Alien: Romulus

When a young woman is fighting an alien xenomorph on a crippled spaceship, she must be in her underwear. Them’s the rules. Lot of other rules and tropes, callbacks to previous Aliens, in this scary and well-made chapter. There’s a legit pattern now, and a lot of it is predictable. An innocent will be face-hugged. A synthetic will betray the hero. Acid blood will cripple the ship. It goes on. But it’s a skillfully made bundle of lore. Director Fede Alvarez knows how to “fan-service” and uses his excellent sense of timing to scare – beyond the typical jump scares. When something new DOES come along, a biological abomination, you don’t get the sense that it’s going to be sticking around for very long. Spoiler alert. Thematically, all of the “Alien” movies depict a worse-case-scenario of people caught in between a battle between biology and technology, and the exploitation of one for the other for profit, of course. One of the lessons is: don’t let a corporation decide what’s human.

Twisters

“Oh, no! A big tornado! Let’s drive straight into it!” 

“What? That’s crazy. You’ll get us all killed.” 

“Do you believe in science or don’t you?” 

“Okay, drive!” 

 “Oh, no! Another member of our team died in a tornado!” 

“Why does this keep happening to us??” 

“They died doing what they love: driving straight into tornados.” 

“Say! Isn’t that a tornado?” 

“We should drive into it!” 

“Great idea!” 

“For science, bitches!” 

 Up next: Irwin Allen and Steven Spielberg Present: Twister Part 3: Twistees!

I Know What You Did Last Summer

Rewatched this influential, trope-filled, 1997 horror movie; a chapter from the old guard and a relic from the popcorn-horror before-times. Horror movies function best as cautionary tales. And this establishes a strong parable about taking responsibility for one’s actions, etc. The plot, however, is pretty boring, and the filmmakers compensate for this by lingering on the bodies of the prepossessing teenagers while trying to milk suspense. For the most part, the cast is game and, without having much to work with, expertly mine suspense out of thin air. It entertains, but it doesn’t really surprise.