Alien: Romulus Star Says One Scene Is “So Disgusting” That the Whole Crew Had to Look Away

The upcoming Alien: Romulus comes from director Fede Álvarez, known for horror films like Evil Dead and Don’t Breathe, and star Isabela Merced is confirming he won’t be toning down his intense filmmaking methods, as one scene caused members of the cast and crew to recoil and look away during playback. Merced didn’t offer any insight into what the scene contained, but given that the figures watching playback had likely witnessed the scene unfold in real life before watching the video, it’s impressive that such a sequence could look so brutal on an iPad. Alien: Romulus is set to hit theaters on August 16th.

“When we were doing reshoots, Fede Álvarez gave me the iPad where he watches playback, and he had the movie pulled up,” Merced revealed to The Hollywood Reporter. “So I told him I wanted to see parts of it, and he showed it to me. I was the one holding the iPad, and there were ten people around me watching it on the iPad. So there’s a scene that I’m in, and they all had to turn away. Not one person stayed looking at that iPad because it was so disgusting.”

The directors in the proper Alien franchise include Ridley Scott, James Cameron, David Fincher, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and while all of them had dabbled in genre storytelling prior to helming an entry in the seminal sci-fi franchise, Álvarez is arguably the one most known for being a horror director. Part of what makes the films so compelling, though, is that filmmakers all bring their own skills to the franchise to offer unique experiences, with Romulus potentially being the most visually disturbing in the franchise’s 40-year history.

In addition to Merced, the film stars Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Spike Fearn, and Aileen Wu. The movie was previously teased as following “a group of young people on a distant world, who find themselves in a confrontation with the most terrifying life form in the universe.”

The upcoming entry is said to take place between Alien and Aliens, though is expected to largely be a standalone story whose connections to the core franchise are centered around the deadly xenomorphs.

Stay tuned for updates on Alien: Romulus before it hits theaters on August 16th.

Are you looking forward to the new movie? Let us know in the comments or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter or on Instagram to talk all things Star Wars and horror!