What eventually became the Alien Franchise was unleashed in 1979 when 20th Century-Fox rolled out Alien, director Ridley Scott's seminal, cosmic space shocker that wound up making a ton of money and establishing Sigourney Weaver as a major star. For better and for worse, Alien spawned a string of sequels, prequels and interquels that have endured for 45 years--with no end in sight. That first movie was an edge-of-your-seat, all-out horror show lurking beneath the trappings of science fiction. James Cameron's 1986 follow-up, Aliens, striking a slightly different tone, became an even bigger box office smash than the first. A nail-biting, non-stop roller-coaster ride, Aliens featured Sigourney Weaver in the lead role that made her famous. Her triumphant return as Ripley in Aliens subsequently netted the actress an Academy Award nomination. Realizing they were on a roll, 20th Century Fox brought back Weaver (this time, with a shaved head), and an entirely new cast, for novice filmmaker David Fincher's 1992 misfire, Alien3. Less successful (and considerably bleaker) than the other two movies, Alien3 is still a masterpiece in light of what was to come (and to be fair, the reputation of Alien3 has improved in the years since its release). Alien3 also brought an ending to Ripley's character arc--or so we were led to believe. However, in 1997, a fourth installment, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Alien: Resurrection resurrected Weaver's Ripley--or something resembling Ripley--for yet one more outing. Alas, the less said about Alien: Resurrection, the better. In fact, multiply that sentiment times ten for the two movies that followed: the execrable Alien vs. Predator (2004), and the even more abominable Alien vs. Predator: Requiem (2007). After those two atrocities, Ridley Scott eased back into the driver's seat with two--sort of--world-building backstories for the Alien universe, both featuring hottie Michael Fassbender as the synthetic crewmember, David. Prometheus (2012) fared well at the box office even though the plot seemed to want to be more profound than it actually was. Alien: Covenant (2017) took up where Prometheus left off but was a box office disappointment for Fox. In a nutshell, that's the brief trajectory of the Alien film series that leads us to the present moment. 

To wit, the xenomorphs are back in director Fede Alvarez's gore-soaked Alien: Romulus. Unfortunately, Alvarez, who previously directed 2013's Evil Dead remake and Don't Breathe (2016), is not a particularly original thinker or creator. Alien: Romulus does nothing little to alter that fact. In this movie, Alvarez remixes the hits and misses of preceding alien movies, tossed them together, and produced a horror/sci-fi salad that is woefully lacking in thrills, chills or scares. In fact, he rips off so much from Alien and Aliens that this movie's finale is entirely predictable: you don't need to be clairvoyant to see what's coming. But, for the most part, Alien: Romulus is pretty boring: nothing is fresh or authentic, which, if you've seen the other movies in the series, sorely diminishes whatever thrills might, otherwise, be had. 

Alvarez seems to take forever setting up the action. After about 15 or 20 minutes of expository scenes, I figured it was a good time for me to go pee. When I got back, they'd barely gotten off the wretched Gulag where the movie's characters are mired in a hopeless muck of hard labor and scavenging. This must surely be cinema's grimiest and gloomiest space colony ever. Nasty, filthy, blecchhhh. So, anyway, our main character, a miner named Rain, pals around with her bff, Andy, a "brain"-damaged rescue synth with the mental capacity of a child. The pair runs into Rain's ex-boyfriend, Tyler (Archie Renaux) and his crew: cousin Bjorn (Spike Fearn), sister Kay (Isabela Merced), and the ship's navigator Navarro (Aileen Wu). With no reason to remain on their squalid space colony, Rain and Andy hop aboard Tyler's transport-hauling ship and jet off to an abandoned space station located just outside the planet's rings. Once there, they hope to retrieve a few cryonic stasis chambers which will allow them to hyper-sleep while their auto-piloted spaceship takes them to a remote--but more hospitable--planet. When they do, finally, connect to the abandoned space station, they discover that it was actually a research station with two wings, one of which is Romulus, the other Remus. You can guess what the researchers on the research station were researching. 

The crew has 36 hours to remove the stasis chambers from the derelict research station before it crashes into the asteroid belt swirling around the mining planet. After docking with the station, the crewmembers mosey over, unwittingly awakening a multitude of skittering horrors while they haul away their new and improved sleeping quarters. Faces are finally hugged, xenomorphs spill acidic blood hither and yon, folks are eaten, and there's a lot of running through the facility's extremely dark passageways. When a crash alters the station's orbit, the survivors discover they have less than an hour to board the transport hauler and get the hell out of there. A task easier said than done. Since this film is, essentially, a remake of the first Alien movie, with generous helpings of Aliens, the film's climax is signaled long before it actually arrives. In fact, when an alien/human hybrid (and Freddy Krueger lookalike) shows up (in a particularly gnarly scene) near the end, the movie morphs into a twisted copy of Resurrection before, ultimately, segueing back into an Alien/Aliens ending. 

Most of the cast members of Alien-Romulus look like they wandered over from the set of a CW teen drama. Certainly, they don't resemble sharpshooting space adventurers, renegade miners, or pilots of an interplanetary spacecraft: they barely look old enough to buy beer without two forms of I.D. The lone standout, in more ways than one, David Jonsson (whom you may recognize from HBO's series, Industry) actually looks like an adult; he is both believable and moving as the electronically compromised Andy. The ghost of Ian Holm--also an adult, albeit a dead adult--shows up via some animatronic trickery as Rook, the spitting image of the old Nostromo's devious droid, Ash. Like Ash in the first movie, Rook's electrical system must be reconfigured so he can deliver an ominous message to the youngster's crew. The animatronic imaging thing is a bit creepy, and it just seems wrong to see long-dead performers being reconstituted for current use. What's next? Bette Davis in a rom-com with Ryan Gosling? 

Admittedly, the actors here are remarkably athletic. Well, with all the sprinting, climbing, jumping and rolling (mostly in the dark) they'd have to be. They also scream very well. I suppose lead actor, Cailee Spaeny, is meant to step into the tall shoes of Sigourney Weaver, but Weaver was clearly a grown-up and a credible action hero, and Spaeny, well, seems out of place in this movie. I hear she was excellent in Priscilla, though, so maybe character dramas are more her oeuvre.  

There are scenes of bloody carnage in Alien: Romulus but even the gross-out scenes are hand-me-downs from previous movies. Of course, the lighting in this movie is so atrocious that it tends to lessen the impact of the monster attacks. But, when we are allowed to see them up close, the xenomorphs look fantastic. On the other hand, I was less impressed with the face huggers design, which looked like skittering rubber shoe soles with tails. 

To sum it up: Alien: Romulus is simply a mishmash of scenes already existing in the Alien universe. You've seen it all before.  And in much better lighting.