In latest Alien film, a human and her android brother fight monsters

SINGAPORE – The secret to making the Alien franchise scary again? Sibling love, says Alien: Romulus director and co-writer Fede Alvarez.

Fans of the sci-fi horror series – of which there are nine films in total, including two spin-offs and the latest Alien: Romulus, opening in Singapore cinemas on Aug 15 – are no longer excited by creepy shots showing eggs, face-huggers and 2m-tall xenomorphs.

“We cannot depend on slowly revealing the monster because you already know what the monster is. We know its life cycle. The creative team needs to give much more than that,” says the 46-year-old Uruguayan film-maker.

Alvarez, who gained recognition for directing the supernatural horror film Evil Dead (2013) and the thriller Don’t Breathe (2016), was speaking to The Straits Times over Zoom on Aug 12.

Alien: Romulus’ story is set between the events of the first movie, Alien (1979), directed by Ridley Scott, and the second film, Aliens (1986), helmed by James Cameron.

A group of young scavengers living on a bleak industrial planet venture into a derelict space station. Among them is Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and her synthetic companion Andy (David Jonsson). The group will soon have to fight for their lives after discovering the craft’s deadly cargo.

“Rain and Andy are siblings, but one is human and the other is an artificial person. They grew up together and kind of love each other and can’t imagine life without the other. In the midst of the horror, that relationship is put to the test,” Alvarez says.

In Andy, the new film brings back a theme that crops up in several Alien films: artificial intelligence (AI).

In the first movie, the android Ash (Ian Holm) carries out corporate policy ruthlessly. This includes the attempted murder of crew member Ripley (Sigourney Weaver). In the sequel, the android Bishop (Lance Henriksen) holds the opposite moral code and is ready to lay down his life for humans.

“Cameron loves technology more than Scott,” says Alvarez with a laugh, adding that the film series has always had a love-hate relationship with AI.

“Look at our relationship with AI right now. It’s a question that never gets old. In the film, we have a kind of love story between a human and an AI,” he adds.

Weaver’s Ripley is a recurring character in the franchise, so it might be tempting to see Spaeny’s Rain as the new Ripley. But Rain is her own character, says Alvarez.

He adds that journalists who have seen the trailer and early footage of the film understood his Ripley homages to mean that the torch has been passed to Rain.

“I do create shots in the new film that are reminiscent of the originals, so I don’t blame anybody who compares the two female characters,” he says.

In the first minutes of Alien, Ripley is the way she will be at the end of the movie – a hero.

“She’s a fighter, a strong person who knows what’s going on. We admire her and she is fun to watch. You might say she’s a superhero,” he says.

But Spaeny’s Rain is different. She has to learn and grow, or die.

“She’s more flawed and she has to find the hero inside of her. The Rain in the first few minutes is not the Rain at the end – she is not Ripley. She is more like Sarah Connor,” he says, referring to the character from Cameron’s The Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) films.

Connor (Linda Hamilton) transforms herself into a warrior to protect her son and herself from killer robots.

Early reviewers have hailed Alien: Romulus as an effective return to the single-location “haunted house in space” format of the original.

Alvarez says that when it comes to instilling fear, the open-world formats of Alien films such as Prometheus (2012) and Alien: Covenant (2017) cannot compare with the dank corridors of a derelict ship hanging in space.

“Horror is at its peak when the main character is alone. Now put that character in the country, away from the city. That’s even more scary.

“Take that to the limit – put her in space. That is truly terrifying. Dying alone is a terrible human fear. It’s why the tagline is so famous: ‘In space, no one can hear you scream.’”