Parasites: "Alien: Romulus"

In the absence of new or better ideas, this is probably all we can expect Hollywood to squeeze out of the Alien IP in years to come: would-be visionary spinoffs in which obsessive tinkerer Ridley Scott expands the series mythology while leaving the fanboys varyingly grumpy, and straightforward runarounds of lowish ambition, directed by self-identifying fanboys, which remind us all of why we thrilled to this franchise in the first place. (Essentially, it'll be two kinds of films to do what the far less grandiose Planet of the Apes update, another Disney reboot of what was once a Fox mainstay, has done in the course of individual movies.) Alien: Romulus falls squarely and plainly in the latter camp: it sees Fede Alvarez, the Uruguayan import who oversaw 2013's Evil Dead reboot and initiated a franchise of his own with the Don't Breathe films, pitching up with a story that slots chronologically between Alien and Aliens, thus limiting any baggage and allowing the film that results to travel relatively light. In as much as Alvarez brings new elements to the series mythology, it's the suggestion there may still be populated planets within the prevailing quietness of the original film's space: in this case, an overpopulated mining colony where the grime, abundant hardware and marked absence of sunlight more immediately recalls Scott's Blade Runner than Aliens. (You instantly see why Ripley and co. might have signed up for an away day.) Furthermore, Alvarez posits, a younger generation are labouring under the same oppressively indifferent system that allowed the creature(s) to run amok in earlier movies: these sons and daughters of Veronica Cartwright and Yaphet Kotto, led by a colourless Cailee Spaeny and her android "brother" David Jonsson, are prompted to raid a decommissioned craft to pay their way after the official channels are firmly closed off to them. If stealing the lead off the roof of an abandoned spaceship sounds like a bad idea, best avoided, within the context of the Alien universe, well... like, duh.

The problem the non-Scott Alien derivatives face is that they're bound to seem less like a long-term passion project than parasitic and/or opportunistic fan fiction. (This series may finally have reached the same stage its exact contemporary Star Wars did when Disney signed off on Rogue One and Solo: the franchise is entering its Years of Annotation, and possibly dwindling pop-cultural significance.) That Romulus is New Aliens™ is discernible from the bald fact none of the broadly interchangeable supporting cast can credibly suggest having worked down any mine outside of cryptocurrency. As recently as twelve years ago, Prometheus was employing such grizzled troopers as Sean Harris and Michael Fassbender; the moviegoing demographics can't have shifted that radically in the meantime, but Romulus leaves us watching what often resembles the Muppet Babies variant of Alien. (Alvarez has turned to CG or AI to regenerate some notion of seniority for a key cameo, and the plasticky effect ranks among the film's least persuasive.) That said, accept these limitations and commercial compromises, and much of the new film still works - which is to say it reminds us that, getting on for fifty years ago, Scott and screenwriters Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett alighted upon a copper-bottomed premise for suspenseful cinema. Usher a ragtag of patsies and grunts, scrappers and scrabblers, into a dark, confined, unwelcoming space; have them picked off one by one; wash, rinse and go again. Gorehounds get their fix; scholars of postcolonial and gender studies are invited to make a greater case for this artful exploitation than perhaps it deserves. Everything hinges on the setpieces the chief creative has planned for when the airlock doors close on their characters, and Alvarez, a proven suspense technician, engineers gantry-based action with a little of TV's The Crystal Maze about it: sneak through a room raised to human body temperature, past beasties who track your heat; cut a pregnant crewmate from a nest before the alien mother clocks you; dodge aliens in zero gravity, an idea so inspired both Scott and James Cameron will be kicking themselves when they see it. (So inspired, indeed, that it should really have been the pièce de résistance, rather than just another bit to be burned through.) Nothing here contradicts the sense Hollywood has gone backwards again this summer, but Romulus at least goes back to a formula that has reliably delivered one type of Alien movie - and along the way, liberated by low expectations, Alvarez even alights on one of my favourite images of the series entire: hundreds of appreciably rubbery facehuggers, loosed from cryo, bouncing up off these sets like triggered mousetraps.

Alien: Romulus is now playing in cinemas nationwide.