One would be forgiven for having trouble connecting the narrative dots between the Alien films, which make up a franchise that has spanned across six decades. 

To keep things relatively simple: The latest entry, Alien: Romulus, takes place chronologically between 1979’s Alien and 1986’s Aliens, the two movies that still stand as undisputed twin peaks of the series. 

Despite this, director and co-writer Fede Álvarez peppers in references to plenty of other chapters in the series, including an iconic face-off shot from Alien³ and creature design callbacks to the Engineers from Prometheus. After two Ridley Scott-helmed tales that bent more toward hard sci-fi, Álvarez has seemingly been brought on to bring these movies back to their horror roots and has mild success doing so.

Our story begins on the desolate mining colony Jackson’s Star, where Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and her surrogate android brother Andy (David Jonsson) brave the planet’s perpetual absence of daylight. Dreaming of a way out of their squalor, Rain reconnects with ex-boyfriend Tyler (Archie Renaux) and his sister Kay (Isabela Merced), who have access to a scrappy spacecraft from their mining jobs. They come up with a plan to fly up to decommissioned space station Romulus and gather the necessary cryopods and fuel cells for their years-long exodus to the distant planet Yvaga. Their mission is complicated, inevitably, by the presence of the deadly xenomorph creatures onboard, who were recovered from the wreckage of Nostromo spaceship from the inaugural Alien film.

Opening with a dynamic and propulsive prologue that juxtaposes the silence of space with the beeps and boops of an awakening spaceship, Álvarez transitions to a strong introduction of characters and their circumstances. Even though Jackson’s Star is a gloomy locale, there’s some brilliant storytelling at hand as Rain’s work contract is unexpectedly extended by the barbaric Weyland-Yutani Corporation. Even though Andy is a robot — he prefers the term “synthetic human” — it’s clear that he has a strong bond with Rain and his programming by their dad has allowed for a sweeter demeanor and pun-laden jokes. Later in their journey, the plot necessitates that Andy get an “upgrade” to his processing system and Jonsson does a terrific job modulating his performance to accommodate the drastic shift in personality.

If Jonsson’s work represents the most well-rendered android character in the franchise since Ash (portrayed by Ian Holm) in Alien, then it’s a shame that Alien: Romulus doesn’t do much new with any of its other characters, human or otherwise. Filling out the cast are Spike Fearn and Aileen Wu, the latter portraying the pilot of their Corbelan vessel, but in a space slasher like this, it’s pretty obvious that not every character is going to be with us the whole runtime. Isabela Merced is a talented young actress on the rise — she’ll appear as Hawkgirl in Superman next year — and while she’s certainly served better by the material here than she was in Madame Web this year, there’s similarly not much interesting about her Kay either.

Where the rote characters and familiar story beats as the narrative progresses count against the final product, Álvarez does everything he can to make up the deficit on the directing side. 

As he proved with his 2013 Evil Dead reboot and 2016’s Don’t Breathe, he certainly knows how to build up tension and pay it off with some genuinely squirm-inducing punctuation marks. The most effective set-piece overall involves a zero gravity effect out of the fizzy lifting drink scene in Willy Wonka and an elevator shaft, even if the sequence ends with a bit of eye roll-inducing fan service. 

Hot off a musical score for Twisters that is among the year’s best, composer Benjamin Wallfisch infuses homages to Jerry Goldsmith’s Alien compositions, with fluttering flute flourishes that imply the majesty of outer space and trumpet blasts that remind us of its danger. 

Alien: Romulus doesn’t do much to move the mythology of the Alien saga forward, but it’s a serviceably suspenseful journey back to the place where no one can hear you scream.

New movies coming this weekend

• Coming to theaters is The Crow, a superhero remake starring Bill Skarsgård and FKA Twigs, following a murdered musician who is resurrected to avenge the deaths of himself and his fiancée.
• Also playing in theaters is Blink Twice, a psychological thriller starring Naomi Ackie and Channing Tatum, involving a cocktail waitress who travels with a billionaire tech mogul to his private island for a luxurious party, where things begin to go wrong after her friend vanishes.
• Streaming on Peacock is The Killer, an action remake starring Nathalie Emmanuel and Omar Sy, reimagining John Woo’s classic about an assassin who tries to make amends in an effort to restore the sight of a beautiful young singer.