By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
There are few franchises that will hurt you quite like Alien, and I’m not talking about the threat of chest bursters or acid blood. No, fans of this franchise faced the more sublime pain of watching the excellence of Alien and Aliens get tarnished by increasingly weird and desperate prequels and spinoffs. Even Ridley Scott’s return with movies like Prometheus and Alien: Covenant disappointed, but here’s some good news for fans: Alien: Romulus is the best franchise entry in decades, and you can now stream it on Hulu.
While the exact chronology doesn’t matter to all but the most hardcore fans, you should know that Alien: Romulus is set between the first two films, focusing on a new cast of characters who venture from their brutal planet (basically one big company town) to a Weyland-Yutani space station. They’re planning a heist that will allow them all to enter cryosleep and travel to a paradise planet, but they soon discover that the station is abandoned for a very grisly reason. Mad science experiments on the xenomorph from the first Alien have led to a station full of face huggers, xenomorphs, and one shady corporate android.
The cast of Alien: Romulus is small but talented, including Cailee Spaeny, best known to genre fans for her role in Pacific Rim Uprising. She is joined by Archie Renaux (best known for his role in the Shadow and Bone show) and Isabela Merced (whose performance was one of the better parts of Transformers: Last Knight). However, the real standout performance comes from David Jonsson, who plays an android whose various glitches and upgrades cause him to go from a figure you can’t help but pity to one that will make your blood run cold.
As great as this cast is, horror fans are likely to be more impressed with the talent behind the camera. The film is directed by Fede Álvarez, who previously brought us the surprisingly awesome Evil Dead remake. The film is also produced by Ridley Scott, and while we need to collectively admit he’s lost a step or two (go watch Gladiator 2 if you doubt me), it’s cool to know that the director of the iconic first Alien film is here to help shepherd this franchise in an entirely new direction.
And it certainly seems like audiences love this direction. Alien: Romulus earned $350.9 million at the box office against an $80 million budget. This led the studio to begin workshopping ideas for a sequel, though as of this writing, nothing has been officially announced. It’s hard to fault the powers that be for taking their time with a follow-up considering how long we had to wait to get a xenomorph movie nearly as good as the first two films in the franchise.
Fortunately for audiences and the studio alike, Alien: Romulus was a critical hit as well as a commercial one. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a critical rating of 80 percent and an audience Popcornmeter rating of 85 percent. In general, critics praised the movie for building off the best parts of what came before while introducing some cool new ideas and creepy new designs.
Will you agree with us and the critics that Alien: Romulus is the best Alien movie in decades, or will you want to take off and nuke the whole franchise from orbit after watching it? You won’t know until you stream this modern horror classic on Hulu. By the time the credits roll, you’ll know that while nobody can hear you scream in space, they can definitely hear you scream in a space station.
