EXCLUSIVE
ALIEN: ROMULUS The iconic sci-fi horror series goes back to terrifying basics. Be afraid…
Fede Alvarez is fit to burst. No, the Uruguayan director behind Evil Dead, Don’t Breathe and The Girl in the Spider’s Web hasn’t had a run-in with a facehugger. He’s talking to Teasers shortly after the first trailer for Alien: Romulus unleashed to an egg-static reception, and the typically laid-back filmmaker is thrilled that audiences are chiming with his stripped-back vision for a series that’s found itself a long way from its roots with recent instalments.
‘That’s what I wanted to see as a fan. That was what I was missing, in a way,’ Alvarez says. ‘Alien, above all, is a pure horror movie. It’s as elevated as it can be. But at its core, they’re very simple, straightforward storytelling machines that focus on just punishing the audience with horror over and over. That’s what I wanted to write.’
Set, tantalisingly, between Ridley Scott’s seminal ’79 original and James Cameron’s superlative sequel, Romulus follows a young crew of scavengers – among their number ‘surrogate siblings’ Raines Carradine (Cailee Spaeny) and synthetic human Andy (David Jonsson) – who have a close encounter with the perfect organism aboard abandoned Weyland‐Yutani research vessel Renaissance. The film’s place in the timeline doesn’t just have narrative consequences, it also reflects Alvarez’s stylistic approach.
‘[Romulus] is an amalgamation of Alien and Aliens on many levels,’ notes Alvarez, who embraced many of the same practical filmmaking techniques as Scott and Cameron, down to the use of animatronic creature effects and men in Xenomorph suits. ‘The environments, and the pace of it as well – it’s more similar to Alien for quite a bit. And then gradually – you won’t even know – you f
