Romulus’ Star Watched Scary Classics to Stay Terrified

Alien: Romulus star Cailee Spaeny mentioned that she watched classic horror movies to keep her expressions of terror fresh while filming the new sci-fi thriller.

Spaeny—who played Jessie the photographer in the dystopian thriller Civil War this spring—leads the ensemble cast of Alien: Romulus, the seventh installment in the Alien movie series.

Spaeny portrays Rain Carradine in Alien: Romulus, part of a young group of colonizers exploring what seems to be an abandoned space station, only to confront horrifying Xenomorph aliens.

Naturally, any actor facing a Xenomorph in an Alien movie has to convey fear effectively, but maintaining that expression over the course of filming can be challenging, according to Spaeny.

“Honestly, when you shoot a movie like this for months and you’re doing so many horror beats, you do run out of ways to be horrified,” Spaeny told SFX magazine in an interview. The film is set to open in theaters on August 16.

Cailee Spaeny said she referred to classic horror films to bring varied expressions of terror to Alien: Romulus.

“The whole time I was making the movie, the second I got home, I either had a sci-fi or a horror film playing in the background the whole time. Usually horror,” Spaeny told SFX. “So, whether it was The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Blair Witch Project, or Near Dark, [you watch] because you do sort of run out of ideas.”

“You’re like, ‘I don’t know how to be horrified again today in an interesting way,’” Spaeny added. “I’ve got, like, three facial expressions and you’ve seen all of them about 100 times now!”

Alien: Romulus is a prequel of sorts, set about 20 years after the events of director Ridley Scott’s original Alien, director Fede Alvarez told Digital Spy. However, Alvarez mentioned that Alien: Romulus also evokes James Cameron’s 1986 film Aliens.

“It’s kind of the child of both movies combined visually, aesthetically, and storywise,” Alvarez told Digital Spy.

Produced by Ridley Scott and also starring David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn, and Aileen Wu, Alien: Romulus is scheduled to premiere in theaters on August 16.

Source: Forbes, Digital Spy