Halloween 2024: September 2nd

Alien: Romulus (2024)

In retrospect, it's obvious that Disney sticking a reboot of Fox's sometimes profitable "Predator" series on Hulu was a test run. Fox's sci-fi/horror franchises are iconic and beloved but have not always been huge box office hits. It was easy to imagine the unambiguously evil corporate overlords at the House of Mouse damning all of the R-rated, non-superhero franchises to the oblivion of streaming. This was the original plan with Fede Álvarez' new entry in the "Alien" series, after all. The positive response to "Prey" – not to mention the frequent outcry to see it on the big screen – is likely the reason why "Alien: Romulus" was upgraded from streaming to theatrical. It was clearly a good move for Disney/Fox, as the interquel opened huge a few weeks back. Fan reception of the new film has been less concrete though, the pros and cons of "Romulus" already being debated into the ground. Hopefully it's not too late for me to officially weigh in as well.

Following the destruction of the Nostromos, the Weyland-Yutani company retrieves the remains of a hostile alien lifeform and brings them to the twin space stations, Romulus and Remus. On a near-by mining planet, wage slave Rain has her indentured servitude to the company forcibly increased. With her glitchy android "brother" Andy, she agrees to a risky heist. A team is going to break into an abandoned ship before it crashes into the planet's rings in 32 hours, stealing some cryo-pods and the necessary fuel. They plan to than stowaway to a more prosperous world. Andy's programming is enough to get them into the station... The aforementioned Romulus, where terrible experiments with the recovered creature led to another outbreak of the parasitic beasts. With Andy being influenced by insidious Weyland-Yutani programming, Rain and her friends find themselves in a race against time. They must escape the doomed station while surviving encounters with the unrelenting biomechanical organisms. 

In the run-up to "Alien: Romulus'" release, as has become customary any time an old nerd favorite is revived, the director mentioned every chance he could that practical creature effects and actual sets were used as often as possible during filming. At least in this case, the stated commitment to using physical props is evident on-screen. "Romulus" is the most convincing recreation of "Alien's" "used future" since the 1979 original. The sets are heavy on big analog monitors with chunky buttons and green-on-black interfaces. There are lots of cavernous corridors, industrial tubing, perilous catwalks, and mist spraying everywhere. By far the most impressive effects are saved for the alien creature itself. Álvarez and cinematographer Galo Olivares follow the original's playbook by mostly keeping the beast bathed in shadows and smoke. We are given only ominous close-ups on the monster's jaws as the lips curl and slime drips from every curve of its phallic head. "Romulus" is very heavy on the drool and Giger-esque sexual imagery, making a concerted effort to replicate the industrial nightmare of Ridley Scott's masterpiece. When combined with a newfound focus on the characters' enslavement to an unfeeling mega-corp – more relevant than ever in the dystopian future Bezos has made for us all – the new film comes close to recapturing the claustrophobic ambiance of the original. 

The question must be asked, however. Why is "Alien: Romulus" so determined to recreate the look and feel of the original film? "Romulus" is the latest example of a so-called legacy sequel that operates more as an extended homage to the franchise's history. The script directly links itself to "Alien," while copying much of its progenitor's structure. This includes a last act where the heroine has to slip into a space suit while in her undergarments. That is proceeded by a blatantly contrived story beat that exists solely to set up an imitative finale, where Ripley v5.0 will face off with a monster after believing herself to be out of danger. Ya know, just like in "Alien" and practically every one of its sequels. Entire shots, sequences, and soundtrack segments are copied from "Aliens," "Alien 3," Ridley Scott's incomplete prequel trilogy, and even the much contested "Alien: Resurrection." This overwhelming desire to remind the viewer of older, better movies peaks during a frankly embarrassing deployment of a trademark line of dialogue. 

