Fede Álvarez understands the assignment when it comes to horror. The Uruguayan director broke into Hollywood with his 2013 reimagining of the 1981 horror classic Evil Dead. And in 2016 he wrote and directed the disturbing psychological horror Don’t Breathe, which was hailed as “a thriller of a generation” and “a nasty, vicious spin on the home invasion narrative.” And now he’s stepping into even bigger shoes with his upcoming movie Alien: Romulus.
The sequel starring Cailee Spaeny, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, and a whole cast of young actors, is set between Ridley Scott’s 1979 Alien and James Cameron’s 1986 sequel Aliens. And Remezcla got a chance to speak with the director about why the xenomorph’s are so terrifying, his first experience with the franchise, and set life when it comes to telling the story of these young people facing a terrifying life form they can not run fast enough to escape from.
Aliens was the first time Álvarez met the xenomorph’s. Born in 1978, he was too young to watch Alien. And around the time that Alien³ came out in 1992, Álvarez watched the second movie in the franchise. And that’s all it took to hook him. “It’s always been my favorite sci-fi movie, almost more than all the others. And obviously, because it has that horror element that makes it so unique, it was always felt to me like the horror, the “horror Star Wars” for me. That’s how I always felt,” Álvarez said.
Flash forward to 2024 and here he is, directing and writing his own entry into the Alien world. The inspiration came from a deleted scene that Cameron restored in the extended Special Edition cut of Aliens. There’s a moment where he saw a bunch of kids running around the colony featured in the film. And he wondered what it would be to grow up there and told himself, “If I ever tell a story in that world, I would definitely be interested in those kids when they reach their early twenties.“
That’s what he’s doing in Alien: Romulus; creating a world of 20-something’s facing xenomorph’s with the approval of Scott himself, who called his movie “fucking great.” And when asked what makes this franchise so relevant, even to audiences today, he was quick to say that it was the creature and the claustrophobic fear of it all. “It is one of those things that you get enough of [the creature.] And I think there’s just that claustrophobic aspect of it, horror in its best version [in Alien].”
Horror also denotes that there be one survivor. One last thing standing between the horror and its goal/survival. We saw that with Ellen Ripley over 4 movies. And that feeling of being ‘the final girl,’ it resonated with audiences in 1979 and still does with audiences today. As Álvarez explained, “To die is something everybody’s scared of. To die alone is even more terrifying. That’s why that tagline that “no one will hear your screams is in space” is such a powerful one because it appeals to that idea that there would be nothing worse than to die and to die alone in a spaceship.” And the face hugger, the xenomorph, they deliver on that idea of a terrible death. They are fear we are running from.
When watching the trailer for Alien: Romulus, you feel that fear. It’s in the thumping of the chestburster within one of their chests, the silent screams from Merced’s character, and in Spaeny’s face when the xenomorph confronts her in a scene that looks like it’s straight out of Alien³. And that’s what Álvarez wants us to feel. He told us, “Usually it reaches its peak when usually there’s just one survivor, right? But one thing is to be the last person running around your neighborhood or whatever, but to be the last person in a spaceship away from any other human? It’s a really, truly horrific feeling.”
One of the space colonizers on the crew for Romulus is Peruvian actress Isabela Merced. And as a viewer, it was nice to know that there was a Latino behind the scenes and a Latina in front of the camera. But that’s not the only Latine presence on Álvarez’s set. Because if there’s anything that he’s going to do, it’s having Latine people with him as he walks through new doors. He told Remezcla, “In my sets, they’re always more Spanish than English sometimes. Because a lot of people around my circle, like Galo Olivares, my DP (Director of Photography) is from Mexico, Rodo [Sayagues], my co-writer, is from Uruguay, like me, and then there’s Isabela Merced in the film. There’s always at least one Latina in my films at least.”
It makes a huge difference for Álvarez to have people from our communities around him while working on such big films and projects. When talking about set life he said, “We always go back and forth in Spanish. And a lot of my close circle around [Romulus] is really people that make the whole difference when it comes to making the film. They tend to be Latinos because they’re my friends and people I work with all my life.” And we all know how it is when Latine people get together. We stick together. No matter where we go.
Alien: Romulus hits theaters August 16, 2024.
