Space colonists battle ultimate killing machines in Alien: Romulus trailer

The face huggers and chest bursters will return with a vengeance in a few weeks as Alien: Romulus finally in theaters. It’s the latest installment in horror director Fede Alvarez’s (Don’t breathe, Evil Death), and the final action-packed trailer has just been released.

(Spoilers ahead Alien And Aliens (below.)

As mentioned before, Alien: Romulus takes place between the events of Alien And Aliens (and is not related to FX/Hulu’s Alien prequel series set to premiere next year). That is, after Ellen Ripley, the sole survivor of the Our currentdestroyed the killer xenomorph and launched herself into space in the ship’s lifeboat – along with the ginger cat, Jonesy – before waking up after 57 years in hypersleep and fighting off more xenomorphs while protecting the young orphan Newt (Carrie Henn). According to the short and sweet official premise: “While scouring the deep reaches of an abandoned space station, a group of young space colonists come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe.”

Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla, Pacific Rim: Uprising) starring Rain Carradine, Isabela Merced (The last of us) plays Kay, and David Jonsson (Murder is easy) plays Andy. Archie Renaux (Shadow and bone) plays Tyler, Spike Fearn (After the sun) plays Bjorn, and Aileen Wu plays Navarro. But we likely won’t be seeing iconic badass Ellen Ripley (immortalized by Sigourney Weaver) in the film. At this point in the timeline, she’s in the midst of her 57-year stasis with Jonesy while her escape shuttle travels through space on its fateful encounter with a xenomorph queen.

Haunted house in space

We got our first glimpse of Alien: RomulusThe ninth installment in the sci-fi franchise, debuted with a short teaser back in March. That footage showed that Alvarez would be able to deliver on his intention to take this standalone film back to the franchise’s stripped-down space horror roots. There was also some special footage shown at CinemaCon in April, showing off the expected face-huggers and chest-bursters. A full trailer dropped in March, and it looked every bit as gory, intense, and delightfully terrifying as the first two films in the franchise, with some spooky haunted-house-in-space vibes thrown in for good measure.

This final trailer features much of the same footage, but gives us a few more plot details. The young space colonists are preparing to steal “highly regulated equipment” from the aforementioned abandoned space station, especially since Tyler thinks it “might be our only ticket out of here.” The team thinks it needs to be a quick job, in and out in 30 minutes. But we know better, right?

They’re welcomed to the Romulus space station by MU/TH/UR (the ship’s computer), and Bjorn is the first to say out loud that this space station is super creepy. Poor Bjorn gets the first face hugger, followed by Navarro—she’s the one we saw in earlier footage discovering an alien growing inside her chest. In this trailer, we see the chest burster preparing to emerge, much to Kay’s understandable horror. Kay, Rain, Andy, and Tyler grab their weapons, ready to take on the monsters together. But how do we think they’ll fare against these ultimate killing machines? Especially given that ominous final countdown to an “impact event”…

Alien: Romulus will be released in theaters on August 16, 2024.

Image of the list by YouTube/20th Century Studios