‘Alien: Romulus’ Review: The Primal Shock and Awe Is Gone, but It’s a Good Video-Game Horror Ride
variety.comOwen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic There’s now a contradiction built into the very idea of a new “Alien” sequel. “Alien: Romulus” is the seventh entry in the franchise, and each time we line up for another one of them, even when it’s as encrusted with “mythology” as “Prometheus,” the hope is that we’ll get to experience a taste of the shock and awe that “Alien” achieved 45 years ago. “Aliens,” in 1986, conjured enough of that sensation to register as a classic — and though “Alien 3” (1992) is reviled by everyone in the known universe, including its director, David Fincher, I’ve always found, in its maternal-bad-dream-as-art-film way, that it exerts a slow-burn queasy power.
But starting with “Alien: Resurrection” (it’s never a good sign when a film’s title sounds like a pitch to stockholders), the series has been running less on honest dread than on fumes of space-beast nostalgia.
The face-hugger, the adult alien with its helmet head and dripping silver jaws, the whole primal terror of your body being not just attacked but invaded — the truth is that the more “Alien” movies you see, the less of a nightmare jolt there is to them.
So when I say that “Alien: Romulus” is one of the best “Alien” sequels, that it delivers the slimy creep-out goods in a way that none of the last three “Alien” films have, I don’t mean to suggest that the shock and awe is back, or that the movie has reinvented this series in any visionary mind-fuck way.
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