Alien: Romulus

 Warning: I try not to do spoilers, but this is a movie best enjoyed without knowing anything about it. I'd avoid the synopsis below and read on from after the image if you haven't seen it yet. Hell, avoid the trailers if possible.

 A bunch of no-future kids in a hellish corporate mining world band together to explore a mysterious derelict structure they've found floating in the skies above them. They think it might hold cryostasis pods, which would allow them to escape away from the system and a short life of wage slavery in the mines.

 Rain (Cailee Spaeny) is invited along, partly because the self-proclaimed leader (Archie Renaux) seems to be sweet on her but mostly because her adoptive brother (David Jonsson) is a Weyland-Yutani android - and he might be able to help them bypass some of the corporate security when they break into the structure.

 Said structure turns out to be a full blown Wey-Yu space station... and the resting place for the frozen remains of the xenomorph from the original alien, recovered by an automated probe from the wreck of the Nostromo in the film's cold-open. Things proceed about as well as you'd expect.

 Alien: Romulus, like the space station that lends the film its title, is a film split into two halves: A serious, grounded, tense and very well-thought-out thriller, chased by a gleefully batshit latter-day Alien franchise film with maybe one too many references to the series' past. The first half is clearly superior, and there's some tonal clash to reckon with as things get more and more over the top, but the final stretch remains extremely enjoyable as long as you adjust to a new, more ridiculous status quo in which things just don't quite make as much sense any more.

 It makes sense, then, that it's directed by the great Fede Alvarez (who also co-wrote the script with regular collaborator Rodo Sayagues); This story structure seems to be his MO, after all. His direction here is excellent, muscular and mercurial as the action demands, with the addition of stately (and beautiful) sci-fi vistas to his repertoire. Cinematographer Galo Olivares helps him cleave to the dark and gritty visual style of the first two Aliens, but the camera movements are freer, more prone to indulge in slightly show-offy stunts. It looks great.

 Well... mostly great. There's one particular effect - an act of digital necromancy featuring an android from the series' past - that's distractingly bad; Some of the worst dead-eyed zombie puppeteering Hollywood has offered up yet, made even more insulting because it's shitting over the memory of a well-loved actor, and because it gets a surprising amount of screentime. Romulus started its life as a Hulu streaming exclusive, and I do wonder if these scenes are an artifact of a prior, lower-budget incarnation of the film. This is not the only problematic element (I have my issues with this film's incarnation of the now-obligatory 'final threat' Rain has to face alone)... but it's by far the worst.
 The rest is good to great. The production design (Naaman Marshall) in particular remains incredible, keeping that weird, lovely, stolid 1970's take on future space functionality - and most of the new elements feel of a piece with what's come before.

 The characters get a little lost amid the turns of the busy story, but they are still well-developed enough that it's easy to root for -or against- them. Civil War's Spaeny is particularly good, but the film belongs to Jonsson, who has a lot of fun playing the many changes his android goes through while providing the script's most interesting conundrums.

 Alvarez tones back his bloodthirst slightly, but this is still the most graphic gore we've gotten so far in an Alien movie - including a very grisly, memorable death of a type I've been waiting for ever since we found out the nature of the blood running through the xenomorph's veins. The back half finds some fairly inventive ways to put the various characters through the wringer, and even if it relies a little too much on callbacks (did we really need as many references to the famous Xenomorph lovingly sniffing Ripley shots?), there are still some tense, enjoyably ridiculous horror and action beats there.

 As well as focusing on the bloodshed, Alvarez also pays special attention to the more depraved aspects of notorious pervert H.R.Giger's original designs. Expect a lot of phallic and vaginal imagery, and a very uncomfortable, sexualized depiction of what can only be described as oral rape. Tasteful, it ain't, even before the rest of the story around it descends into madness; Even a discarded chest burster skin looks like a used condom. I have no idea how this managed to get a 15 rating here in the UK.

 Alien and Aliens will forever stand as the ur-text of games that have any sort of action, horror or sci-fi trappings. It's appropriate, then, that this movie was directly inspired by the (excellent) 2014 game Alien: Isolation; Even when the script makes sense of them, there's something very videogame-y about the setup and many of its setpieces - how complications stack on top of each other to provide poor Rain and her friends a proper survival horror gauntlet.

 I can't overstate how good the first hour of this film is. If the movie had reined in its more outré instincts and self-referential impulses for the back half, I'd be perfectly happy to hold it up as one of a piece with the first two installments. As it is, this is a flawed, somewhat disappointing, but still very fun Alien movie; Easily the fourth best - which, to be clear, I don't consider an insult whatsoever.