Cailee Spaeny looked to other horror and sci-fi movies to really nail her terrified reactions in the upcoming Alien: Romulus.
The film sees a group of of young people, including Spaeny's character, encounter the series' iconic spine-chilling facehuggers in an abandoned space station. Given how long principal photography takes on a movie like Alien: Romulus, we wonder what’s more exhausting for one of the cast: all the running around, or having to hype yourself into a convincingly terrified state for days on end? Can you just turn that on and off?
"I try to," Spaeny tells SFX magazine in the new issue, which hits newsstands on August 7 and features Alien: Romulus on the cover, "but honestly, when you shoot a movie like this for months and you're doing so many horror beats, you do run out of ways to be horrified! The whole time I was making the movie, the second I got home I either had a sci-fi or a horror film playing in the background the whole time. Usually horror.
"So whether that was having The Texas Chain Saw Massacre on, or The Blair Witch Project, or Near Dark. Because you do sort of run out of ideas. You're like, 'I don’t know how to be horrified again today in an interesting way. I've got, like, three facial expressions and you've seen all of them about 100 times now!'"
Not a subscriber to SFX? Then head on over here to get the latest issues sent directly to your home/device!
Alien: Romulus releases on August 16. Read more in the latest issue of SFX magazine, which features Alien: Romulus on the cover and is available from Wednesday, August 7.
For even more from SFX, sign up to our newsletter, which delivers all the latest exclusives straight to your inbox.
Check out our guide to this year's movie release dates for everything else 2024 has in store.
