Kevin C. Wong

Alien Romulus (2024) [+]

Alien: Romulus is set between the first two Alien movies. A group of young adults living on a Weyland-Yutani company world want to be free from their indentured lives and escape to a better colony world. To do that they need to loot the abandoned space station Romulus for the cryogenic components they need for an interstellar trip (it's both interesting and yet not really explored how Alien has maybe a slow FTL tech that requires cryogenic suspension for humans so interstellar travel is possible but sending a platoon of Colonial Marines to rescue a colony world seems like they'd be too late to do any good).

Anyway, they get to the space station, explore, find that the station was doing bio-weapon experiments, and run into various Alien creatures that offs them off one by one.

Rain Carradine (Cailee Spaeny) - main protagonist

Andy (David Jonsson) - damaged android modified by Rain's father and whom she treats as her brother, he has an interesting arc starting out like he has mental disabilities then getting upgraded on the station to his normal self but with company-first directives.

Tyler (Archie Renaux) - Rain's ex-boyfriend
Kay (Isabela Merced) - Tyler's sister, pregnant
Bjorn (Spike Fearn) - Tyler and Kay's cousin, hates androids so he hates Andy
Navarro (Aileen Wu) - ship pilot and Bjorn's sister
Rook (Daniel Betts) - damaged science android on the Romulus who wants to save some Alien bio form from the station's destruction.

This movie has a very Alien the original movie vibe. Big empty structure, eerie noises, savage Alien attacks. On a big screen it looks great. I did find the part where the station crashes into the colony world's rings rather funny since the rings are crazily dense.

Overall an entertaining Alien scary movie.