Alien: Romulus

 Now this was one movie I was looking forward to see, as it promised to get back to it's roots, a horror / science fiction setting.

 

 

And it was sort of a love letter to the franchise, as director Fede Alvarez used the wiki pages to get as many references correctly, trying to bridge the gap between the Prometheus prequels and the original movies.

 

And what bigger call back, then a movie that starts aboard the USCSS Nostromo, Ellen Ripley's ill-fated vessel from the very first Alien movie.  Here, a Weyland-Yutani probe recovers a strange cocoon.  Some time later, at the colony world of Jackson's Star, Rain Carradine, recently orphaned, discovers the company has elongated her labour contract without her knowing.  But she wants to go to the planet of Yvaga III, and teams up with her adopted brother Andy, a malfunctioning android reprogrammed by her late father to be her caretaker.

 

Together with Andy, her ex-boyfriend Tyler and his cousin Bjorn, Bjorn's adopted sister Navarro and Tyler's pregnant sister Kay they set out to reach Renassaince, a defunct Weyland-Yutani station that has drifted into orbit.  Here they plan to steal cryostasis equipment to be able to travel the mult-year journey to Yvaga III.  But arriving on the station, they realise the station will crash into the planet's orbital rings within hours, and must make haste.  Andy interfaces with the station to allow them access to the Remus part of the station, but also learns Yvaga III doesn't allow androids, meaning he should stay behind and guilt-ridden Rain.

 

 

As Tyler and Bjorn try to find the cryostasis fluid, they unintentionally trigger a lockdown as several facehuggers are released.  Rain decides to upgrade Andy with the chip of the damaged science android they found nearby, in order for Andy to bypass the security measures of the systems.  But this chip shifts Andy's loyalty from Rain to the company, causing Navarro to be impregnated by a facehugger.  They reactivate the science android, called Rook, to learn what is going on at the station.  The cocoon apparantly contained the xenomorph that killed the Nostromo crew, and they tried to bio-engineer the facehuggers.  However, the Xenomorph escaped, massacring most of the crew either in the normal gruesome ways or by decompression as the killed beast's acidic blood ate through the hull.

 

Thinking Andy might kill Navarro, he flees with her towards Kay on their vessel.  But onboard, a chestburster breaks out of Navarro, and as Bjorn tries to wound it with a baton, he is killed himself by the acid spraying out of it.  The adrift vessel crashes into the cargo bay of the Romulus section, causing the orbital decay to increase as the beast quickly gestates to it's adult form.  Kay escapes into Romulus hunted by the beast, as Rain and Tyler try to save her, but Andy refuses to open the door and they watch her being taken away by the beast.

 

 

Rook instructs Andy to recover a compound called Z-01, harvested from facehuggers to adapt and rewrite DNA.  The company intends to use it to create the perfect human, as Rain and Tyler arm themselves with Pulse Rifles.  They discover a xenomorph nest, where they rescue the badly hurt Kay.  They are attacked by hordes of xenomorphs and facehuggers, and Tyler sacrifices himself to protect Rain and Kay as Andy is incapacitated, until Rain can remove Rook's chip.  Disabling the station's gravity, they manage to kill a lot of the beasts, and they barely escape with their ship as the station starts crashing into the rings.

 

As they prepare for their trip to Yvaga III though, Kay gives birth to a human-xenomorph hybrid as a result of her being injected with the Z-01 to help her heal.  It kills Kay, before Rain can eject it into the rings.  She records an audiolog and enters cryostasis, hopefull of reaching their destination alive...

 

So this was a good film harking back to the original (okay, the hybrid finale was a bit more meuh for me) and the atmosphere that movie invoked back in the days.  Surely worth the look if you like your xenomorph vs desperate people movies!