Still from Alien: Romulus (2024), dir. Fede Álvarez, digital film (4K), color, sound, 119 minutes.
*Please note that this piece contains spoilers*
Becoming a horror film devotee happened overnight. It was the summer of 2007—a summer of airplane crashes, spacecraft milestones, the European heatwave, and the release of the iPhone in the United States. Google had owned YouTube for almost a year and was just about to introduce advertising to its user base with overlay ads.1 Facebook and Twitter were in their infancy, and Instagram didn’t even exist yet.
It was a year for horror sequels, remakes, and franchise expansions: Rob Zombie's Halloween; Michael Haneke’s second Funny Games; Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's 28 Weeks Later; The Brothers Strause's Alien vs. Predator: Requiem; David Flores's Lake Placid 2; Darren Lynn Bousman's Saw IV. It was also a big kick-off year for found-footage horror soon to become their own franchises (Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza's [Rec] and Oren Peli's Paranormal Activity) and book-to-movie thrillers centered around end-of-the-world survival and heroics (Francis Lawrence's I Am Legend and Frank Darabont's The Mist).
It was the year we moved to Singapore after a lifetime in Hong Kong. I was an awkward thirteen-year-old starting over with no friends, having trouble adjusting to the lack of seasonality and being forbidden from having a Facebook account to keep in touch with those I’d left behind. But one night in August, I relished that I could watch, in ad-free parts, the recently released The Hills Have Eyes 2 (dir. Martin Weisz) from the comfort of my home on youtube.com. I shared a bedroom with my sister, so I sat at a table in the living room's dark with our family laptop and a strawberry-kiwi Snapple (which I would spill all over the keyboard halfway through the film) and clicked play on part 1. I turned on a light just to be safe. That August, I learned how much I love to be afraid.
A little less than a year later, on my fourteenth birthday, I was gifted the films The Shining (1980), Se7en (1995), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), and Alien (1979), which quickly became my favorite. It’s a film I've probably watched in earnest about fifteen times, so when my brother excitedly sent me the trailer for Alien: Romulus, I refused to watch it. Throughout my nearly decade of studying art history and film, including the evolution of the horror film, I’ve tried to hold little space for judgment and snobbery. It's so easy, especially in these realms, to fall into the superiority complex that can come with having a deep passion for something. There seems to be this shared belief that having more exposure and experience leads to attaining some sort of pure knowledge of the subject, and therefore, the opinions you hold about it must be correct or, at the very least, have more merit than others. This shrinks any room for nuance when discussing these topics, leaving many trying to outdo each other or 'win' a conversation. I had prided myself on my ability to hold space for opposing thoughts or viewpoints, especially when discussing the subjectivity of art. Yet here I found myself purposefully and prematurely avoiding the existence of art that I felt could never hold up or add anything to the legacy of Ridley Scott's Alien. Of course, I would watch it eventually, I thought, but through clenched teeth and the anticipation that it would fail me and the franchise. And somewhat embarrassingly, it wasn't until I saw a quote attributed to Scott floating around online, assuring me that he thought the new film was "fucking awesome," that I became hopeful and excited to see it.
Still from Alien (1979), dir. Ridley Scott, 35mm, color, sound, 116 minutes.
The film ended up exceeding my expectations. Whether Ridley Scott had indeed deemed it "fucking awesome" or not, I shared the sentiment. Despite being aware of all the horror tropes, gimmicks, elements, themes, and tricks, and despite knowing the ins and outs of the film’s predecessors, I was jumping at every jump-scare, internally yelling at every lousy decision the protagonists made, shying away from each bloody moment I knew would be coming and crying out of sheer joy at the end of what I felt was a justified and appropriate homage to the film I hold dearest to my heart and the filmmaker who directed it. This movie tapped into the memory of my fourteen-year-old fear, and I once again could taste the joy of being afraid that I deeply missed. Which is why I ended up doing a 180 and taking great offense to the myriad of bad reviews I saw online: a few lamenting over its slow start, some upset over its apparent catering to the fans, a handful comparing the dialogue to the MCU, and most mocking its obvious reminders of the first few films and wishing Scott would just “come back and make another prequel already.”
