Romulus’ 10 Most Disgusting Scenes

Alien: Romulus takes the Alien franchise back to its grisly horror roots, and it has some truly disgusting and disturbing sequences to plant it back in that genre territory. Set during the time jump between Alien and Aliens, Alien: Romulus sees a group of young space miners checking out an abandoned space station in the hope of finding some key equipment that will help them escape to a brighter future (literally). But once they get on board the station, they’re horrified to find they have much more to fear than a lack of sunlight.

Director Fede Álvarez doesn’t just take the Alien series back to its horror roots – specifically, he takes it back to its roots in body horror. He took the iconic chestburster scene from Ridley Scott’s original Alien film and somehow managed to make it even gorier. He introduces a brand-new addition to the xenomorph family that’s one of the franchise’s creepiest creations to date. Alien: Romulus has plenty of moments that are just as sickening as the facehugger from the first movie.

10 The Crew Pulls The Facehugger Out Of Navarro’s Throat

After Navarro is jumped by a facehugger that promptly latches onto her head, Bjorn goes to electroshock it, like he did with the facehugger that attacked Tyler. But Andy warns him that shocking the facehugger will kill Navarro, because its tail is wrapped around her neck and it’ll tense up and strangle her. Instead, they resolve to freeze the facehugger, loosening its grip and allowing them to pull it off Navarro’s face (the tragic irony being that the chestburster has already been planted, so any attempt at rescue is futile).

They get the facehugger off Navarro’s face, but they have to pull it all the way out of her throat. The extended shot of a facehugger tentacle being yanked out of Navarro’s throat might be too much for squeamish viewers. It prompts a pretty visceral reaction.

9 Kay Injects Herself With Xenomorph DNA

The most important MacGuffin in Alien: Romulus is the black goo that Rook wants Andy to take back to the colony. It’s a pure form of xenomorph DNA that the Romulus crew managed to extract from the creature before they were wiped out. When Kay seems to be dying, Tyler tries to inject the goo into her in a last-ditch effort to save her, but Rain convinces him to wait.

Later on, when Kay is experiencing excruciating pain and is willing to do anything to make it stop, she decides to inject the xenomorph DNA herself. The black lines that start coursing through her veins are an immediate sign that this was a bad idea. The horrific consequences of Kay infusing her pregnant body with xenomorph DNA will be revealed in the film’s jaw-dropping climax.

8 Tyler Is Slaughtered By Xenomorphs

No one is safe in an Alien movie. Just when Tyler is starting to rekindle his romance with Rain and it seems like they might have a bright future together, he’s slaughtered by the xenomorphs. As they infiltrate the aliens’ nest and try to sneak through to the other side, Tyler is grabbed by a xenomorph tail and carried up into the hive, where several other xenomorphs are waiting to feast on him.

Álvarez does a great job of building suspense in this scene, because the xenomorphs don’t strike right away. They inspect their prey for a few seconds before they finally pounce. And when they do, it’s appropriately gory. Similar to Parker’s death in the original film, a xenomorph pierces Tyler’s eye with its mini mouth. Tyler’s gory death hammers home just how dangerous the xenomorphs are.

7 A Xenomorph Stalks Kay

The xenomorphs have always been terrifying creatures, but Alien: Romulus manages to make them even scarier by making them smart. This movie’s xenomorphs use cunning tactics to stalk their prey. They don’t just mindlessly attack whenever a frightened human is standing in front of them; they strategize. This is demonstrated when Kay is trapped in a room with a xenomorph. While Kay is desperately begging Andy to open the door and let her out, the xenomorph stalking her just sits behind her and waits patiently.

Andy refuses to open the door, because that’s what the creature is waiting for them to do. Rather than just killing Kay now, the xenomorph is waiting for her friends to open the door, so it can attack them as a group. There’s usually safety in numbers, but not when there’s a bloodthirsty xenomorph around.

6 Rain & Tyler Rescue Kay From The Xenomorph Nest

After Kay is taken away by the xenomorph that’s been stalking her, she seems to be a goner. But when Andy takes Rain and Tyler into the lion’s den – the xenomorph hive aboard the Romulus station – they’re delighted to find that Kay is still alive. She’s been assimilated into the nest with a bunch of other xenomorph victims. She’s in a pretty bad way, but she’s not dead yet. This scene recalls the sequence from Aliens in which Ripley saved Newt from a similar nesting situation.

