Alien: Romulus starts strong but loses its guts along the way

Oh, what a crushing experience it is to watch a movie lose itself. When features start with so much potential before concluding on such a middling note, it's heartbreaking. So many cinematic promises left unfulfilled! "We were on the verge of greatness, we were this close!" as one Orson Krennic once declared. Alien: Romulus is an unfortunately egregious case of this phenomenon in gooey action. An enthralling and thematically compelling first act gives way to a standard modern sequel chock full of fan service. Good news for us Alien fans though: much like Rick Blaine will always have Paris, we'll always have those impressive early Romulus sequences.

Romulus begins on a Weyland-Yutani mining planet where the sun never shines. Ash fills the air, despair is everywhere, and protagonist Rain Carradine (Cailee Spaeny) is desperate to leave. Just as she thinks she's secured enough work hours to leave this place, she gets a devastating shock. The Weyland-Yutani corporation has increased the workload she needs to reach before she can exit the planet. "Weyland-Yutani thanks you for your hard work," a dry bureaucrat informs her while delivering this horrific news. She and her android/surrogate brother Andy (David Jonsson) need another way off the planet. The script by Fede Alvarez and Rodo Sayagues (the former of whom also directs) gives them a ticket out through a scheme hatched by their friend Tyler (Archie Renaux). He and some other young denizens of the planet are going to sneak aboard a ship that's just hovering in the planet's atmosphere. Once they get onboard, they can go wherever they like.

The most inspired touch in Romulus is how it extends the franchise's contempt for corporations. After all, all the mayhem of the first Alien occured thanks to the Weyland-Yutani corporation ordering android Ash (Ian Holm) to retrieve the Xenomorph without caring what happened to the human employees. Corporate greed and a disdain for working-class lives have always informed this franchise's horrors. Here in Romulus, inaccessibility to upward economic mobility inspires a risky mission to an abandoned ship. Desperation is the underlying motivator of every on-screen action.

Meanwhile, the disdain most human characters wield for android Andy intriguingly reflects how the working class often creates proletariat hierarchies rather than unite as one. In the face of capitalism's horrors, too often everyday workers seek out other ordinary souls they can feel superior to. If one can't take down the big bosses actually making their lives miserable, they can create another social hierarchy that puts them "on top". This informs toxic perceptions that "immigrants" or "trans people" are really at fault for woes rooted in matters like unequal wealth distribution. That's a fascinating idea to translate into a sci-fi setting and especially into an Alien movie. These humans can't stop using Andy as a tool to give themselves brief bursts of "power" in a world they have no hope of controlling. Moments of humans othering Andy instead of embracing him echo the Alien saga's ethos while also delivering something discernibly new to its thematic tapestry. 

Alien: Romulus also looks incredible under Alvarez's direction and cinematography from Galo Olivares. Though the proceedings sometimes lean too heavily on darkness (even for a movie set on a planet with no sunshine!), there's a tactility to their images that's incredibly welcome. That element is undoubtedly aided by solid production design work ensuring Romulus occupies a world of grimy tangibility, not green-screen artifice. What light does enter the screen emerges in such an interestingly precise way while an emphasis on wide shots allows moviegoers plenty of opportunities to soak in grand images. Alien: Romulus looks incredibly crisp...which makes it such a shame when the script starts going off the rails.

Without delving into spoilery specifics, a mid-movie plot turn connected to the original Alien suddenly thrusts Alien: Romulus into the dreaded territory of a modern blockbuster sequel too overly concerned with franchise mythos. From there, distinctive character personalities vanish in favor of action beats, expository dialogue, and entire lines of dialogue either echoing or outright repeating earlier Alien installments. Alien: Romulus starts off with a bang because of a willingness to differentiate itself from its predecessors. Elements like younger protaganists or emphasizing capitalistic hierarchies suggest this Alvarez feature will be more than just Aliens redux. Alas, that potential slowly deflates away as Romulus becomes most interested in reminding viewers of the past.

