I read a couple reviews that basically said, “the movie’s great until the last 5-10 minutes, when it isn’t.”
I don’t really agree, but I can see how they reached that conclusion. In the final confrontations of the film, it takes a sudden sharp turn away from the expected trajectory the story was headed towards, and some of them, at first blush, feel bad. I’m going to talk about these “bad” parts of the film first, but bear with me, it’s a good movie that I very much enjoyed.
Bad part 1: There’s some serious body horror – more than the typical Alien franchise fare of melting limbs and stabby bits.
Bad part 2: It also appears to succumb to “Smart Characters Being Dumb,” which is another unfortunate trope of horror, often used as a way to drive the plot forward.
Let’s break those down (again, spoiler-free), because I feel they’re a serious anchor dragging the film down.
The first one, the body horror, stems from a “Smart Characters Being Dumb” moment. But if you take a step back, they make a bad decision based on incomplete information. It’s subtle, but it’s there. We the audience know it’s a bad decision, and in the moment, we’re screaming, “why would you do that?!” But in thinking through the story from that character’s perspective, I can make the mental leap to why they made the Bad Decision. I’ll get to the body horror part later, because I feel that deserves its own section.
The other Smart Characters Being Dumb appears to occur because of Stupid Technology Design and failing to introduce Chekov’s Gun (elements placed early on that seem unimportant but later become crucial). This puts the failure (and yes it IS a failure) on the filmmakers, not the character. The character attempts to solve the immediate problem by doing Something Dumb, that is, go interact with Stupid Technology Design. They don’t have another character to describe their plan, so the audience is in the dark. Worse, since the Stupid Technology Design was never explained earlier, the whole situation just looks like they’re being incredibly dumb.
Ultimately, it feels like the end of the story was just kind of rushed, and leaps are made in the story that jump over crucial moments necessary to keep the audience satisfied. Therefore, the “movie is good until the last 5-10 minutes, when it isn’t.”
The body horror – I’m loathe to approach this because it feels a little spoiler-y. I’ll do my best, but you may want to skip this paragraph. The Alien franchise has always had this subtle (and not so subtle) undertone of the potential horrors motherhood. The first Alien was “given birth to” by a woman character. There’s the unavoidable metaphor of the creature gestating inside a human or other creature. Ripley has strong motherhood moments throughout the second and third films (let’s skip discussing the fourth film entirely). Prometheus and Covenant steer away from this undertone, but for Romulus, it feels like the filmmakers leaned *heavily* into the theme. And it’s not like they don’t foreshadow it. Multiple references to the myth of Romulus and Remus being mothered by Lupercal. The computer system named MU-TH-UR. But then there’s an alien cocoon that is designed to look like a vulva (and the assault a character makes on it), a pregnancy and birth by one of the characters, and some definitely creepy mother-child horror. Stepping back, it feels like either there’s some latent misogyny on the part of the filmmakers leaking through or they’re trying to capitalize on the overall risk and horror around human reproduction. I can’t really say this is something just for this film or it’s something the filmmakers regularly do, but these parts of the film left me with kind of an “ick.” Of course, I absolutely recognize mother and childbirth is a whole subgenre of horror that capitalizes on that, so, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
ALL THAT SAID – it’s a great movie! The film is a masterclass in the Ticking Timebomb and characters making Hard Decisions. It gets most of Chekov’s Gun right. It has amazing effects. It’s tense and stressful. It gives a few, appropriate breaks. It does jumpscares well. The sound design does more than just enhance the mood or the occasional sting to nail a jumpscare. At times it’s informative without the need for additional dialog.
The Ticking Timebomb in particular is extremely well done. They have multiple layered ticking timebombs, short and long fuses, fuse reductions, all ratcheting up the pressure on the characters. It’s impressive.
Characters making Hard Decisions is also really well done – the push-pull of what humans consider morally right vs the coolly analytical “greater good.” A good portion of the movie centers around that challenge. Emotional attachments heavily inform decision making, and it’s hard for the audience to determine what’s the right choice. And that’s good writing.
Talking about writing, I’ve written enough for now, even though there’s a *lot* more to say about the film.
If you’re into Aliens, if you’re into sci-fi horror, check out Alien Romulus.
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