Although part of a large franchise, this installation of “Alien” has a very self-contained story. In “Alien: Romulus” we find ourselves with a crew of people with one synthetic (robot) human, on a mission where the team comes across some trouble with a group of alien “Xenomorphs,” a fictional species of extraterrestrial.

I was not familiar with many of the previous “Alien” movies, but I still felt like I knew exactly what was going on during the whole movie. I really enjoyed the fact that I did not need to watch every installation before this one to understand it (Marvel *cough, cough*). It was a very standalone story and it did not even run long for movies by today’s standard. It was a quick little horror story.

One thing I really enjoyed about “Alien: Romulus” was the creativity. There are many cool and interesting concepts introduced in this movie. There was one scene involving zero gravity towards the middle-end of the movie. I just was in awe of this scene because it was such a cool scene to watch. The action side of this movie was very fulfilling with many cool human versus alien scenes, which normally left you on the edge of your seat.

The horror aspect of this movie surprised me. There were a few eerie moments and a few good jump scares. But, there was one scene that genuinely terrified me, and it kept my jaw dropped until almost the end of the movie. It was horrifying, and I was definitely not expecting this scene going into the movie. I loved that this movie scared me because I tend to not get scared by most horror movies. 

The setting of this movie was alright. Taking place in space for the majority of the movie allowed for some cool looking shots. But, most of the time, the crew was in a dark space where nothing shouted out to me cinematically, but I did enjoy it. Some shots of the surrounding planet looked cool though, so I do have to give credit because there were some scenes in this movie that were beautiful.

Another positive of “Alien: Romulus” was the characters, but I also think that they were a negative. I think the way that the characters were handled went well. Fede Álvarez, the movie’s director, knew how to handle the likable characters and what to do with the annoying and unlikable ones too. But, I think this movie fell short with the development of characters and the fact that they were just forgettable. Off the top of my head, I can only name one character, Andy. He was the synthetic in this movie. Synthetics are androids in this “Alien” universe, and Andy was very pleasant and interesting. But the rest of the crew felt like background characters, which is a bit of a negative.

In general, “Alien: Romulus” was a very good mix of horror and storytelling. 

I would watch this movie again, and it is definitely one of the better movies to come out of 2024, scoring 4/5 stars from me.