"Romulus" is so determined to operate as a best-of reel for the series that it literally reanimates a dead actor's likeness, strictly to get a whoop out of any fanboys watching. Coming on the heels of "Deadpool & Wolverine" – the most blatant act of corporate disguising of a montage of references as a new movie – truly makes me wonder what we're doing here. "Alien: Romulus" is not interested in pushing the series forward or expanding on the premise with new ideas. It is content simply to show us stuff we liked in the past, knowing fully that some people will clap for it. This deficit of imagination is most evident during that climax, which lazily cobbles together monster parts from previous movies to create its final boss. A kid with crayons and some old Kenner action figures could've come up with something cooler. 

"Alien: Isolation" was clearly an influence too, making the comparison to a video game unavoidable. There's a scene – also lifted from "Aliens" – that explains auto-aiming. The ship's artificial gravity is switching on and off throughout, resembling a common gameplay gimmick. The general structure of the story, which has the protagonist and her NPC buddy travelling across different terrain, resembles stages of a video game. This influence from interactive storytelling most damages the film in regards to its characters. The original "Alien" is such an economic script. We learn nothing about the characters except their names and functions on the ship, their personalities evident entirely through their actions. "Romulus," meanwhile, tosses in expostionary dialogue exchanges that exist solely to tell us who these people are. So-and-so is racist against robots because a robot killed his parents. This person is pregnant but don't tell her brother. Are these character arcs or dialogue branches? This leaves the cast very little to work with. The film finds reliable zoomer stand-ins for Sigourney Weaver and Lance Henriksen in Cailee Spaeny and Davis Jonnson. Yet both flounder with a script that invests no genuine heart in its characters, reduced to wide-eyed stares and twitchy mumbling. Isabela Merced and Aileen Wu get it the worst, tasked with giving life to flesh-and-blood plot devices like a damsel in distress or a carrier for the contagion. 

The result is a series of set pieces centering on people it's difficult to care about. It's hard to build suspense when the audience isn't invested in whether these characters live or die. This is all the more frustrating because Fede Álvarez clearly understands the mechanics behind creating thrills. There's well done scenes within "Alien: Romulus." The ensemble being threatened by a group of scurrying facehuggers, eager to forcibly insert appendages down their throats, creates some grim tension. The heroes have to quietly move through a tunnel without attracting the monsters' attention or navigate a zero gravity hazard of levitating acid blood. Before it becomes obvious that the movie has no deeper ideas up its sleeves, the movie is mechanically effective. The use of sound, camera angles, and special effects come together to get reactions out of the viewer. There's no heart to it but it's well done. This is a problem I had with Álvarez' past films as well. He knows the dance steps but can't put any emotion behind them. 

Say what you will about "Prometheus" and "Alien: Covenant," flawed films that also copied past hits too closely. At least they had ideas, ambitions, themes, a deeper desire to express something beyond making the viewer say "I understood that reference." "Alien: Romulus" starts out promisingly enough, before sinking into a repeating cycle of callbacks to things we've seen in the past. After "Prey" managed to honor the traditions of that series while also doing new things and introducing fresh concepts, it is dispiriting to see "Alien" fail to invest its repetitions with any creativity or novelty. The sequel's success suggests Disney will probably move forward with future installments, which I hope take more risks rather than merely repeat past successes. "Alien: Romulus," despite all the craft on display in its effects and production design, ultimately feels like a cynical act of corporate extension. [5/10]

The Devil Commands (1941)

After coming to fame with "Frankenstein," Boris Karloff would appear in seven movies for Columbia during the thirties and early forties. He would play a mad scientist in five of them. You could say ol' Boris was fairly typecast by this point. After making three similarly themed movies with director Nick Grinde, Karloff would be teamed with filmmaker Edward Dmytryk. "The Devil Commands" breaks with the naming convention of the "The Man They Could Not Hang/The Man with Nine Lives/Before I Hang" trilogy. However, it's not that different from the other programmers Karloff was making around this time. I'm a slut for old-time-y horror movies so, naturally, I'm willing to check this one out too. 

