Editor’s Note: This article discusses the topics of sexual assault and violence.Horror cinema is no stranger to sexploitation. Even in movies not categorized as such, directors often film the torture and death of their female characters through an overtly sexualized lens. A now famous study by Molitor and Sapolsky reports that it takes women in slashers twice as long to die on-screen than men. Popular director, Fede Álvarez, has received push-back and criticism for participating in the glamorization of violence against the female body. In his 2013 remake, Evil Dead, Jane Levy’s Mia is possessed during the notorious “tree rape” scene, in a nod to the similar moment from Sam Raimi‘s 1981 original. In Don’t Breathe, Levy is once again threatened with a forced impregnation plotline.
Eight years later, Álvarez returns to the horrors of pregnancy in his latest project, Alien: Romulus. However, Álvarez censors the scene where the xenomorph-human hybrid known as the Offspring, breastfeeds from a dead Kay (Isabela Merced). Though the blocking prevents a clear visual, the horror is clear and overwhelming. Alien: Romulus does a lot with this plotline, generating a relentless sense of dread once it’s clear that something is wrong with Kay’s pregnancy. Focusing on grounding the pregnancy horror through gore and atmosphere prevents a tonal shift into torture porn. There is a clear evolution here from Álvarez, but has the criticism against the director been fair? Do sexual assault and forced pregnancy belong in horror?
Jane Levy Endures a Lot as Fede Álvarez’s Final Girl
Starring in two of his previous projects, Jane Levy’s characters are at the heart of both of Álvarez’s major controversies. In Evil Dead, Levy plays Mia Allen, the victim the titular evil dead chooses to possess. After crashing her car and running through the wilderness, Mia is restrained and raped by the vines. The demon possesses Mia through the vine assault, making the scene not only a rape but a forced impregnation. The lead-up to Mia being captured by the vines is harrowing. Levy’s eyes are blown wide as she runs in terror through the woods and her cries once she’s caught are piercing. In a movie where one girl amputates her arm with an electric turkey carver and another cuts the bottom half of her face off with mirror glass, the tree rape scene is easily the most stomach-turning.
In Don’t Breathe, Levy is once again in peril as Rocky. Strapped into a harness with her pants torn open, Rocky is threatened with a turkey baster full of her captor’s semen. 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. It is very much a weapon. This makes the line, “I’m 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. Rocky is threatened with being locked in a basement and impregnated with a “clone” for nine months. Both situations steal the girls’ autonomy and freedom as a means to torment them.
A less discussed aspect of Mia and Rocky is the question of morality and how it affects their final girl status. Mia and Rocky are imperfect characters before we meet them in their respective films. Mia is a heroin addict and Rocky is knowingly burglarizing the home of a blind man who recently lost his only child. These features can distance some viewers from the characters and portray them as undeserving of empathy. After the abject horror the girls are subjected to, they manage to claw their way out and become the sole survivors. The subtext here is that the threat of sexual violence was a crucible that imbued them not only with the strength to survive where everyone else perished but also to return to their lives on a more positive note. There is a suggestion that Mia will stay sober where she failed to before, and Rocky can now go to Los Angeles with her sister. Rape in fiction has long been used to “empower” female characters, with little regard for how traumatizing reality is, and Álvarez’s films slot right into this disappointing trend.
The Censoring in ‘Alien: Romulus’ Is a Step in the Right Direction
Alien: Romulus features another pregnancy-is-horror plotline. Alien as a franchise has, since the beginning, been interested in the female experience and pregnancy in particular. The design of the xenomorphs has drawn comparisons to phallic imagery since the release of the first film, and therefore metaphors regarding sexual assault. There is also a thin allusion to pregnancy in chest bursters and The Queen. In Alien: Romulus, when overnight, Kay goes from flat-stomached to full-term thanks to an injection of Prometheus formula, the audience can confidently expect more of this thematic exploration. Towards the opening of the film, Cailee Spaney’s Rain walks past a Renaissance painting of a baby nursing from the corpse of its mother. This foreshadows Kay’s gruesome fate.
The breastfeeding scene stirred up a lot of buzz online. The blocking of the hybrid curled over Kay left some viewers believing that the Offspring was eating Kay, rather than breastfeeding. Arguably, this confusion only further bolsters Alien: Romulus’ place in the pregnancy-horror canon. Whether or not the scene is read as breastfeeding or eating, the hybrid is taking from Kay to nourish itself. Many first-time mothers report being shocked that breastfeeding hurts, and good horror is often mundane experiences amplified to an unbearable volume. The censored scene comes on the heels of the birthing scene. Álvarez is quoted as saying the blood and gore of the birth were not meant to be viewed as supernatural. “It’s 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. Stacking two scenes, back-to-back, of Kay suffering, once through childbirth and then as her corpse is mutilated, would be gratuitous.
Álvarez said in a 2013 interview with Gizmodo that he was pressured into recreating the rape scene from The Evil Dead and regrets having acquiesced. Alien: Romulus does not shy away from the pregnancy horror, yet manages to avoid exploitative tropes. With the breastfeeding scene, he affords Kay some dignity that Mia and Rocky didn’t get. The point that the hybrid needs to feed from Kay to nourish itself is made clear, regardless of whether the viewer sees it as breastfeeding or flesh-eating — the slurping noises as the hybrid feeds feel louder than ringing sirens. The birthing sequence is nothing short of pure body horror, with wet squelching and copious amounts of blood. Blocking the breastfeeding as Álvarez did elevates the horror, with the creature hunched over Kay’s 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. She is dead. 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 showing the female experience through the lens of horror. 2024’s Immaculate investigates forced pregnancy and religion, 2022’s Fresh is about the dangers of dating as a woman, and 2019’s Ready or Not is all about marriage and how socioeconomic disparities play into the dynamic. The Alien franchise is well-versed in these questions. Director Álvarez has faced criticism for how he’s handled depictions of sexual violence in the past. With Alien: Romulus, it’s obvious in his treatment and handling of the breastfeeding scene that he’s heard and internalized these critiques. When thinking back on Evil Dead and Don’t Breathe, it’s impossible not to recall just how horrific the movie frames the threat of sexual violence. The camera is not gleeful, zeroing in on exposed skin. Sexual violence and the malicious violation of female bodies are horror. Perhaps framing it as such rather than relishing in its depiction or censoring it might be the best way to include it.
Alien: Romulus is in theatres now.