I can understand. Alien has remained one of the most influential films since it came out 45 years ago. The Independent wrote in 2019 that when discussing his film, Ridley Scott said he wanted Alien to be an “unpretentious, riveting thriller…” but ironically, it has inspired more than enough pretentious commentary from critics, academics, and the public alike. Every frame of his film and James Cameron’s sequel Aliens (1986) has been pored over for meaning from Freudian analysis of the face huggers, explorations of women’s role in horror with Sigourney Weaver’s portrayal of Ellen Ripley, essays on the aesthetic choices of Swiss artist H.R. Giger’s design for the xenomorph, to comparing our dystopian treatment of persons under capitalism mirrored in the operations of the Weyland-Yutani corporation. With the emergence of Alien: Romulus, the rise of Alien-expert commentary shows no sign of slowing down.
Still from Alien: Romulus (2024), dir. Fede Álvarez, digital film (4K), color, sound, 119 minutes.
Alien was only Ridley Scott's second feature; its sequel, Aliens, was James Cameron's third; and this latest installment is director Fede Álvarez's fourth. It's a franchise that inspires, connects, nourishes and stays true to itself as if it were a living, breathing organism that has only changed naturally as it ages. While intriguingly familiar and beautifully designed, the low-fi technology remains a secondary focus while retaining timelessness. The use of practical effects engineered for the first film is honored in both later works. While fans and critics have been frustrated with Ridley Scott's prequels, Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant (2017), due to his over-dependence on CGI and seemingly getting lost in the desire to over-explain his own mythology, I was surprised to see the selective amnesia commentators had when accusing Álvarez's film of the same whilst wishing Scott would return with another prequel. I find some humor in reading the comments critiquing the latest film's slow start, in that the original continues to be lauded for its gripping pace—a masterful and lingering build up to a furious climax. The numerous takes from viewers having trouble with Alien: Romulus' touching on the previous films seem to be willfully intolerant of the film's setting between the events of Alien and Aliens as well as the fact that Ridley Scott, as many directors are with continuations of their work, was very much involved with the film as a producer and early critic, offering Álvarez many notes he ended up taking. Álvarez's version fills in the gaps while maintaining the recognizable brand of a dystopian future that we can tap into today.
The world of Alien showcases blue-collar exploitation set against the backdrop of the expanse of space. Each film features commentary on climate crises, extractivism, capitalism, and colonization. With the extracting of resources by an overlord-esque corporation often referred to as "the company," the future looks mighty bleak with only the exposure to new existential threats, hostile environments, and job hazards (that include being sacrificed in the name of advancing bioweapon technology) to look forward to. Not much has changed in the last 45 years. There is an undeniable everlasting quality to the film's themes as time passes. Many critics saw the original release as a reaction to the war the United States had waged in Vietnam, with it following elements of the styles of Vietnam war films as the crew of the Nostromo waged their own war against an "invisible entity." This has stayed relevant during the franchise’s development with America's greed-driven wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the unending cold wars that continue against Russia and China, and the invisible enemy continues to be used as a tool manufactured by the state to scapegoat a political adversary and achieve its goals to the detriment of its people.
The franchise also explores sexual assault and body autonomy, uncharacteristically of horror, not relying upon the victims being women. Facehuggers use a proboscis2 to force eggs deep into the host's body; the interior of the adult xenomorph's mouth reveals a smaller phallus-shaped mouth with teeth that could be seen as vagina dentata;3 and crew members turned hosts aware of their ‘impregnation’ are often forced or coerced into 'delivery' against their wants, health, or safety. While the films never intended to be a feminist statement, Sigourney Weaver's treatment of Ripley and Cailee Spaeny's treatment of Alien Romulus' Rain come at a time where a woman’s intelligence and resolve against threats in a world often resorting to aggression and violence do feel cheapened by their stripping down to their underwear in the final acts, but remain critical to the success and relevance of the films.