It doesn't help matters that the bigger frightening set pieces are hit-or-miss, though there are some undeniably creative high points. A terrific sequence chronicling our leads trying to walk through a room crawling with Facehuggers is dreadfully suspenseful. Alvarez channels lots of energy from his 2016 feature Don't Breathe for this scene and that influence works quite nicely. Emphasizing excellent practical effects work for the Xenomorphs also lends these creatures a discernible ominous presence. There's such believable weight and texture to these beasties, they're truly an impressive feat from the visual effects crew. Other times, though, not even cool practical effects can compensate for the script's generic jump-scares. Too many of the scares in Romulus are serviceable, but nowhere near nightmare-inducing.

Alien: Romulus is an endlessly frustrating movie. Nowhere is this better exemplified than in its overall clumsy social commentary. Conceptually, this feature is all about the dangers of putting corporations first. Key Romulus aspects like that suffocating mining colony planet or an antagonistic character justifying their actions by saying "it's for the good of the company" exemplify this. Yet the distracting fan service in Romulus, not to mention its dedication to not subverting too many Alien franchise norms, reeks of modern corporate blockbusters. Alien: Romulus is very much a Disney Alien movie, though not in the sense that it has princesses singing to birds or toxic right-wing interpretations of what "Disney" means this month. Instead, Romulus adheres to the modern Disney blockbuster mold (see: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the 2022 Hellraiser remake, any of the live-action animated movie remakes) of merely gesturing at loftier progressive ideas, lots of fan service, removing any traces of sex (no naked push-ups here or men kissing here), and building on the bold creativity of other artists. 

The jagged "I'll do the fingering" edges of earlier messy installments like Alien: Romulus are gone. In their place are hollow reminders of the past, including regurgitating one of the most iconic Alien franchise lines. These inescapable symbols of the larger Mouse House empire leave the Romulus political commentary hollow. It's hard to chastize corporations while also reeking of a corporate monopoly. Without that element in play, audiences are left with a rudimentary entry sci-fi horror film. Great cinematography and committed performances from actors like David Jonsson (between this and Rye Lane, Jonsson's becoming a star to always watch out for) can't erase the emptiness ultimately permeating this project. Oh well, at least the first act of Alien: Romulus is strong, even if that dynamite opening just reinforces how weak the rest of the production is.

Trap Is Shyamalan Operating In Agreeable Dark Comedy Mode

M. Night Shyamalan's first two 2020s movies were unquestionably made as direct responses to a world rattled by COVID-19. Both Old and Knock at the Cabin were grim projects following characters isolated from the rest of the world coping with the inescapable specter of death haunting families. Old especially evoked the days of COVID lockdowns with its younger characters wistfully talking about how they'll never get to experience events like prom or graduation. Meanwhile, Knock at the Cabin had its leads watching as the world unraveled through their television set, much like all of us frantically checking and rechecking COVID-19 statistics on our phones in August 2020. These were brutal thrillers channeling the apocalyptic vibes and inescapable mortality informing the earliest years of this decade.

By contrast, Shyamalan's latest feature Trap is a respite from those earlier titles. After his immersion into darker projects ruminating on how death comes for us all, Shyamalan wants to do something more enamored with dark comedy. This isn't a title about family units gradually succumbing to mortality. Instead, Trap is meant to make audiences go "ooooooh!" at big plot developments and revel in its silliness. Shyamalan's post-2022 excitement even extends to Trap's central locale of a concert. With COVID filming restrictions eased or outright eliminated, this filmmaker can finally shoot interior crowd scenes again! He doesn't have to confine his actors to a beach or cabin anymore! These qualities offer something new for 2020s Shyamalan. They also inform a movie that's entertaining more often than not.

