Alien: Romulus director explains his new film’s big Alien: Isolation Easter egg

Alien: Romulus is taking the iconic sci-fi horror series back to bloody basics, with a stripped-back, survival horror focus, gnarly body horror, and the return of a Giger-authentic biomechanical Xenomorph.

Though inspired by 1979’s Alien and 1986’s superlative sequel Aliens first and foremost, Alvarez’s film also nods to Alien’s wider legacy – everything from the less-than-stellar sequels to tie-in novels and comics. And that includes Creative Assembly’s palm-sweatingly scary 2014 game Alien: Isolation.

“Alien: Isolation was kind of what made me see that Alien could truly be terrifying and done well [today],” Alvarez tells the Inside Total Film podcast and GamesRadar+. “I played a few years after it came out. Don’t Breathe was coming out. Or was I waiting for Don’t Breathe to come out, and I was playing the game. That’s why, at the time, I was like, ‘Fuck, if I could do anything, I would love to do Alien and scare the audience again with that creature and those environments.’ I was playing, and realising how terrifying Alien could be if you take it back to that tone.”

The eagle-eyed among you may remember that the very first behind the scenes image from Alien: Romulus (see above) features a familiar-looking Emergency Phone. In the game, these ‘Registration Points’ allow the player to save, but aren’t exactly a safe haven as their agonisingly slow operation leaves main character Amanda Ripley vulnerable to a pharyngeal jaw to the back of the skull – a fact Alvarez pays homage to in Romulus.

“The movie is set up in a way [that] every time something bad is about to happen, you will see a phone,” the Romulus director and co-writer says with a grin when we meet in London. “In the game, every time you knew there’s a phone you’d go, ‘Fuck, I’m about to go into some bad set-piece.’ It’s the same thing here. You’ll see they’re planted strategically throughout the film. When you see the phone, it’s like: brace for impact.”

Alien: Romulus releases in cinemas across the UK and Ireland, and in US theaters, from August 16. Listen to our full interview with Fede Alvarez on the Inside Total Film podcast , out later this week.

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