It’s been 45 years since cinema audiences first learned that, ‘In Space No-one Can Hear You Scream’. Since then, what began as Dan O’Bannon’s haunted house in space concept, has grown into a huge multimedia franchise centred around the titular Alien, or Xenomorph, to use its proper name. It’s perhaps proper that after the most recent entries, the Promethean pair of less than well received prequels, the film franchise has returned to a more back-to-basics approach for the latest instalment, Alien: Romulus.

Set a rough twenty years after the original film, Alien: Romulus picks up on the Weyland Yutani Company mining planet, LV-410, where Rain Carradine (Cailee Spaeny) and her adoptive android brother, Andy (David Jonsson), live and work as little more than slaves to a corporate system; grinding and working them to death. Luckily, her ex-partner Tyler (Archie Renaux) has a plan to get them, and the rest of his ragtag found-family group, offworld and to the freedom of a non-corporation planet. The only snag being that they need to break into a derelict spacecraft that recently floated into planetary orbit, to steal the cryo-stasis pods that will keep them alive during the nine-year journey.

Of course, this being an Alien movie, the unknown spacecraft is far less derelict and more perilous than originally thought, leading to a frantic race through its corridors and hanger bays while hounded by the galaxy’s most savage and unstoppable lifeform. Pulling a whole host of threats, props, lines and even characters, familiar to fans of the franchise in the process.

In many ways, that’s both the best and worst thing about Alien: Romulus. It’s a film that desperately wants its audience to point and clap in recognition at the familiar, while never quite remixing the ideas enough to make them feel wholly unique. Particularly in the back half of the film, there’s a horrible sense that all you’re watching are old scenes fed back with minimal changes, amidst the literal homage shots and moments. The side effect is that the better moments, such as a silent creep through a room full of scuttling face-huggers, or a zero-gravity escape from a corridor laced with spirals of floating acid, feel less fresh than they could do, surrounded with old material.

It means that casual fans of the franchise will eagerly lap up or be horrified by the nods and winks, as well as the somewhat ghastly return of the late Ian Holm, as Rook, another android from the same production line as Ash from Alien, half smashed apart and oozing milky fluids. It’s an uncanny and somewhat unfinished looking effect, with deep faked eyes and lips badly slapped on top of an animatronic replica of the dead actor. But, it’s a story choice that ,while unnecessary, fits the story universe.

Beyond that, the film itself is well directed by Fede Alvarez, bringing his horror movie chops to the fore, as well as a knack for decent characterisation in a short time. While most of the cast are one note and disposable, Rain and Andy are brilliantly realised with a genuine bond. Jonsson in particular steals the show, alternating between playing Andy as broken, or almost mentally impaired, and scarily cold and smart, as his programming is influenced by Company control. It’s a great performance and outshines almost everyone else. The other end of the spectrum are the bizarre choices made for Spike Fearn‘s Bjorn, who is played like a sulky chav. Slouching like a teenager and being borderline unintelligible as he growls, mumbles or yells every line in a guttural Midlands brogue. Somewhere in the middle, Isabella Merced tries her best with an underwritten role as Tyler’s pregnant sister, Kay, a situation which ties directly into the heavy themes of pregnancy and childbirth that suffuse the movie.

How much you enjoy Alien: Romulus really does depend on how wedded you are to the Alien franchise, and how much seeing things you’ve seen before will bother or cheer you. People who uncritically cheered at films which rebooked older movies, like Jurassic World, or Star Wars: The Force Awakens, or more directly, The Matrix Resurrections, will likely have a great time here. Others will baulk as the film begins to descend into key-jangling member-berries at the midpoint, turning what is a great starting point into essentially a less tongue-in-cheek remake of Alien Resurrection. Much like that misjudged entry in the series, this is destined to be no-one’s favourite, but likely also no-one’s most hated either.