Alien: Romulus

The seventh installment in the Alien franchise, “Alien: Romulus,” released back in August, is directed by Fede Alvarez as a horror story in outer space. Dennis Schwartz noted in his review, “Though competently made, it’s not offering anything new in the alien world– preferring to play it safe.” However, to its credit is a throwback to the great original 1979 film and the superior sequel, “Aliens.” Schwartz said, “Its CGIs are marvelous, even if it’s dialogue is only serviceable and its supporting characters are only thinly developed. Alvarez co-writes the sci-fi thriller with Rodo Sayagues Mendez as if stuck in the past and not willing to get unstuck.”

The broken space colonist, Rain (Cailee Spaeny), who is a young adult, lives on an unfriendly corporate owned mining colony planet with no sunlight, with her friendly android “special needs” bad pun telling brother Andy (David Jonsson). Her ex-boyfriend Tyler (Archie Renaux) and his sister Kay (Isabela Merced) are escaping from this corporate prison with the rebel space colonists Bjorn (Spike Fearn) and his girlfriend pilot Navarro (Aileen Wu), to a more livable and brighter planet, Yvaga, and invite her to go with them on the year-long flight. However, before leaving, they must fly to an abandoned space station that has flown above their planet to steal its hyper-sleep chambers, needed to secure the flight to Yvaga. However, they encounter the evil Xenomorph aliens and creatures known as facehuggers, and everything becomes a nightmare.

In a highlight, with jump scares, the group is chased through the space station’s corridors by a group of jumping facehuggers (scary creatures we have seen in previous installments).

The movie has amazing visuals and continues enough shock and surprise violent scenes to be entertaining. Schwartz noted at the end of his review, “But the franchise has lost some of its power to move the story forward–which is a sign it should probably call it a day (even if it won’t). It ends with a fight for survival between the evil corporate created aliens and its sympathetic but bland human heroine.”

I think this movie is a welcome return to what made the franchise so great in the first place. After a series of bad or mediocre installments, this film is amazing, and is up there with the first two films. The only problem I had, which is probably the theater’s fault, was that I couldn’t really hear what was said at certain times. Still, I really got into this. Check it out if it’s still playing in theaters as this film really fits the Halloween month.

Thank you for joining in on this review tonight. Stay tuned Friday for the conclusion of “Candyman Month.”