As Rain and Tyler pull Kay out of the nest, it’s not necessarily scary, but it is gross. They have to dig through a lot of unsavory goos and gunks to free Kay from the hive. There’s more slime in this scene than in the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards.

5 There’s Something In The Water

Although Alien Resurrection is widely considered to be one of the worst Alien movies, it does have one terrific underwater sequence. As the crew has to swim from one flooded part of the ship to another, the xenomorphs swim after them with the grace of an Olympic athlete. This frightening underwater sequence, which combines the intergalactic terror of the Alien franchise with the aquatic terror of the Jaws franchise, gets a spooky homage in Alien: Romulus.

When Tyler, Bjorn, and Andy find some extra cryo fuel in a flooded room, they’re trapped in there. And then they accidentally awaken a swarm of facehuggers eager to implant baby xenomorphs in them. The ankle-deep water makes the creatures practically invisible as they sneak up on their prey and attempt to pounce. The blood-red lighting of the room makes this sequence even creepier.

4 Kay Gives Birth To “The Offspring”

Alien: Romulus has plenty of the familiar xenomorphs, but it also introduces a terrifying new creature to the franchise’s rogues’ gallery: “The Offspring.” After Kay injects herself with xenomorph DNA, it morphs her unborn baby into an unholy hybrid of human and xenomorph. Just as Rain is putting Kay into the cryosleep chamber for a nice, relaxing journey home, Kay’s vitals start to spike as the Offspring starts to make its way out of her.

The chestbursters were bad enough, but the birth of the Offspring is a gory blend of chestburster and regular human childbirth. A burst of blood shoots out between Kay’s legs and a slimy egg sac slides out of her. This is a truly gruesome moment of body horror that’ll surely make any faint-hearted viewers tense up and recoil in disgust.

3 Bjorn Is Burned Alive By Acid Blood

The Alien sequels have mostly ignored the fact that the xenomorphs have acidic blood. In the first film, one drop of that blood could doom the whole crew as it drips through the hull. But the sequels have confined the acid blood action to a couple of burns. Alien: Romulus brings back the full-time threat of the acid blood as it prevents Rain from shooting the xenomorphs on the lowest deck of the station, presenting yet another obstacle in the way of survival.

Bjorn falls victim to the acid blood when a bit of it splashes on him and he’s quickly burned alive. Whatever he does to try to stop it, it just makes the acid burn through his skin faster. It’s a horrifyingly elongated scene that doesn’t let up for what feels like an eternity.

2 The Offspring Devours Kay

One of the coolest ideas in Alien: Romulus is that the xenomorphs get even more ruthless after they’re fused with some human DNA. The xenomorphs on their own are the perfect killing machines, but the corruptible free will of humanity made them even more monstrous. When the Offspring rears its terrifying head, it instantly slits Andy’s throat with its claws before targeting its own mother.

The Offspring gets up close and personal with Kay, seemingly recognizing its familial connection to her as it inspects her face from an inch away. A petrified Kay tries to push the Offspring away, but it keeps studying her before eventually devouring her. This scene is about as unsettling as the controversial tendril kiss from HBO’s The Last of Us; it takes an intimate act and puts a horrifying spin on it.

1 Navarro’s Chestburster

The chestburster is a staple of the Alien franchise, but it’s been tough to bring the same shock value to the sequels, because the audience already knows what’s coming. The original chestburster was so iconic because the audience was just as surprised as Kane when a baby xenomorph tore through his chest. None of the subsequent chestbursters have quite had that same impact. But Alien: Romulus’ chestburster comes close, because Álvarez dialed up the gore.

Álvarez managed to make Alien: Romulus’ chestburster even more gruesome than Scott’s. He sustains the dread for longer, because the facehugger’s latest victim, Navarro, has an x-ray gun that allows her to see inside her chest. She sees the xenomorph trying to bust its way out long before it actually hatches. Isabela Merced sells Kay’s terror as she frantically tries to help her friend, making the sequence feel all the more real.