Did you know there’s a new Alien movie out? And that it’s not about anyone exploring the lore or mythology of the xenomorphs nor whoever the giant people in the crashed ship that the Nostromo found some 45 years ago in the movie-goer’s timeline were?

Ah, I have your attention now, I think. No, Romulus is a research station in a decaying orbit around one of Weyland-Yutani’s colony planets[1], and a handful of teens intend to get up there and take advantage of the opportunity before anyone else does. Too bad, of course, about what Romulus-the-station is researching…

I’m not going to get into the plot of the movie. If you’ve seen an Alien movie, you know what the plot is and you know what the story beats are going to be, to at least a first approximation. This is one of those, for better or for worse[2]. I do want to call out one thing especially, though. As you know, a key aspect of these movies is body horror. From the moment John Hurt got that funny look on his face in the middle of lunch (or, honestly, from the moment they tried to pull the thing off his face and it… refused), that sense of impending dread, that your fleshbag is not entirely yours to control, is easily a third of what these movies are about. Anyway, the body horror in this movie is amped up pretty high even by my jaded standards.

Bravo.

[1] Yes, I am going to just sit here and assume you know what that means. And if you don’t, then this movie is for you the first episode in a reboot of the franchise rather than the latest episode in the franchise itself, and watching the movie would be a good way to find out. The accumulated lore surrounding that particular company is such that they didn’t have to waste any time hinting at things that have been slowly revealed over five decades and six or eight prior movies. Subtext has become text, and in 40 point font a that.
[2] And mostly for better, I would argue; both the formula and this implementation of it, to be clear.