After dabbling in mind transference, artificial hearts, cryonics, and anti-aging serums, "The Devil Commands" sees Karloff – playing Dr. Julian Blair – creating a machine that reads brain waves as physical lines on a graph. After a proud display of this early EEG, Blair's wife dies in an auto accident. After visiting Miss Walters, a phony medium, Blair believes his dead wife's spirit is attempting to communicate with him through his machine. His daughter, Anne, is disturbed by his new obsession with contacting the afterlife. Soon, Blair and Walters are conducting experiments that cross ethical boundaries, his mind reading contraption having deadly consequences. How far will he go in his mania to communicate with the beyond? 

The mad doctors Karloff played were usual sympathetic to some degree. They almost always had good intentions behind their experiments, driven to madness only by rejection or the unforeseen consequences of their work. "The Devil Commands" is probably the most innocent example yet. Julian Blair only wants to speak with his wife again, clearly crippled by the heartbreak of her loss. His research only crosses over into immorality when people start to die while strapped into the machine, accidents that the doctor never planned on. In fact, Blair seems quite sane throughout the entire film. Instead, it's sham psychic Miss Walters that continually pushes him to keep working on his machine, even after people start to die. It's something of a Lady MacBeth situation, though there's no romance between the two. Walters, nicely played by Anne Revere, is greedy and ambitious, where Blair is isolated and depressed. This is definitely an example of a Karloff movie where the star makes his character seem so reasonable and relatable that he barely registers as a bad guy. Nothing wrong with that, though I always feel like we're missing out when Boris doesn't go on a speech about how the world has wronged him. 

"The Devil Commands" features most of the plot points you expect from a movie of this type and time. When the yokel janitor in Blair's lab gets zapped by the machine, he's transformed into a silent, menacing brute of an assistant. Shortly after committing himself to his otherworldly research, Blair and Walters shack up in a creepy old mansion on the edge of town, the stormy winds outside frequently blowing the trees around in a spooky manner. The movie concludes with a mob of angry locals storming into the scientist's lair, though torches or pitchforks are present. Dmytryk and cinematographer Allen G. Siegler create some nicely moody visuals, with the expected amount of shadows cast on walls and darkened rooms. The main novelty of the film is the device Blair uses in his studies. It resembles an elaborate diving helmet that is strapped around the head, like some sort of medieval torture apparatus. When a circle of dead bodies are placed in these machines, seated around a table, the visual is quite eerie. 

Ultimately though, "The Devil Commands" doesn't really distinguish itself from the similar movies Karloff made around this time. The daughter character – Amanda Duff playing her as a typical damsel-in-distress – has a rather awkward narration that pops up throughout the film. Blair's experiments don't involve any sparking machinery or bubbling tubes of chemicals, merely producing lines on a screen. So watching him go about his work is not the most exciting thing in the world. Because Karloff's character is so sympathetic, it takes quite a while for his experiments to cross the boundary into the wicked. He doesn't arrive at the spooky mansion until about half way through the hour-long runtime. In other words, "The Devil Commands" doesn't start to feel like it's really moving until right before the end. The movie gets very interesting and then we're listening to the closing speech about how man shouldn't meddle in God's domain a few minutes later. 

I've definitely seen dryer, lamer horror films from this time. Karloff is always a compelling presence and he knows exactly how to play a character like this. The cozy charms of black-and-white horror movies go a long way, at least for an aging monster kid like me. The scene where Blair debunks the medium's séance suggests a more interesting film than the one that follows. Yet any fan of golden age horror flicks can find a dozen ones better than this, including Boris' earlier work at Columbia. The title is pretty misleading, by the way. "The Devil Commands" suggest a diabolic element that never emerges. The movie should've stuck with the pattern of Karloff's other Columbia titles and been called "The Man Who Spoke to the Dead" or something like that. Always go for pulp appeal over poetic nuances when it comes to stories like this, ya know? [6/10]

