Alien: Romulus director explains his new film’s big Alien: Isolation Easter egg

Cailee Spaeny as Rain backing away from a xenomorph in the movie Alien Romulus. — (Image credit: 20th Century Studios)

Alien: Romulus is taking the iconic sci-fi horror series back to bloody basics, with a stripped-back, survival horror focus, gnarly body horror, and the return of a Giger-authentic biomechanical Xenomorph.

Though inspired by 1979’s Alien and 1986’s superlative sequel Aliens first and foremost, Alvarez’s film also nods to Alien’s wider legacy – everything from the less-than-stellar sequels to tie-in novels and comics. And that includes Creative Assembly’s palm-sweatingly scary 2014 game Alien: Isolation.

“Alien: Isolation was kind of what made me see that Alien could truly be terrifying and done well [today],” Alvarez tells the Inside Total Film podcast and GamesRadar+. “I played a few years after it came out. Don’t Breathe was coming out. Or was I waiting for Don’t Breathe to come out, and I was playing the game. That’s why, at the time, I was like, ‘Fuck, if I could do anything, I would love to do Alien and scare the audience again with that creature and those environments.’ I was playing, and realising how terrifying Alien could be if you take it back to that tone.”

The Alien: Romulus clapperboard and a facehugger, posted on Alien Day 2023 — (Image credit: Fede Alvarez/20th Century Studios/Disney)

The eagle-eyed among you may remember that the very first behind the scenes image from Alien: Romulus (see above) features a familiar-looking Emergency Phone. In the game, these ‘Registration Points’ allow the player to save, but aren’t exactly a safe haven as their agonisingly slow operation leaves main character Amanda Ripley vulnerable to a pharyngeal jaw to the back of the skull – a fact Alvarez pays homage to in Romulus.

“The movie is set up in a way [that] every time something bad is about to happen, you will see a phone,” the Romulus director and co-writer says with a grin when we meet in London. “In the game, every time you knew there’s a phone you’d go, ‘Fuck, I’m about to go into some bad set-piece.’ It’s the same thing here. You’ll see they’re planted strategically throughout the film. When you see the phone, it’s like: brace for impact.”

Alien: Romulus releases in cinemas across the UK and Ireland, and in US theaters, from August 16. Listen to our full interview with Fede Alvarez on the Inside Total Film podcast, out later this week.

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