Alien: Romulus is here to bring the Alien franchise back to its horror roots, and director Fede Alvarez made it his mission to scare as many as people as possible.

Alvarez spoke with Sharronda Williams for Blavity’s Shadow and Act, and he said that what helped make the film scary was increasing the screen time for the facehuggers, the parasites that latch onto victims’ faces and implant alien embryos into them.

“It’s always been [in] the original films, one of the scariest parts for me, the facehugger, the facehugging,” he said. “If you give me a choice of like having to find a face hugger or an alien, I prefer the quick death of the blow of the inner mouth of a xenomorph than to be impregnated by thing that touched your face. And then knowing that then that’s going to come out of your chest in the most horrendous possible way. So…the facehuggers are one of the most terrifying creatures in this universe. In the other movies…you see them a little bit, but they never really had their moment in the sun. So I thought it was something I really wanted to do to really put them on the front line.”

Something else that scared Alvarez wasn’t what happened in the film, but what happened before the film even began–pitching his idea to original Alien director Ridley Scott. In his words, it was “obviously terrifying” to face Scott with his ideas. However, he and Scott got along well on set.

“Ridley is super nice and super friendly to directors, but, it is always scary to go to Ridley Scott and say, “Let me tell you, this is what I think an Alien movie [has] to be now. And so that was definitely intimidating,” he said. “But he welcomed it with open arms and he was so generous and so helpful as well to make it [the film] better. We had an original idea that he really helped us to get it home, to take it home and make it the best version it could be. Working with him is amazing, he’s been involved in every level.”

Alvarez added that Scott was on board with Alvarez since the beginning of the film, and he offered his help to make the story the best it could be.

“When the movie was ready, he was the first person to see it outside of my editorial circle,” Alvarez said. “…I didn’t want anybody to see it outside of the office except for Ridley. So he watched it and I went to see him right away to get his first reaction and thank God he loved it and thought it was great and really believed in the movie.”

Watch the full interview with Alvarez and the cast–including David Jonsson, Cailee Spaeny, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn and Aileen Wu–below. Alien: Romulus comes to theaters Aug. 16.

Fede Alvarez

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