Rating: 6/10

Spoilers ahead for “Alien: Romulus” 

What do you get when you combine weaponized autism, Bilbo Baggins and an obscene amount of sexual motifs? Apparently, “Alien: Romulus.”

Directed by Fede Álvarez, “Alien: Romulus” is the seventh movie in the “Alien” franchise. Set separately from earlier films, it follows a group of young space colonists who attempt to scavenge materials from a deserted space station. Aliens appear, hijinks ensue, etc.

Let’s start with the good stuff. The visual effects, or VFX, in this film were spectacular, from the scuttling face-huggers to the expansive spacescapes. I especially loved how they played with sound design during these cinematic scenes — cutting the audio to go from blaring alarms inside the ship to the sudden, dangerous quiet of open space was stunning. The lighting design was equally impressive, particularly its use of tube lighting in alarm scenes.

For all those good qualities, the film definitely had its downsides. For one, the accents were atrocious. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for strong accents, but one of the characters — Bjorn, played by Spike Fearn — was completely unintelligible. I’m not exaggerating when I say I caught maybe one or two of his lines. While none were probably plot-relevant, slowing down just a little would have gone a long way.

Aside from accents, the plot is where the movie really lost points for me.

This film was way too long. “Alien: Romulus” has almost a two-hour runtime, which might be alright except we don’t see a single Alien for the first 45 minutes. Half the movie is spent on the “Remus” half of the ship, so even the title is a hard sell.

Going back to weaponized autism, the whole “synthetic person” angle just didn’t seem fully fleshed out. For a character that’s basically supposed to be an AI flesh suit, Andy’s character waffled between a complete lack of empathy and very human decision making. 

While I enjoyed David Jonsson’s acting, Andy came across more as low-functional autistic than synthetic human, particularly in his facial expressions and speech. This changed the vibe of the film for me and ruined the immersion in some parts, just because the writers couldn’t seem to decide how human to make him.

The entire Rook character was weak. He was just a glorified narrative data dump to catch the audience up. They even slapped him on the intercom so he could keep popping up like a video game narrator to explain away plot holes or push the action forward. 

Lazy writing, if you ask me, but they made up for it somewhat by overlaying a young Ian Holm’s face on the actor, paying homage to the original movie. Holm died four years ago, so this is yet another testament to the fantastic VFX team. He looks a bit AI-generated from time to time, but I guess that’s the price you pay for literally reanimating the dead.

Aside from the characters, my chief complaint with the film lies in the heavy sexual undertones. Good God, the amount of sexual motifs afforded to the Aliens was ridiculous. I know, I know, the movie’s whole deal is extraterrestrial impregnation; the Alien’s heads are phallic in shape, and I don’t even want to talk about the freaky little tubes inside their double mouths.

But to put a whole ass alien-ussy on screen and have a character literally — how do I put this? — penetrate it with a zappy stick was a bit much, at least when you consider that they didn’t intend for the scene to be funny. Big laughs from my group in the theater, to say the least.

The same misplaced humor could be found in the “offspring.” Why, tell me why was his neck so thick? Every time they did a close-up he looked goofier. Out here looking like a whole thumb and they’re trying to pass him off as the end-all and the be-all of horror. I don’t think so.

Overall, it was alright. Great VFX, OK plot. Way funnier than I expected, and very possibly way funnier than they intended — perfect for a movie night with friends.

Charis Adkins is an English senior and opinion editor for The Battalion.