Although set in the same universe and utilizing some of the same characters, Cameron and Álvarez successfully balance being homages to Alien while retaining their own identities. Those hoping that Alien: Romulus would outdo, out-gore, or out-shock the original film probably hated or would've hated Cameron's sequel with the same fervor when it came out. In an interview by Film4 in 2016, Cameron explained, "I was as much doing an homage to what Ridley [Scott] had created as I was making my own movie, but I did set out to do both in a balance. I didn't think I could outdo Alien for pure shock…So I had to come up with an end run around that would be equally entertaining for an audience but in a different way." This is essentially how I see the newest movie and, in general, how I see any iterative artwork. So why is there so much disappointment and disdain for this most recent homage?
Still from Alien (1979), dir. Ridley Scott, 35mm, color, sound, 116 minutes.
There is a rich and well-known history of filmmakers paying respect to films that have influenced their lives and careers. Unlike parodying or spoofing, homages range from respectful referential nods to full-on love letters to the muse. While there's a thin line between duplication and paying tribute, cinema hinges upon this ability to look back to move forward. Last year, I wrote an essay on the fallibility of memory and film. I noted the viewer's reliance and insistence upon a film, even a fictional work, existing as an honest reproduction of some form of reality. Yet the entertainment we claim entitlement to and crave often contradicts this. We want to be shown fantastical moving images, to be engaged and immersed in worlds that aren't our own but also to see a reference point we can anchor ourselves to—I want to witness someone else's portrayal of fantasy, horror, comedy, or adventure while having been left enough room to see myself living there. After sitting comfortably in a luxury recliner for two hours, I want to exit a theater believing I had just fought for my life and won.
There is much discourse in art history about how to distinguish between art as an outright replica or a merited response. This is often from a copyright and intellectual property standpoint, but the same questions continue to come up regardless of the art form: what makes art good or bad, what gives the expression of a concept validity, how do we measure if enough change has occurred for a work to be deemed original, and can there be value in a copy?
Elements of global culture seem to push themselves further toward the brink of recursive self-reference, self-consciousness, and self-parody. The evolution of social networking and electronic communication continue to drive this, and memes are an excellent example of this phenomenon, with ideas, behaviors, and/or styles spreading through mass imitation. The term meme arose in 1976 as an explanation of things that are 'reproduced' in this way, with British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins coining it as a shortening of mimeme, coming from the Ancient Greek word mīmēma (μίμημα), meaning 'imitated thing.’ Ancient Greek philosophers, Plato and Aristotle spoke of mimesis as a re-presentation of nature. Plato believed all artistic creation is a form of imitation, and Aristotle stressed that tragedy was an "imitation of an action." In contemporary philosophy of mind, social neuroscience, and developmental psychology, a common topic is the study of imitative behavior. Evidence shows that humans imitate across a wide range of tasks and domains with high fidelity and subtle sensitivity to context, more so than any other species.4 Questions remain about imitation’s origins and purpose.
One explanation offered is simple— imitation helps us survive— and because the operations of human culture are a recursive system of self-reflexivity, participating in culture is essential. Author and founding executive editor of Wired magazine, Kevin Kelly, wrote in his book Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World, published in 1992:
[But] if we consider culture as its own self-organizing system - a system with its own agenda and pressure to survive- then the history of humans gets even more interesting...systems of self-replicating ideas or memes can quickly accumulate their own agenda and behaviors. I assign no higher motive to a cultural entity than the primitive drive to reproduce itself and modify its environment to aid its spread. One way the self-organizing system can do this is by consuming human biological resources...culture follows our bodies, while our bodies follow culture. In the absence of culture, humans seem to lose distinctly human talents.
