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If you search for critical opinions on the latest Alien film (number seven in the franchise, not counting spinoffs, crossovers, and Spaceballs), you’ll find plenty of references to it being a return to the 1979 original, its horror roots, its practical effects, etc. So why is it even called Alien: Romulus? Why not just Alien: The Return?

Well, because there’s a lot that’s new in this film, although most of it is contained in the first half of the movie. The further you get, the more it resembles older Alien movies, until the final act becomes a rip-off (or should we say Ripley rip-off?) of some of the best moments from the legendary original and its great sequel.

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So let’s start with the wonderful, world-building opening scenes, all gritty, dirty and analog. Rain (Cailee Spaeny, as excellent here as she was in this summer’s Civil War) is trying to escape a desolate off-Earth mining colony where the sun shines zero hours a year.

Her friends have found an abandoned spaceship in orbit and plan to take it over and travel to a milder place. With the help of her brother – in reality a humanoid robot played with empathy-inducing seriousness and sadness by David Johnsson – they manage to get on board the spaceship.

It turns out it’s more of a space station, equipped with the cryopods they need for the years-long journey to a new world. (Alien is that rare science fiction story that both understands that travel between the stars can take a long time, and uses that to its advantage narratively.)

So co-writer and director Fede Alvarez (Don’t Breathe, 2013’s Evil Dead reboot) creates a series of interlocking timelines. To avoid another six years on the colony and power their cryopods for a nine-year journey, Rain and her comrades (including the pregnant Kay, played by Isabela Merced) have 36 hours to loot the Romulus before it crashes into a beautiful planetary ring. Oops, that’s 47 minutes!

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The whole thing seems quite doable until the marauders accidentally disturb a nest of alien facehuggers (what a cute name for such a nasty creature) and are forced to run for their lives. Andy, Rain’s android companion, tries to help as best he can, but human prejudice and relentless machine logic keep getting in the way.

Meanwhile, the Xenomorphs do what they’ve always done best: transform into a terrifying collection of killer creatures, sometimes at speeds that seem biologically impossible, but whatever.

It’s more gory and scary than just plain scary (which I don’t care for, since I was never into jump scares anyway), and while there’s clearly a healthy dose of computer-generated trickery, there are also some seemingly practical effects, such as a robot cut in half perched on a table exactly where you’d expect it to be if it were played by a human who had to hide its legs.

Romulus also offers an interesting connection to other films in the series, whose weird timeline of release dates and chronology calls for a blank slate rather than a review, but here we go.

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Essentially, this chapter takes place 20 years after the events of 1979’s Alien, meaning Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley is still in her 57-year cryogenic sleep that will culminate in 1986’s Aliens. But Romulus also takes place after the events of the Ridley Scott-directed Prometheus and Covenant, so there are connections to those films as well.

As geektastic as that may be, you don’t have to be an Alien completist to enjoy this latest scarefest, which leans heavily on the characters Rain and Andy and their relationship. Aside from Ripley herself, the franchise’s various conflicted malingerers – played over the years by Ian Holm, Lance Henriksen, Winona Ryder, Michael Fassbender and others – have reliably proven to be its most interesting characters, more human than human, if I may use a phrase from a parallel universe.

You can also enjoy the retro-future elements of the film — Alvarez and the film’s designers clearly put a lot of time and effort into designing Andy’s tiny SIM card and mini CD-ROM brain slot. (Also, why they decided that Romulus Station needed a giant elevator and cable car, as well as a giant airport-style escalator, is more of a mystery.)

In fact, the less you know about the Alien films, the more you’ll enjoy the supposedly original elements of this film. That may sound like double-edged praise, but it’s also an inevitable aspect of such a long-running franchise, one that has taken decades to create and spans centuries. Everything new is old again.

Alien: Romulus hits theaters on August 16.

3.5 out of 5 stars

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