Creepshow: Twenty Minutes with Cassandra/Smile

The third season of Shudder's "Creepshow" was the series' most uneven yet, featuring the best episode of the program so far but also some of the worst. Despite that, this is still the closest thing the world has right now to my beloved "Tales from the Crypt," so I'm going to keep giving the show a chance. Even if it only barely manages to scratch the same itch. The fourth season begins with "Twenty Minutes with Cassie." Lorna returns home, orders a pizza, puts on some music, and pours a glass of wine. Her peaceful evening is interrupted by a panicked woman knocking at her door. She lets her in and discovers that her name is Cassie and she's being pursued by a monster. Incredulous at first, Lorna soon discovers that this monster is real, will kill anyone else that shows up, and plans to kill her in twenty minutes. While Lorna prepares for a fight for her life, Cassie attempts to get to know her. 

"Twenty Minutes with Cassie" is a very tonally confused story. The premise – a random act of compassion inviting an unavoidable monster into your life – is nightmarish in a way that a short horror film could really play off of. Instead of going for raw terror, the segment juggles attempts at sincerity with flippant comedy. When the monster kills a random deliveryman, the violence is cheesy and the score kicks into a sarcastic mood. Cassie – a cute goth chick played by Ruth Codd – tries to make casual chitchat while Lorna unsuccessfully cobbles together a weapon. Obviously comedic moments like this co-exist alongside side blatantly more philosophical ones. Such as the lengthy dialogue Lorna has with the kind-hearted pizza guy, about the nature of kindness. Is this episode meant to be funny, scary, or poignant? Trying to be all three is a lot to ask of a thirty minute TV show. 

Despite the title drawing attention to that lack of time, "Twenty Minutes with Cassandra" continues to diddle-daddle. The comedic touches continues as the required latex monster reveals himself to be a talkative, thoughtful fellow. If you hadn't guessed by then, this segment is trying to be a metaphor for something. Instead of letting that ambiguity breathe, the final minutes of the sequence lay out everything. Lorna and the monster have a long chat about personal failures and Cassie's habits. (While also arguing about the meaning of the word "Kaiju," an exhausting moment.) Yes, this story is an obtuse metaphor for personal baggage and, it seems, going to therapy. That leads to an obnoxiously inconclusive conclusion. If you stripped this premise down to its bare set-up, it would've been a lot scarier and more meaningful. If the comedy was squarely the focus, the neurosis at the center could've been a lot more entertainingly absurd. Instead, a lack of focus makes "Twenty Minutes with Cassandra" a frustrating exercise that ironically makes us feel like our time has been wasted. 

What about the second half of the episode, "Smile?" Is it better? Photographer James Harris and his wife, Sarah, leave a humanitarian ceremony. James has just won an award, for his photo of a man and his child drowning in a war-torn, foreign country. Instead of going home to their kid, James and Sarah stop at a fancy restaurant for dinner. There, a mysterious man snaps a Polaroid of the couple. James follows after the stranger, finding a trail of impossible photographs and taunting messages. It quickly becomes clear that he's being haunted by the subject of his award-winning photo and the choices he could've made. And the ghost is out for blood.

"Smile" doesn't foreground its subtext quite as much as "Twenty Minutes with Cassandra" – or the big screen jump-scare fest it shares a name with, for that matter – and is better for it. Yes, this is clearly a story about how privileged white people in America use the misery of those in less fortunate places for their own glory. Where this is going is apparent from early on, as we move towards a suitably ironic finale. However, "Smile" does a good job of building anticipation towards this pay-offs, with a gradual reveal of details. The script's ideas touch on themes we can all relate to. James acted selfishly in a moment when he could've been selfless. We've all made mistakes like that, even if they probably aren't in life-or-death scenarios. You never know what decisions will be significant or not until after you make them. Beyond its thematic weight and effective pacing, "Smile" is also well made. Fitting for a story about photography, it's a good looking half-hour. Shots of shadows cast long on walls definitely establish an eerie mood. 

