At San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC), those who attended the Hall H panel for Alien: Romulus were treated to quite a number of scenes from the movie. Of course, director Fede Álvarez warned that the sneak peek scenes were cut in different ways than they would appear in the movie. And, often, they had their best parts removed. And for us, this is incredibly hard to believe because the scenes shown were, dare we say it, exquisite. We don’t say this just because they were well-shot and dynamic, but the Alien: Romulus sneak peeks shown at San Diego Comic-Con were downright scary.
It’s hard oftentimes to create a good scare, even when one has a whole movie to achieve this goal. So it was absolutely awe-inspiring that just snippets of moments, shown in the middle of a huge convention, were as terrifying as they were. I gasped and yelped and jumped out of my seat literally every 30 seconds. If that’s the power of just a few scenes out of situ, I can’t wait to watch the whole movie in full. In total, three clips from Alien: Romulus were shown to the hall at SDCC.
First up was an Alien: Romulus SDCC clip showing Rain Carradine (Cailee Spaeny) investigating a xenomorph incubator in a room filled with water. She’s with Navarro (Aileen Wu), Synthetic Andy (David Jonsson), Tyler (Archie Renaux) and Bjorn (Spike Fearn). There’s something wrong with Synthetic Andy so he has to reboot, but as he’s coming back to the crew, a xenomorph escapes into the room and starts attacking everyone in sight. Andy snaps back into focus with just enough time to stop a deadly attack on Tyler, but more and more xenomorphs hatch and begin to surge forward. The crew just barely escapes the onslaught, but they can’t stop the xenomorphs from leaving the room and heading out into the wider ship.
Honestly, this Alien: Romulus SDCC scene has it all. There’s the sheer volume of facehuggers, what I might describe as a sea of facehuggers, that attack. There’s the fact the room is filled with water, which means you never know exactly where a xenomorph is hiding. There’s the intense bodily horror of a Synthetic rebooting, its head tossed back and its eyes unseeing, as all around it, the very mortal crew’s lives are being threatened. It’s a chilling sequence. But also so beautiful. Every moment in this Alien: Romulus footage was perfectly thought out. Each of them makes a micro-painting of horror all their own, with at least three kinds of terrors coming into play together at any given time. And the way they merge is divinely chilling. Phew!
The second new piece of Alien: Romulus SDCC footage focused on Navarro (Aileen Wu) and Kay (Isabela Merced). In the Romulus scene, the pair are on an escape pod, leaving behind the ostensibly xenomorph-infested ship. But as Navarro pilots the pod out to space, she suddenly begins to feel sick. Using an X-Ray torch, which allows the crew to see inside of bodies, she looks at her chest… And. Yep, it’s a chestburster sitting there between her ribs. “Please don’t let me die.” She begs Kay, as she falls into her arms. But we all know what happens next. An alien bursts out of her chest in a sea of viscera.
Seeing the outline of the chestburster inside of Navarro’s ribs is a type of horror that you just have to see to understand. But the chilling plea for life is equally as devastating. Fede Álvarez noted at SDCC that Alien: Romulus is different from other Alien movies because, this time, the crew are all people who care for one another, siblings and friends. And that’s what makes it the most devastating. It begs the question, would you leave your brother or sister to die? Would you run away or try to save them? And that makes the consequences of Alien: Romulus‘ deaths, of which Álvarez assures us, there are many, that much more intensely painful.
Finally, in the last piece of new SDCC Alien: Romulus footage, we see Rain and Bjorn fighting to escape. Bjorn uses a cattle prod to taze a facehugger, but it lashes back out at him. And then, with the air of slow creeping menace, the moment we’ve all been waiting for comes. A full-sized xenomorph emerges from its amniotic sac (or something like it). Sticky with fluids and membranes, the Alien: Romulus xenomorph slowly uncurls itself. And yeah, it looks good, viciously elegant in all its promise of death. We get the feeling this marks only the beginning of the movie’s true terror.
Just thinking back on these Alien: Romulus SDCC scenes catches the breath in our throats. We can’t wait to see the full movie when it releases on August 16, 2024.