thepalestfire

Alien: Romulus feels a lot like Fede Alverez asked ChatGPT to make an Alien movie. Romulus combines all the plots of the franchise into one boring convoluted story that features about a hundred callbacks to the original. As if Alverez had no trust in his audience, he highlights each of them as if to ask us, "Hey, did you see that? That was in Alien". Or whatever movie he's copying and pasting from. Stars Cailee Spaeny and David Jonsson do their best with absolutely nothing to work with. Johnsson's entire character is based on telling bad dad jokes. The rest of the actors don't matter, at least not to the movie, and certainly not to the audience. At least it looks good. Cinematographer Galo Olivares of Gretal and Hansel is certainly having a good time shooting in the immaculately designed sets. Discounting the Alien Vs Predator movies this is the worst of the franchise. Say what you will about Alien: Resurrection, but at least it was trying something new.

There was a lot of care and likely money put into Addie and the Lightning Bugs. The cinematography, the acting and the entire production are all topnotch. Sadly, the narrative voice feels like a copy of a copy of a copy. We've seen this sort of magical children's story a thousand times.

Addie (Cailey Fleming) finds out she is moving to a new city. Faces with leaving behind the memories of her deceased brother, she tries to capture the spirit of his life to bring with her.

Despite being sweetly told, by time we get the conclusion, we can't help but have wanted a more satisfying conclusion. As the one we get just sort of arrives with little dramatical fireworks.

Antlers follows a small Oregon town into its descent into madness. After a clumsy opening featuring an attack on a meth cooker and his son within abandoned coal mines, we meet our heroine, played by Keri Russel. She's a teacher with a haunted past worst than any monsters. We are quickly and visually shown she is an alcoholic in one of Cooper's highlights as a director. A woman goes into a store to buy something. She looks a the bottles of alcohol. The point comes across. Who needs pesky expository dialogue to show this?

Antlers biggest problem is we have no strong through-line. Her story is intriguing and it should have been fleshed out. Instead, we follow one of her students. The older son of the meth cooker in the opening scene. He's a strange boy who gets picked on. It is a horror movie after all. This film could have also been about him and been interesting. We follow him home to see he is feeding roadkill to something locked up in the closet. I wouldn't consider this a spoiler as it is revealed early on, but if you don't want to know skip to the next paragraph. Last chance. Move ahead. It's his father and brother. Both of them seem to be infected with some sickness turning them into monsters.

I wonder if the original screenplay focused more on the boy and got cut down in the film's edit. It's the more interesting story. It just needed fleshing out. Unfortunately, the young actor who plays him isn't up to the task. Which could explain a lot of problems with the film. This is of course just speculation.

Whatever the case, the script as seen on screen is the problem. We never get to follow the interesting threads long enough to become enamored in the story. By the time we get to the climax, we just don't care enough to feel the final blows.

I like Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart, Out of the Furnace, Black Mass). He has a great eye. Every shot and staging feels completely natural. But here he finally comes up with a dud after a career-high with the under-seen Hostiles. While he directs the hell out of Antlers, the script has little intrigue and is filled with dull characters.