I guess the stark divide in quality between this "Creepshow's" two segments comes down to experience. John Harrison, who handled "Smile," has been directing episodic horror television, including "Tales from the Crypt," since the eighties. (In addition to scoring the original "Creepshow" movies.) His past "Creepshow" episodes have been decent, more committed to the E.C. Comics tone than most. Greg Nicotero, who did the first segment, hasn't directed much outside of this show and "The Walking Show." His episodes frequently have an overly meta, self congratulatory element to them that sits badly with me. I guess this is an indication that season four of "Creepshow" is probably going to be uneven as all the previous ones. [Twenty Minutes with Cassandra: 4/10 / Smile: 7/10]

Chucky: Murder at 1600

According to Wikipedia, Syfy Channel – as execs insist we call it now – only has three on-going, original programs. Of those, the only ones I see anyone talking about are "Resident Alien" and "Chucky." It doesn't seem improper to say that the killer doll, slasher spin-off is the network's biggest hit right now. Naturally, they greenlit a third season and Don Manchini cooked up maybe the most outrageous premise for it in a franchise with no shortage of campy ambition. In season three, Chucky has gone to the White House. I found the second season an improvement over the first, so I'm willing to give this next batch of installments a look too. (Even if I remain as allergic as ever to the pacing of modern, serialized genre television.)

Jack Collins is an independent who has been elected to the Presidency on a platform of complete government transparency. His eldest son, Grant, is a stoner social media influencer. His middle son, Joseph, is deceased. His youngest son, Henry, is dealing with his grief by becoming obsessed with his Good Guys doll, also named Joseph. Yes, Charles Lee Ray is on the prowl in D.C. The White House is beset by mysterious blackouts and the apparent suicide of a Secret Service Agent. Meanwhile, Jake, Devon, and Lexy use the internet to try and locate the killer doll and Caroline, Lexy's little sister that was kidnapped by Tiffany at the end of last season. After a taunting call from the doll, the three teens discover they are going to have to infiltrate the most secure home in the country if they hope to stop the murderous plaything.

“Murder at 1600” – all the titles this season are taken from pre-existing films, this one coming from a largely forgotten Wesley Snipes vehicle – certainly has fun slowly revealing the exact nature of its setting in the first scene. It's a shame all the marketing spoiled that surprise. A visual playfulness remains evident throughout. Such as the way each of the teens' social media platform of choice is revealed largely through their visual interface. Or in an amusing cold cut from Grant promising not to smoke pot in the White House anymore to the President and First Lady ripping on a giant bong. 

As always, “Chucky” mines a lot of tension out of the doll sitting around, not doing anything, while the unawares people go about their business. This is most apparent here in an early scene that involves the First Family heading down a secret elevator, a guard dog growling at the unmoving Chucky. Something that elevates this show over so many other lackluster horror programs is “Chucky” has the good sense to include one outrageously gory death scene per episode. That arrives when Chucky blows the Secret Service agent's face off with his own pistol. Good use of a detached eyeball there. This pairs well with the defining theme of the entire franchise: The corruption of innocence, evident already in the way Chucky has wormed his way in Henry's life. 

Lots of subplots are set-up here, like a snooping reporter, a scheming Vice President, and a neurotic First Lady. Who's to say which of these will actually amount to much and which will merely pad out the body count. Three seasons in and I guess I can say I'm invested in the teenage protagonists. Jake and Devon's young, queer romance remains charming and Alyvia Alyn Lind still has some bitchy charisma as Lexy. I guess the main thing missing from this otherwise entertaining premiere is Brad Dourif, who only gets a single scene to dig into Chucky's trademark colorfully profane dialogue. But I suspect we will get more of that soon enough. [7/10]