Fede Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus, the seventh entry in the Alien series, delivers a fresh look at a familiar franchise. The film delivers facehuggers, alien carnage, and palpable fear Alien fans have grown to love.

Set between events of Alien and Aliens, the plot follows a group living on Jackson’s Star – a bleak mining colony with no daylight and is ravaged by deadly thunderstorms. Rain (Cailee Spaeny) attempts to get her travel permit to relocate to another planet and learns she has to work another six years before she can leave.

A dejected Rain is approached by her ex-Tyler (Archie Renaux), Kay (Isabela Merced), Bjorn (Spike Fearn), and Navarro (Aileen Wu) about a way to escape the colony. They believe there is a decommissioned Weyland-Yutani ship floating above the planet. The ship should have enough cryopods to help them travel to a new planet. The group needs Rain because her android Andy (David Johnson) should have codes that allow him access to the ship.

Once they approach the ship, they learn it’s not a ship but a space station called Renaissance split into two parts – Romulus and Remus. There is no one alive on the space station and they realize it’s not abandoned, but something terrible happened to the crew. All that remains is parts of android named Rook and the carnage left behind from xenomorph attack.

Despite all the red flags telling them to leave, the crew is hellbent on getting off the colony so they push forward with their mission. When they start removing coolant tanks in the lab, the room begins to heat up and releases the most aggressive facehuggers in the franchise. Despite their best efforts, one of the facehuggers attaches to Navarro. Rain’s quick thinking gets the hugger off Navarro quickly, but Andy fears they may be too late.

We’ve seen this before… Andy was right and Navarro’s chest pain goes from bad, to worse, to an alien bursting out and turning into a ruthless predator with acid blood and the stealth of a ninja. Rain and the rest of the crew try to make it back to their ship before they’re destroyed by the xenomorph or the space station.

Alien: Romulus is the fun action sci-fi fans of the franchise should enjoy. They try a few different things that expand the Alien world and dive deeper into some aspects that have already been explored. The main deep dive is into Weyland-Yutani and their role in this franchise. They’ve always been the big bad corporation hovering over the alien carnage. Rook (Ian Holm vocal reference) gives some exposition as to why the corporation wants the xenomorph and how what their plans are. Why a corporation like Weyland-Yutani would risk handling something so dangerous is explained.

One of the other changes is group the film follows. This group is a bunch of young scavengers desperate for a way out of a bad situation only to find them at the center of an even worse situation. Although some of the character’s decisions are beyond dumb, you understand why Rain and her friends can’t go back to Jackson’s Star. They’re motivations and allegiances are different than most Alien films – especially the brother/sister dynamic between Rain and Andy.

It wouldn’t be an Alien movie without some great thrills and kills; thankfully Alvarez is a master at this and delivers a heart pounding good time. From the space station malfunctioning to the aggressive facehuggers, Alvarez takes elements from the first to films and seamlessly blends them into his film along with some fresh ideas.

One of the best scenes is Navarro’s chest bursting death. Alvarez draws this sequence out longer than expected. Instead of focusing on a convulsing Navarro, the camera is mostly on Kay as she watches in horror. Another horror themed death involves a character dying from the acid blood.

Alien: Romulus is worthy addition to the franchise and pairs well with Alien and Aliens. The film takes some big swings in the third act but they work for this franchise. With Alvarez at the helm, the franchise is in good hands going forward.

Grade: B