The two iterations of the Alien franchise each possess a distinct conception of the xenomorph, despite their internal differences. Alien, Aliens, Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection all present the xenomorph as a creature – the most terrifying creature in the universe. By contrast, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant present the xenomorph as a distillation of the divine at its most alien or, alternatively, as an embodiment of the principles of the cosmos at their most counter-intuitive. In this second strand of films the xenomorph is closer in spirit to the monolith of 2001: A Space Odyssey, an entity that defies all human comprehension, even though it remains terrifying as a physiognomy. Fede Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus straddles both these lineages and plays as an alternative sequel to Alien that also draws upon the lore of Prometheus and Covenant. Since Romulus is a syncretic text it feels quite familiar at first only to grow stranger and more original as it proceeds. We open at a mining colony, Jackson Star, run by the Weyland-Yutani corporation, where a collection of disaffected workers, headed by Cailee Spaeny’s Rain, decide to hijack a derelict spacecraft that is floating past their planet. However, it turns out that the craft, which consists of twin components named Romulus and Remus, was abandoned after recovering the remaining xenomorph on the original Nostromo.

In the chaos and horror that ensues, Alvarez both develops the alien as a physiognomy, as occurs in the first four films, and as an abstraction or suspension, as occurs in Prometheus and Covenant. As far as physiognomy goes there is more here on the biology of the alien than in any film since the original. By dividing the craft into two discrete entities, Romulus and Remus, Alvarez can focus equally on the facehuggers and the full-grown xenomorph, along with the symbiosis and metamorphosis between them. For the first time in the franchise humans are confronted with hordes of hyper-kinetic facehuggers. For the first time too, the humans learn how to elude facehuggers, at least temporarily. Realising that the facehuggers are blind and can only respond to rapid movement and body temperature, Rain and her sidekicks raise the thermostat so that it is the same as human body temperature and then slowly creep their way past a plethora of dormant facehuggers, in a genuinely new spectacle.

Simultaneously, Romulus develops the xenomorph as an abstraction or suspension of the most alien qualities of the universe. This aesthetic of suspension begins with the location of the Romulus and Remus at the edge of a vast asteroid belt that surroundings the mining planet. Upon boarding the two ships Rain and her crew realise that they are going to make contact with this suspended orbit of asteroids much sooner than they had realised. In the final scene, Rain hides in the basement of a smaller mining craft, surrounded by heaps of mineral ore, while the floor gives way beneath her to the outermost rim of this orbit. With that suspended material in the background, Alavrez focuses on the facehuggers as aquatic organisms. While we did see the xenomorphs swimming in Resurrection there’s a more pervasive sense here that water is the facehuggers’ natural medium. The crew first encounter them in knee-deep water, whipping and swerving with liquid grace. These facehuggers are also far wetter than ever before, transpiring heavily as they attach themselves to their prey.

This aesthetic of abstraction and suspension reaches its apotheosis in the second half of the film with two equally brilliant spectacles. On the one hand, Rain and the remaining members of her crew discover a science laboratory at the heart of the Romulus. The centrepiece of this laboratory is a test tube that contains the very essence of the xenomorph – a sample of “Non-Newtonian DNA” that is preserved in suspension. The xenomorph now ceases to be a single or consistent physiognomy and instead becomes an embodiment of the most counter-intuitive properties of the universe; those aspects of our physical world that extend beyond the space and time of human perception. With the help of Rook, Ian Holm’s robot from the first film, Rain learns that the Weyland-Yutani corporation are planning to use this Non-Newtonian DNA to accelerate human evolution and thereby deal with the mortality crisis plaguing the offworld colonies. The alien thus collapses into the imminent posthuman future.

The other spectacle of suspension and abstraction emerges more concretely from the aliens themselves. During the third act Alvarez repeats some of the key beats of James Cameron’s sequel but in zero gravity – or more accurately, in rapid alternations between gravity and zero gravity. This already abstracts the xenomorphs somewhat, removing their natural mobility and instead presenting them suspensed in space, as occurs during the credit sequence, when the frozen body of the original alien is removed from the exploded hull of the Nostromo. Total abstraction comes when Rain switches off the gravity drive as the last great horde of xenomorphs descend upon her, and then takes aim at them with her pulse rifle. Yet this simultaneously creates a different kind of danger. Due to the acidic quality of the aliens’ blood Rain has to twist, bend and contort her body around one zero-gravity string of corrosive liquid after another. No trace of the aliens remains except this suspended abstraction of their most insurmountable physical attribute, in the most elegant and lyrical sequence in the entire film.

As that might suggest, Romulus starts off somewhat familiar but becomes more original as it proceeds. No doubt it’s classicist, especially compared to Covenant, but that’s also what may be needed to continue the franchise, and there’s something bold about returning to the world of the first four films. From the outset it’s clear that Alvarez is keen to draw upon all the signature elements of Ridley Scott’s original – hush, granularity, vividly etched surfaces and textures, and above all an embodied and visceral sense of (outer) space. The first dialogue in the film is a joke – “Did you hear about the claustrophobic astronaut?” “He needed space” – that reflects a core truth about the franchise: a genuine sense of claustrophobia depends on a genuine sense of space. Accordingly, Alvarez takes great pains to enliven the Romulus craft as a space when the crew enter it. He shifts from a tiny corridor that serves as their main point of ingress to a cavernous central chamber and alternates vertiginously between gravity and zero gravity. Both juxtapositions set the stage for a film that insists upon space, and the creative configuration of space, as the common denominator across the franchise as a whole.

Impressively, none of this plays as mere fandom service either. By the closing scene, Alvarez has presented us with a new xenomorph, one that combines the physiognomies of the first four films and the Non-Newtonian DNA of the last two films and their vision of accelerated human evolution. To the end the alien hovers between a terrifying body and a terrifying concept and by never committing exclusively to either Romulus feels remarkably pregnant as a incitement to creativity within the franchise as a whole. By schematising the two iterations of the alien in such an elegant way, Romulus also sets the scene for the first text in the franchise (apart from Alien v. Predator) to take place on earth – the FX limited series Alien: Earth, coming out next year, which will surely expand on these two mythological trajectories.