Alien: Romulus

this has been my most anticipated movie of the summer and after a painfully long wait, i got to watch this yesterday in IMAX which was itself just an instant five stars. i loved it so much. it was so so worth watching it in that format. let’s just say that at first, when alien: romulus got announced, i was extremely skeptical about it. i was unsure if fede álvarez would do a good job with this, considering the amount of pressure on him to continue such a beloved franchise. but he proved to us that he loves this franchise as much as the viewers and wants to do it justice and he delivered. this was really good. like really really good. from the start and up until the final act, i was just so glad that it met all of my expectations. the cast was amazing, i loved all of their characters. there was not a single bad performance, especially cailee spaeny and david johnson who plays cailee’s on-screen brother. rain being andy’s protector, their dynamic was something we haven’t seen before in this entire franchise and i really liked it. david johnson did an amazing job with his role, playing two different personalities with what seemed like complete ease. cailee spaeny as always, was so great. she’s going to be huge in the future. rain carradine is already one of my favorites in the horror world.  i liked how we saw more of the world and how humanity lives instead of just straight up jumping into the ship. the xenomorphs in this are still extremely unsettling and i’m such a great fan of movies that involve the use of practical effects, it is such a hard thing to do and requires a lot of effort and you need proper skills to make it look terrific on camera, and the practical effects in this were just so great and i truly appreciate it. the facehuggers were heavily involved in this movie and they were one of my favorites, best they’ve ever looked in the entire franchise. the cryo room scene where we see the facehuggers was so tense. i was expecting a lot more gore and just generally, gruesome stuff, but that didn’t happen. yet, a lot of the action sequences here were great nonetheless. my favourite being the elevator and gravity scene between andy and rain. it was so perfectly done. the final act was a mixture between the four alien films but it was also so good. i don’t think i properly breathed during it. it was so tense. cailee spaeny was so great in the final act.  the film pays homage to the gorgeous set designs that were created in the first movie by the talented set designers, the sets in alien romulus were just as beautiful. even more so, at times. it felt exactly like the original alien movies, some of the scenes in this were clearly taken or inspired from the original movies but it didn’t feel forced or unimaginative. it was only to pay tribute to the first movies so that this new addition to the franchise wouldn’t feel completely foreign.  obviously, this is not close to the first two alien movies in the franchise because those two are just iconic and a game changer for the sci-fi horror genre but it definitely felt like a delight to watch. especially because the movies after the first two were really bad and not worth remembering again. as you can tell, i’m just very satisfied by it and happy that i watched an alien film from the franchise that could be compared to the original in terms of brilliance. i really hope we see more of rain carradine and andy in the future. there’s a lot more that can be done with this.