Romulus’ Cruelest Twist Continues A Dark Trend 8 Years After 88% Horror Movie

WARNING: This article contains SPOILERS for Alien: Romulus

While Alien: Romulus features a lot of gory deaths, the Alien reboot’s nastiest moment continues a surprising trend from the director’s earlier hit. The Alien movies are not known for pulling their punches, but some of the franchise’s offerings are nastier than others. The second Alien Vs Predator movie, Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem, featured an infamous sequence in which a Xenomorph attacked a maternity ward full of pregnant people. This was one of the most mean-spirited moments in the series, although some reviewers accused the sequel of confusing excessive shock value and gross-out gore with tension and scares.

The Alien franchise’s long-awaited reboot Alien: Romulus doesn’t share this issue. Coming from Evil Dead 2013 director Fede Alvarez, Alien: Romulus shares that earlier horror franchise reboot’s intense gore, inventive deaths, and near-constant tension. Alien: Romulus tells the straightforward story of a few ill-fated scavengers who commandeer cryogenic pods from a Weyland Yutani spaceship while trying to escape their lives of drudgery. Unfortunately for them, the ship containing these pods also contains a lot of hungry face-huggers. Soon, the ship is crawling with Xenomorphs and the heroes will be lucky to escape with their lives, let alone the pods.

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Alien: Romulus’ Kay Death Sees Fede Alvarez Subvert A Horror Trope (Again)

Pregnant Characters Are Often Spared In Horror Movies

Almost all of Alien: Romulus’ characters die, but the most surprising death in the entire movie is the fate of Isabela Merced’s Kay. The pregnant Kay is put through the wringer throughout Alien: Romulus. She is knocked out, attacked by a Xenomorph, cocooned, injected with an experimental serum, and finally killed after giving birth to a human/ Xenomorph hybrid. Bizarrely, Alien: Romulus’ Kay death isn’t the first time Fede Alvarez’s movie killed off a pregnant character, despite how rare this twist is in the world of horror movies. Even gruesome, downbeat horrors like Evil Dead Rise usually let pregnant people survive.

However, Alvarez didn’t spare the pregnant character in his earlier 2016 horror hit, Don’t Breathe. Don’t Breathe and Alien: Romulus’ plot similarities are self-evident, as both movies follow morally ambiguous, desperate young antiheroes who sneak into a shady location to set up a better life for themselves, only to be picked off by an unexpected enemy. The strangest similarity between the two movies is their treatment of pregnant supporting characters. In Don’t Breathe, a captive woman is impregnated and accidentally shot moments later. In contrast, Alien: Romulus‘s pregnant Kay almost makes it to the end of the movie.

Kay’s Alien: Romulus Death Is Worse Than Don’t Breathe’s Similar Scene

Kay’s Fate Is Painfully Drawn Out

Don’t Breathe’s minor supporting character, Cindy, undergoes a brutal ordeal at the hands of the movie’s villain, but her eventual demise is relatively quick and sudden. In contrast, Kay’s Alien: Romulus death is arguably more drawn out than most of the franchise’s deaths and is as hard to watch as the original Alien’s chest-burster scene. Kay makes it through an encounter with the Xenomorph, but the odds of her survival steadily decline from there. Although the Alien reboot’s heroine is doomed once she injects the serum, Kay’s blood loss makes it seem like the Alien: Romulus heroine could not have survived her ordeal either way.

Alien: Romulus

Director

Fede Alvarez

Release Date

August 16, 2024

Studio(s)

Scott Free Productions , 20th Century

Writers

Fede Alvarez , Rodo Sayagues , Dan O’Bannon , Ronald Shusett

Runtime

119 Minutes

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