Despite being one of the scariest components of the original films, the facehuggers in Alien: Romulus proved to be one of its most disappointing elements. The 2024 film serves as a midquel between Ridley Scott and James Cameron's first two installments, following a group of space colonists who seek to escape a working planet Weyland-Yutani and head to the titular space station to save cryopods and travel to a new planet, only to inadvertently release a series of xenomorphs and facehuggers.
Co-written and directed by Fede Álvarez, the same mind behind the 2013 film evil Dead reboot-quel, Alien: Romulus it quickly became a critical and commercial success, with many considering it the best since the first two. Even so, while Alien: Romulus found creative ways to better connect the timeline between Scott's prequels and the originals, an element that should have been the easiest to recreate in a chilling way became one of the least.
Facehuggers are often the scariest part of the Alien franchise
With Facehuggers, once they catch their victim, it's over
Over the course of the seven main films, xenomorphs and facehuggers have served as the two main antagonists of the Foreigner franchise, except for the hybrids seen in Resurrection, Prometheus and Romulo' finishing. Before the 2024 movie, facehuggers were somewhat absent, with Resurrection and Covenant only giving them quick scenes, whereas the 2012 prequel left them out entirely due to their timeline placement.
Part of What makes the facehuggers so terrifying in the previous films is that there only needs to be one for everything to descend into chaos. Even more so is the fact that once facehuggers catch their victim, there is essentially no escaping them. In addition to Ripley in Aliens and Lope by Demián Bichir in CovenantNo other character survived being grabbed by the creature, and the latter's escape came with acid burning his face and still leaving him impregnated with a pretomorph.
Why the Facehuggers in Alien: Romulus Didn't Live Up to the Previous Films
There are many Facehuggers in Romulus
Aileen Wu's Navarro Death Was Without a Doubt the Most Horrible come from a facehugger since John Hurt in Scott's original, but it's the scenes that precede and follow it that exemplify the film's problem with portraying them because there are so many. The fact that their escape results in at least a dozen of them chasing the main characters undermines how powerful they are in the previous films. Where just one could lead to the deaths of all the main characters, the introduction of a series of face hugs falls flat.
That doesn't mean that Alien: Romulus is completely brought down by the representation of facehuggers.
Showing a bunch of them jumping around and not being able to grab any of the characters other than Navarro makes it unbelievable that the creatures have any intelligence or tact. That doesn't mean that Alien: Romulus is completely brought down by the representation of facehuggers. Navarro's death is gruesome, the practical effects used to create it are fantastic, and the sequence of other characters trying to get past them provides some good tension. But going into the future Foreigner movies, it would be nice to see a return to what made facehuggers tick originally to illustrate how their strength doesn't come in numbers.