Movie review: ‘Alien: Romulus’ is fine, but unmoving

I wonder how “Alien: Romulus” would play to someone who’s never seen an “Alien” movie.

Would they find it easier to simply enjoy the well-crafted suspense sequences, instead of mentally cataloging the recycled images and ideas, noting that they’ve seen all this done better before?

I ask these questions because I came out of “Alien: Romulus” feeling oddly uncertain of my own reaction, appreciative of its craft but unmoved by its story. How much of that is unfair expectations?

This is the ninth installment in the “Alien” franchise. It canonically takes place between the original 1979 “Alien” and its 1986 sequel “Aliens.”

Our heroes are a group of young miners held in financial servitude — virtual slavery — by a faceless corporation, kept in debt so that they’ll be forced to work forever. Facing futures without hope (their colony is on a planet where the sun literally never shines), they hatch a scheme to commandeer an abandoned space station and use it to escape across the universe. How much do you want to bet that said space station might have an alien or two lurking on it?

There’s something almost metatextual about the premise of “Alien: Romulus,” a movie that is both about and made by a new generation forced to carry the burdens (and be literally consumed by the monsters) of their forebears, repeating the same cycles of trauma forever.

This is essentially a fan film, with young Hollywood hopefuls running around in the detritus of not just their parents’ but their grandparents’ pop culture.

The film remixes moments from prior “Alien” adventures (a space ship becomes a playground for aliens to chase human prey around, an android may or may not be trustworthy, motherhood turns murderous) in a manner that feels both enthusiastic — like watching a kid finally get to play with toys they’ve coveted for years — and a little too respectful — best not play with those toys too hard, or you might break them.

But if director Fede Alvarez is essentially acting as a cover band here, he’s an admittedly talented cover band. The “Alien” pictures are first and foremost haunted house movies, so it makes sense that the producers of “Romulus” would hire Alvarez, a proficient horror director — he helmed the better-than-it-could’ve-been “Evil Dead” remake and the pretty-darn-good “Don’t Breathe” — who largely makes up for a lack of new ideas with sheer skill.

“Romulus” is well directed, and well shot by cinematographer Galo Olivares. The requisite scare sequences are delivered with panache.

Alvarez knows just just when to drop the sound out before a character screams, just how to punctuate a scene with a mordant punchline.

And there are at least two big set piece sequences (one involving the station’s faulty zero gravity, the other involving characters trying to keep their cool lest they be sensed by blind enemies — a direct steal from Alvarez’s “Don’t Breath,” but hey, if you’re gonna steal, I think it’s fine to steal from yourself) that I had to admit, somewhat grudgingly, were quite clever.

The cast members are all solid playing two-dimensional characters, each given exactly one or two traits so we can tell them apart when the carnage begins. David Jonsson is a scene stealer as Andy, the android who goes from sweet, slow puppy dog to coldly efficient pragmatist after an upgrade, and Cailee Spaeny (who was so damn good last year in “Priscilla”) proves that she’s got “horror movie heroine” as part of her rolodex — like Ellen Ripley before her, Spaeny’s Rain isn’t an action movie heroine but an ordinary person fighting to survive.

“Alien: Romulus” in basic is fine. There’s not much I can find to harshly criticize. The film is well made, it pulls off its genre elements with style, and with only a few major exceptions, the callbacks to prior entries in the series are done tastefully enough.

The exceptions are an extended role for a deceased member of the “Alien” cast pulled off with deep fake technology that is uncanny and off putting, and a callback to a catch phrase from “Aliens” that just feels desperate.

But I also find that I can’t work up much enthusiasm for it. “Just play the hits,” is probably music to the ears of audiences left befuddled by the last two Ridley Scott directed entries in the series, “Prometheus” and “Alien: Covenant.”

For myself, I thought “Romulus” played the hits proficiently, but I’ve heard these songs before. I didn’t care, didn’t really get invested, and wasn’t convinced we needed to go back to this well. Can’t we leave the alien alone? I guess not. We’ll be stuck repeating these cycles for years to come.

C.B. Jacobson is an Annandale native who makes independent films at Buddy Puddle Productions, and writes about movies at picturegoer.substack.com. Keep an eye peeled for him at the Emagine Monticello movie theater on Tuesday nights — seated in the middle of the auditorium, with a book in hand.