Review of Alien (1979) by Cameron H — 23 Aug 2014

H.R. Giger was one sick son of a bitch. I don't mean to sound hyperbolic in some of these reviews, but the title character of Alien is the scariest (in the shit-your-pants sense, if you ever saw it in real life) on-screen monster. The face hugger and chest burster are speedy little creatures that warrant some of the biggest scares in the movie, but when the chest burster appears in its fully grown, iconic form, my jaw drops. The alien isn't on screen for that long in a single scene, and what you see the creature do isn't what most terrified me. Two perpetual fears I had throughout the film were when the creature would appear (no jump scares, surprisingly; it likes to lurk in the darkness in dead silence) and what happened to the bodies of its victims. Ripley (Signourney Weaver), the heroine, happens to find the bodies somewhere in the ship. They are preserved in a nest that Giger likely created too. For what purpose is unclear. One character, Ash (Ian Holm), describes the alien as the perfect organism and that it cannot die. The implications are insane, considering how the ship it boards is going back to Earth. Ridley Scott's direction sustains this paranoid atmosphere by slowing down the pace wherever possible, as opposed to quickening it. This is why Alien leans more towards sci-fi/horror than sci-fi/action, unlike its James Cameron-directed sequel, Aliens.

Thanks to the smartly written script by Dan O'Bannon, there is a plot point that implies even scarier possibilities, regarding the alien. The space ship is used for commercial reasons, and most of the workers are there to earn their fair share. They were resting in a sleep chamber until their ship received a distress signal from some mysterious location, where a protected nest of alien eggs are held. Kane (John Hurt) decides to get closer to one egg, and the face hugger hatches from the egg. The rest should be clear. The crew doesn't know how to handle the situation, so Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt) puts his faith in Ash, the science director, and the company-built "Mother" system. (*SPOILER*) In the midst of the escalating alien rampage, it is revealed is that Ash is a robot, too built by the company, whose primary purpose is to bring the alien from its planet and to the company as a weapon. Talk about sequel bait. Each character acts rationally, which is relieving when the stakes rise, and it means I genuinely hope for the survival of every crew member. For anyone interested in watching the best of horror and/or sci-fi fiction, this is an essential watch.