at the audience. Not even winks, but waves with both hands and says, “Look, look! Remember this?” It’s like if Maximus’ son in Gladiator 2 started yelling after a fight, “Aren’t you having fun??” It’s silly and takes the connection to the other films to a meta level that doesn’t work.

Otherwise, it’s an excellent film. Its place in the great list of Alien films is debatable, but it’s certainly at the top thanks to its outstanding performances and director Alvarez’s excellent use of special effects combined with computer graphics. Even though I haven’t been interested in Alien films for ten years, this film was definitely worth seeing.

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