Eight years later, Alvarez returns to the horrors of pregnancy in his latest project,Alien: Romulus.
Do sexual assault and forced pregnancy belong in horror?
InEvil Dead, Levy plays Mia Allen, the victimthe titular evil deadchooses to possess.
Image by Jefferson Chacon
After crashing her car and running through the wilderness,Mia is restrained and raped by the vines.
The lead-up to Mia being captured by the vines is harrowing.
Levys eyes are blown wide as sheruns in terror through the woodsand her cries once shes caught are piercing.
Image Via 20th Century Studios
InDont Breathe,Levy is once again in peril as Rocky.
The baster is framed, within the context of the scene, as a knife.
The camera tracks it carefully, with close-up shots of it being wielded.
Image Via 20th Century Studios
It is very much a weapon.
This makes the line, Im not a rapist.
I never forced myself on Cindy [Roberts], all the more horrifying.
While Mia is not pregnant, she does lose her body to host the demon.
The director has come in late in three different different movie series.
Mia and Rocky are imperfect characters before we meet them in their respective films.
These features can distance some viewers from the characters and portray them as undeserving of empathy.
There is also a thin allusion to pregnancy in chest bursters and The Queen.
This foreshadows Kay’s gruesome fate.
The breastfeeding scene stirred up a lot of buzz online.
Arguably, this confusion only further bolstersAlien: Romulus place in the pregnancy-horror canon.
Its a normal birth of an abnormal thing.
The horror in this moment is in the realism.
The subsequent rapid growth and the breastfeeding are tonally different because of their fantasy.
The birthing sequence is nothing short of pure body horror, with wet squelching and copious amounts of blood.
Blocking the breastfeeding as Alvarez did elevates the horror, with the creature hunched over Kays limp body.
It also prevents the camera from lingering with a lecherous gaze.
There is also no subtextual misstep here, where Kay is suddenly stronger for having endured this warped pregnancy.
The hybrid kills her.
It’s final and definitive.
Recent Horror Movies Are Focusing on the Female Experience (And Doing It Respectfully!)
Recent years have seen a surge in interest in showingthe female experience through the lens of horror.
The Alienfranchise is well-versed in these questions.
Director Alvarez has faced criticism for how hes handled depictions of sexual violence in the past.
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Alien: Romulusis in theatres now.
