Alien Romulus was a fun time at the movies. The plot didn't make much sense (how did they get so many facehuggers? how did the pregnant woman know to inject herself with black goo? ), and while the movie is creepy when it's cribbing Alien it's kind of undercut by the action-movie setpieces when it's cribbing from Aliens. The Alien isn't scary in this one!
The methodical winnowing-down of thinly-drawn twenty-somethings felt like a feature when I considered this is a 2020's Fede Alvarez haunted-house movie, but maybe that script could've used a second pass (at one point a character says "don't tell my brother" about a plot development, and I'm still unsure which of those guys was supposed to be her brother). I wasn't necessarily morally outraged by the character people have been bothered by, but their constant presence added a video game feeling to the narrative.
I read a critique that "the characters know they're in an Alien movie," which doesn't seem quite right. It was more like the movie itself felt like we knew it was an Alien movie; when the facehuggers are first revealed there's a dramatic sting that really only plays if you know what a facehugger is, imo.