Since art is a means of communication utilized to relay the crucial elements of culture and the time in place in which it was created, its mimetic qualities will, as Plato and Aristotle surmised centuries ago, be inherent to the nature of producing it. Imitation builds culture; it helps us understand and relay information, connect with each other and the world, and feel safe. Horror movies are no exception. In Robin Wood's essay, The Return of the Repressed, he remarks that contemporary horror cinema brings "to a focus a spirit of negativity, an undifferentiated lust for destruction, that seems to be not far below the surface of the modern collective consciousness…" It can feel safer to collectively be afraid of the same things and to participate in the same attitudinal response to the anxieties and tragedies in front of us. Art acts as a commentary on social, political, environmental, and personal strife. In the case of Alien, the nightmarish creature Ridley Scott brought to life embodies culture and acts as a harbinger of category crisis. In his essay, Monster Culture (Seven Theses), Jeffrey Jerome Cohen suggests that "the monster's body is a cultural body...being born at a metaphoric crossroads as an embodiment of a certain cultural moment—of a time, a feeling, and a place." The xenomorph in Alien quite literally exists as a physical manifestation of the zeitgeist, incorporating all fear, desire, anxiety, and fantasy. Cohen continues:
A construct and a projection, the monster exists only to be read: the monstrum is etymologically 'that which reveals,' 'that which warns,' a glyph that seeks a hierophant. Like a letter on the page, the monster signifies something other than itself: it is always a displacement, always inhabits the gap between the time of upheaval that created it and the moment into which it is received, to be born again.
By existing in ontological liminality, the monster often distinguishes times of cultural crisis. The viewer, possibly frustrated with a franchise's insistence on continuance and, despite the awareness of a fictionalized reality, challenges the lack of logic in the monster continuing to survive or escape death throughout its iterations. The geography of the monster presents itself as hazardous, conflicting traditional methods of organizing knowledge and human experience, and therefore, remains a contested cultural space. No matter how many times an assailed Ripley jettisons the xenomorph into the unforgiving black of the universe, its progeny5 returns because it refuses easy categorization, not unlike Jason Vorhees of Miller's Friday the 13th, Michael Myers of Carpenter's Halloween, and Freddy Kreuger of Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street. Cohen remarks that the monster exists as "an invitation to explore new and interconnected methods of perceiving the world," and yet, we remain limited by our binary beliefs on how film and art should operate. Our dissatisfaction with the experience ends up being a more extensive imitation of our dissatisfaction with the culture.
It is a chicken-or-egg situation when it comes to the originality of an idea, and we have no choice but to be exposed to and inspired by the ideas and products of those ideas that have come before us. The development of communicating through mimicry continues its expanse with the fuel of technology and modern communication at its fingertips. Whether a work of art, original or reproduction, lives up to your expectations or disappoints, sentiment should not be the sole gauge used to measure its effectiveness at cultural participation and communication, or its success as a work alone. I may come across as a fourteen-year-old girl defending her favorite piece of cinema, but my dismay in the reception of Alien: Romulus lies not merely in the fact that I felt an attachment to it as a project and deemed it a worthy new chapter in the saga, but more so in reading the lack of distinction between simple opinion and thoughtful critique. The prevalence of opinions that require no accountability, understanding, or suspension of ego in a culture hurling further into self-obsession and self-reference feels almost satirical. Ultimately, I hope we all take the monster's invitation to observe the world from outside our understanding, and have more fun leaping headfirst into discomfort and fear.
Title sequence from Alien (1979), dir. Ridley Scott, 35mm, color, sound, 116 minutes.
Unobtrusive, semi-transparent ads that appeared at the bottom of the video player so as not to disrupt the experience.
Any of various elongated or extensible tubular processes (such as the sucking organ of a butterfly) of the oral region of an invertebrate.
(Latin for 'toothed vagina') A folk tale tradition spanning many cultures in which a vagina is said to contain teeth, with the implication that intercourse might result in injury, emasculation, or castration.
Farmer H, Ciaunica A, Hamilton AFC. The functions of imitative behaviour in humans. Mind Lang. 2018 Sep;33(4):378-396. doi: 10.1111/mila.12189. Epub 2018 May 22.
An organism or organisms resulting from sexual or asexual reproduction.