Fede Álvarez's Alien: Romulus Might Be Like his Evil Dead, For Better And Worse

Horror movies follow the same trends as every other genre. While independent and lesser-known filmmakers produce original ideas, the studios stick to a handful of profitable IPs. Alien: Romulus will reinvent the 45-year-old Alien franchise by eschewing the widely despised details from Prometheus. Director Fede Álvarez sees an opportunity between the original film and its action-packed sequel. He worked similar magic in his 2013 take on Evil Dead, which earned mixed reviews for its approach.

Fede Álvarez has enjoyed a strange career with several sharp turns. He exploded onto the scene in 2013 with his Evil Dead remake, but he's better known for his follow-up, Don't Breathe. That grim thriller depicted three young thieves breaking into a blind man's house, only to discover dark secrets under his seemingly normal life. His next three films, including the ill-fated sequel he only wrote and produced, failed to live up to his first original project. Alien: Romulus could be the next frontier in his complex career.

Alien: Romulus Looks Like a Return to Form

The teaser for Alien: Romulus feels like a high-budget fan film. Its sound evokes a particular nostalgia. It's the franchise's answer to David Gordon Green's 2018 Halloween reboot. The film will take place between Ridley Scott's 1979 Alien and James Cameron's 1986 Aliens. Alien remains one of the most influential horror films ever made. Its knockoffs still earn theatrical runs today, with films like Life, Underwater, and Breach borrowing half their tricks from the 70s classic. Fans cried out for an Alien film that captured the tense gothic horror of the original. Unfortunately, almost every sequel ignored that request.

The Alien franchise consistently added detail to a film that excelled at maintaining mystery. The shocking twist in the original Alien has nothing to do with the origin of the then-unnamed Xenomorph or Space Jockey. It kept its events claustrophobic, contained, and deeply personal. Prometheus upended the franchise with a mountain of inconsistent and uninteresting lore no one asked for. Troublingly, the modern prequels divide their time between sub-par remakes of the first film and dull lore dumps. Prometheus and Alien: Covenant featured spaceship crews struggling to evade acid-blooded aliens, but they cut their shoddy reboot with their worthless explanations. Romulus could dispense with the chaff to make room for more wheat. Unfortunately, that strategy comes with new risks, some of which rear their ugly heads in Fede Álvarez's earlier work.

Evil Dead (2013) Has Ups and Downs

Alien: Romulus and Evil Dead (2013) share a ton of DNA. Fede Álvarez directs both while co-writing both scripts with Rodo Sayagues. Both are attempts to reignite a dormant franchise with modern filmmaking techniques. Both have the original filmmakers attached as producers. While Evil Dead was a remake of Raimi's 1981 original, Alien: Romulus serves a similar role without undoing the narrative of the first outing. Álvarez's Evil Dead is a gripping horror movie that captures the nightmarish circumstances of its source material. It spends roughly 20 minutes setting the stage before kicking into a non-stop thrill ride with absurdly excessive blood and gore. While it delivers in some ways, critics pushed against its lack of innovation. Alien: Romulus could risk a similar fate.

Evil Dead is what it says on the tin. Its no-frills approach eschewed anything as advanced as character development or deeper dives into the franchise's lore. Some critiqued the lack of humor, arguing the borderline slapstick approach to violence seen in Sam Raimi's classic was integral to its success. Evil Dead (2013) lacked gags. Alien doesn't have that problem, but it does hide multitudes of thematic depth that could go ignored by a cursory glance. If Álvarez's Alien sequel seeks only to capture the horror of the acid-blooded killing machine, it risks delivering little more than temporary shock value. Fans have already seen a Xenomorph turn hundreds into stains on spaceship walls. As fun as another rush of atmospheric violence could be, Alien deserves better than repetitive, mindless bloodshed.

Álvarez's Evil Dead is worth watching, but it's hard to remember beyond its kills. Alien: Romulus could innovate on the franchise's unique attributes and deliver the best version of its narrative in decades. It's unlikely, but Álvarez knows what he's doing. The director must deliver a grounded narrative with memorable characters to capture anything beyond visceral popcorn entertainment. Alien: Romulus will hit theaters this August. Fans will have to wait and see whether Fede Álvarez can deliver the nightmare they've been waiting for.