it turns out to be more of a space station, equipped with the cryo-pods they’ll need to make the years-long journey to a new world. (alien is that rare sci-fi story that both understands that it can take a long time to travel between the stars, and uses it to narrative advantage.)
thus does co-writer and director fede alvarez (don’t breathe, 2013’s evil dead reboot) set up a series of nested timelines. to avoid another six years on the colony, and power their cryo-pods for a nine-year trip, rain and her comrades (including the pregnant kay, played by isabela merced) have 36 hours to ransack the romulus before it crashes into a gorgeous planetary ring. whoops, make that 47 minutes!
it all seems quite doable until the looters accidentally disturb a nest of alien facehuggers (such 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 implacable machine logic keep getting in his way.
the xenomorph is ready for its closeup in alien: romulus.
20th century studios
meanwhile, the xenomorphs do what they’ve always done best, trasmogrifying into a terrifying array of killer creatures, sometimes at a speed that seems biologically impossible, but whatever.
it’s gory and creepy rather than flat-out terrifying (which is fine by me as i was never one for jump-scares anyway), and while there’s clearly a healthy dose of computer-generated trickery, there are also some seemingly practical effects, as when a cut-in-half robot is perched atop a table, just where you’d expect him to be if a human were playing him and had to hide their legs.