Of course, the Alien movies have dredged ideological waters in the past, most famously in David Fincher’s 1992 follow-up-cum–AIDS parable, Alien 3. If that bleak film represented the series at its most progressive, framing the title creature as a (over-obvious) metaphor for HIV, the latest entry marks a decidedly reactionary turn. More explicitly than ever, the franchise is now a critique of scientific utopianism, a posture as dangerous as any virus. The newest offering even features a loosely constructed Anthony Fauci stand-in.

Alien: Romulus begins on Jackson’s Star, a sunless mining colony manned by workers in a state of quasi-slavery. When, mere minutes into the film, 25-year-old orphan Rain Carradine (Cailee Spaeny) receives an offer of escape, she rushes to take it, insisting only that her synthetic “brother,” Andy (David Jonsson), be brought along. The plan, in standard Alien fashion, involves an abandoned space station in which something deadly lurks. It is barely a spoiler to say that one needn’t memorize the names of Rain’s companions. Before long, they will begin, one by one, to meet the fate of the movies’ bit players lo these 45 years. 

Set mostly aboard the Nostromo (yes, it’s that abandoned ship), the new film takes place between Alien and Aliens, occupying timeline notches previously unconsidered by the franchise. Other elements, e.g., the reliably terrifying “facehuggers” and “xenomorphs,” are familiar but expertly used. Wandering their temporary home, Rain and company encounter not only acid-blooded monsters but locking doors, claustrophobic spaces, and a computer system with a pitiless mind of its own. The new production, in other words, hits all of the Alien sweet spots. Its success lies in writer-director Fede Alvarez’s masterful pacing and a closing act featuring some of the most haunting images I’ve seen on screen in years. 

Though the precise nature of that imagery is better left undescribed, suffice it to say that it grows organically from the film’s themes. If 2012’s Prometheus was a hymn to creation, the latest installment in the franchise takes pharmacology as its preoccupation du jour. To an extent, the Alien movies have always been about the improvement of species: Note the title creature’s horrifyingly swift maturation process. Alien: Romulus, however, has a far grimmer evolution in mind. Midway through the film, offered a chance to save both herself and her unborn child, a dying character consumes an experimental drug harvested from the xenomorphs themselves. Rather than “perfecting” her, as a shipmate promises, the treatment wreaks nightmarish havoc.

I will not insist, in this review, that Alvarez was thinking of COVID vaccines when he composed his screenplay. Nor will I foreclose that possibility given the film’s persistent Faucian echoes. To the extent that the new movie has a humanoid villain, that role is filled by the late Ian Holm, who “plays,” thanks to the magic of CGI, a synthetic science officer very like the one he rendered in the 1979 original. While Holm’s character lacks a “Hi, I’m Tony” nametag, the android has a hand in both the alien infestation’s genesis and the harm done to humans as it “spreads.” His is a seeming mission of mercy unmasked (sorry) as a megalomaniacal fraud. Is all of this a metaphor for the lab-leak theory, 6 feet of distance, and the pharmaceuticalization of the West? Why the heck not? Oppenheimer, after all, spent its last 30 minutes arguing that science bureaucrats should have a say in federal policy. Whether or not the nation is going to litigate the pandemic in retrospect, our movies certainly are.

Of course, depending on one’s politics, one can ignore all of this and simply view an excellently scary movie. Highly watchable in HBO’s Industry, Jonsson brings a soulful intelligence to his role as a damaged, then coldly competent, artificial human. The final minutes contain a beautifully conceived zero-gravity sequence that is at least as interesting as Prometheus’s automated surgery tube. (Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten that scene.) Like the best horror films, the new Alien works just as well literally as it does allegorically. Whatever one thinks of its ideas, it doesn’t shout them. And we don’t have to listen to its whispers to appreciate its design. 

A final note: I saw Alien: Romulus in “4DX,” a multisensory format featuring gentle breezes, bursts of compressed air, and seats that buck in time to the movie’s rhythms. For two hours, my viewing companion and I were jostled like truckers on the New Jersey Turnpike, trying desperately not to spill our drinks. The experience added nothing and will surely go the way of Sensurround and Smell-O-Vision. I am all for luring patrons back to cinemas, but, friends, this is not the way. 

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Graham Hillard is editor at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal and a Washington Examiner magazine contributing writer.