“I’m afraid I have a new directive. To do what’s best for the company.”
After decades of weak sequels and sub-par writing, the “Alien” franchise came back swinging in 2024 with “Alien: Romulus,” directed by Fede Álvarez. This film takes the xenomorph-infested world we know and love and propels it forward into the next chapter of Alien, while still maintaining the spirit of the original movie. The only difference is that this film was made with today’s context in mind, which makes it even more horrifying.
Welcome back to the Modern Monster, your one-stop shop for all things spooky. Each week, I find a new scary story to feature on this column, from movies, books, history and more. I’ll also talk about what we can learn from these stories and what makes them so terrifying. Spoilers start now!
In “Alien: Romulus,” the morally-gray-if-not-outright-evil space exploration company Weyland-Yutani has finally found the xenomorph that terrorized and murdered the crew of the Nostromo in the original “Alien.” The presumed-dead xenomorph is brought to the Renaissance Space Station to be studied, but the xenomorph, unsurprisingly alive, frees itself and proceeds to wreak havoc, killing everyone onboard.
The orphaned Rain, played by Cailee Spaeny, is a young woman living on the Weyland-Yutani-owned colonization planet of LV-410. Rain is hoping to work enough hours to get a travel permit, so she and her adoptive android brother Andy, played by David Jonsson, can escape to the prosperous planet of Yvaga.
This dream is shared by Rain’s ragtag group of friends, who own a spaceship, but unfortunately, they can’t get to Yvaga without cryo-sleep. This issue is seemingly solved when Rain’s friend Tyler, played by Archie Renaux, tells the group that he believes the nearby abandoned space station has the pods and fuel needed for cryo-sleep.
Of course, the space station is much more dangerous than anyone thought. One member of the group ends up impregnated by a facehugger, and a new xenomorph is born. It also doesn’t help that the group ends up finding an android module — essentially a hard drive that gives an android its brain — and plugs it into Andy in the hopes that it will grant him higher security access to the ship. It works, but it overrides Andy original directive, which is to do whatever is best for Rain. Now he only does what the company wants.
When Andy’s programming is changed via the module and “Evil Andy” is born, he begins to weigh the value of human life. The fatal flaw of the humans in this story is that they can’t let each other go. They can’t kill the infected and they can’t leave anyone behind. Andy can, even though the group would be completely fine with leaving him behind. Except, of course, for Rain.
By the end of the movie, Rain realizes how important Andy is. She gives him a new directive: Do what’s best for the two of them, together. Their bond has strengthened, and no one’s getting left behind.
The “Alien” franchise, when you get down to it, is about the evil in the world trying to steal autonomy from others. The evil, whether it’s the xenomorph or Weyland-Yutani, is going to take everything from the powerless people around them and use that to further their own goals. And that includes a person’s body.
If Rain wants a permit to leave the planet she’s on, she needs to work 12,000 hours. When she finally does, Weyland-Yutani informs her that they’ve not only raised her quota to 24,000 hours, but they’re also moving her to work in the coal mines. If Rain wants to leave the planet by following Weyland-Yutani’s rules, she’ll need to spend the next six years in the mines.
Working in a coal mine is dangerous and unhealthy, in a way that completely destroys the body. If Rain wants to leave, that’s what she’ll have to give up. Alternatively, she can resort to theft. Neither ending is good, and that’s the fault of the company.
While on the Renaissance, Rain, Andy and Tyler find a serum known as Z-01, a vial of genetic material sourced from the xenomorph. Weyland-Yutani hopes to perfect this serum and inject it into humans to create the true perfect organism, which will be capable of colonizing with even more efficiency. Ultimately, Weyland-Yutani wants to colonize.
The serum ends up being the ultimate Chekhov’s gun when Rain, Andy and Tyler find their friend Kay, played by Isabela Merced. Kay, who is early on in her pregnancy, is bleeding out from a xenomorph-inflicted wound. However, she hasn’t been facehugged as the xenomorphs see it as a waste, since she’s already dying.
Kay ends up injecting herself with Z-01, which heals her wounds. Rain gets her into a cryo-sleep pod on their ship and does the same with Andy — Tyler is dead by this point — when Kay’s pod begins sounding an alarm. She’s dying.
The fetus growing within Kay was hit with a heaping dose of Z-01, and now it’s ready to be born. This birth kills Kay, and from this horrifying sequence we get the “Offspring,” which acts as our final boss of the movie. Rain wins, of course, and Andy makes it out alive too.
As a viewer, it’s hard to hate the xenomorph when all it’s doing is acting on its nature. It’s very easy to hate Weyland-Yutani when the company, by choice, sacrifices human lives for the sake of reaching a quote, or finding that next step in the staircase of progress.
“Alien: Romulus” was released two years after Roe v. Wade, which protects abortion rights, was repealed by the U.S. Supreme Court. And the movie hammers that point into the ground when Kay is killed by her own child.
The most terrifying part of the “Alien” franchise is the body horror. In every movie, and especially in “Alien: Romulus,” the bodily autonomy of our heroes and victims is ripped away. Control is lost. And there’s nothing scarier than losing control of your own body.
When looking at movies for this column, I like to attach the themes within to something in the real world. Something human, to put it in context. In this instance, I can’t pick one.
The current state of America is one of crisis. The rights of women, immigrants, the disabled and transgender people are being ripped away. Women are losing rights to their own body, immigrants are being stolen from their homes and shipped to prisons, disabled people are losing access to important programs and transgender people are losing access to gender-affirming care. Higher education is in jeopardy, and learning is being restricted.
“Alien: Romulus” is just a movie, and it has no actual connection to any of the real-world crises going on all around us. But in some sense, it’s a cautionary tale. It’s a horror movie for a reason, and it looks like it’s only going to get scarier.