In a recent interview with Collider, Alvarez explains that the Alien: Romulus ending and the ending to 2013’s Evil Dead actually have a number of elements in common. In the latter film, the protagonist faces off against a demon that seemingly rises from the depths of hell, and the director explains that both this “Abomination” and the Offspring are similar in terms of their escalation of the stakes and the ways in which they were approached from a filmmaking perspective. Check out Alvarez’s comments below:
“It is something that is our natural tendency. If you look at Evil Dead, it is exactly the same ending. An abomination rises from hell. It is actually similar. I would love to see a meme of The Abomination and The Offspring sharing a coffee and a cigarette. They’re very similar creatures and approached in a quite similar way technically.
“I knew that I wanna make sure that I would save the most radical, the most scary stuff for the end. I had this perverse enjoyment of imagining the audience thinking the movie’s over, having heard it gets really scary and thinking it wasn’t that scary, and then suddenly an alarm triggered — boom — and they go, ‘Oh f—k, here we go.’ That’s what I felt last night, particularly because I’m happy that people have been hyping that ending.”
Fede Alvarez’s Horror “Fourth Acts” Explained
Alien: Romulus’ Ending Is A Major Movie Highlight
Alvarez has previously described the ending of Alien: Romulus and of Evil Dead as being “fourth acts.” Generally, mainstream movies have a story structure consisting of three acts, with the protagonist’s journey wrapped up by the end of act three. In both Evil Dead and Alien: Romulus, however, the character’s journey seemingly ends with a more traditional act three climax before they then go on to face their biggest, most extreme challenge yet.
In Alien: Romulus, the sequence with Rain and Andy in the elevator shaft seemingly serves as the film’s climactic action set piece. The tension lowers after this, as the main threat has seemingly been defeated, and the movie could realistically end with everyone going into cryosleep. Things then kick into high gear, however, as Kay (Isabela Merced) gives birth to Alien: Romulus‘ Offspring creature and Rain has a one-on-one fight with the movie’s most terrifying monster.
This ending not only works in the sense that it’s shocking, intense, and scary, but it’s also the perfect callback to Ridley Scott’s original Alien movie from 1979. That seminal sci-fi horror memorably ends with Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) seemingly safe before she has one last close-quarters battle against the Xenomorph. It’s unclear what Alvarez will be tackling next after Alien: Romulus, but his penchant for surprise fourth acts has certainly become an exciting director trademark.
