Cailee Spaeny stars in the franchise's seventh installment, directed by Fede Álvarez as a nerve-wracking greatest hits retrospective. It works.

By Owen Gleiberman

There’s a contradiction built into the idea of another “Alien” sequel. “Alien: Romulus” is the seventh installment in the franchise, and each time we queue up for another installment, even one as “mythologically”-laden as “Prometheus,” the hope is that we’ll get a taste of the shock and awe “Alien” inspired 45 years ago. “Aliens” evoked enough of that feeling in 1986 to register as a classic — and while “Alien 3” (1992) is reviled by everyone in the known universe, including its director, David Fincher, I’ve always found it, in its motherly-bad-dream-as-art-film way, to exert a slow-burning nauseating power.

But starting with “Alien: Resurrection” (it’s never a good sign when a movie’s title sounds like a pitch to stockholders), the series runs less on honest fear than on fumes of space-beast nostalgia. The face-hugger, the helmet-headed, dripping silver-jawed adult alien, the whole primal dread of your body being not just attacked but invaded — the truth is, the more “Alien” movies you see, the less nightmarish they become.