Cooper Adams (Josh Hartnett) on the surface looks like a normal dad, especially with how excited he is to take his daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to see pop star sensation Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan). While at the concert, though, Cooper notices a lot of police and extra security systems in place. Cooper quickly realizes that the FBI knew that local serial killer The Butcher was going to be at this concert and they've set up a trap here to catch this monster. Little does anyone realize that Cooper is actually The Butcher and he's not going down without a fight. As he tries to ensure Riley has the best day ever at Lady Raven's show, this psychopath also does everything in his power to throw the authorities off his trail. The Butcher is cornered, but he's not down and out, not by a long shot.

Shortly after Cooper discovers this movie's titular "trap", he returns to his seat with his daughter. Suddenly, right in the aisle next to them, a trap door opens and a "surprise" fictional singer appears. This entrance remains open for an inordinate amount of time, which inspires Cooper to suggest to Riley that they should head down there and explore the stadium's underground area. During every second of this exchange, I could only think to myself "there's no way they'd place that trap door there." Just creating a sudden giant void in a crowd of screaming fans with no guardrails in sight, that's a lawsuit waiting to happen! It's a totally preposterous element of Trap's universe. It's also one of those distinctively ridiculous elements only the writer/director behind "you know what gets a bad rap? Hot dogs" and the character name Mid-Sized Sedan would conjure up.

Trap's greatest ridiculous moments contain enough of those idiosyncracies to register as charming rather than lazy or irritating. Making the innate silliness of the proceedings go down easily is the darkly humorous atmosphere. Some of Shyamalan's worst movies are total dreary slogs like Lady in the Water or After Earth. Here, dashes of grim zest pop up throughout the runtime playing on Cooper being Hannibal Lecter in disguise as Ned Flanders. A sight gag involving a side character unassumingly handing this man a pair of box cutters, for instance, is quite amusing. A later set piece involving Cooper watching over a crowd of police getting a brief on The Butcher is similarly humorous.

These jokes and all of Trap work especially well thanks to Shyamalan's precise visual sensibilities. Working with cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, Trap's camerawork isn't afraid to linger on a shot or engage in deeply precise blocking. After a summer of so many stagnantly framed blockbusters, it felt good to see a split-diopter on the big screen again! Especially interesting in the camerawork is how Shyamalan often just plops viewers into the POV of Cooper without any foreshadowing. It's a great abrupt trait that immediately sets you at unease. Are we being put into his eyeballs because some carnage is about to unfurl? It's a terrific subtle detail. There's also a third-act gag involving the camera swerving to the right to emphasize a piano that's so perfectly timed (shout-out also to editor Noëmi Preiswerk on that front). The 35mm images of Trap go a long way to making this such a fun cheeky outing.

Even with all these virtues and an impressively bravura Josh Hartnett lead performance at its back, Trap is still, ultimately, a messy movie in some key respects. This is a feature thriving on recurring Shyamalan traits like detailed camerawork or well-structured suspense sequences. It also, unfortunately, succumbs to recurring problems scattered throughout his filmography. Trap's final 30 minutes, for instance, ehco Old in lathering on too much exposition that answers questions the audience likely doesn't care about. Meanwhile, Shyamalan's former go-to composer James Newton Howard (the duo last worked together on After Earth) is still deeply missed. Herdís Stefánsdóttir's, reuniting with Shyamalan after Knock at the Cabin, compositions aren't bad, they just lack an extra dose of oomph. Her tracks tragically can't evade the lasting sonic legacy of Shyamalan and Howard's greatest collaborations on films like Signs and Unbreakable. 

Most frustratingly, this is yet another Shyamalan movie with a disabled villain. This time, Cooper is defined heavily by his OCD. Following Unbreakable, The Visit, Split, Old, and other films, Shyamalan's employment of "disabled=villain" is so predictable and that's the one thing a thriller can never afford to be. Trap is clearly imperfect, but it's also a hoot to watch unfold. Even as an Old defender, it's fun to witness Shyamalan in a better and lighter mood with his latest feature. Trap isn't exactly a chart-topper, but it's still a cinematic melody with some incredibly fun flourishes.