Alien

Review

Alien is the quintessential sci-fi horror film and features one of the most iconic final girls to grace the horror screen, Ellen Ripley. Combining a claustrophobic environment, excellent sound design and a well-rounded cast of characters, Alien ends up being a horrifically suspenseful experience that I loved every second of.

Alien is about a commercial ship who is returning to earth to deliver whatever they collected from space when they come across a beacon from another ship, when they go to investigate one of the crew members discovers a bunch of eggs and is attacked by one of the aliens in the eggs. When they bring him back onto the ship, against Ripley’s better judgment, they find out that another alien has been implanted in his chest and it ends up killing him and escaping into the ship. In the chaos, the crew realizes that one of their crew mates is actually an android and was tasked with bringing back any intelligent life, by any means necessary which is why he allowed the alien to infiltrate the ship. At this point the alien has grown to enormous sizes and is picking off the crew one by one. The movie ends with Ripley escaping the ship with Jonesy, the cat, before it blows up. She quickly realizes that the alien escaped with her and she ends up throwing it out of the airlock before putting herself into cyrosleep for the journey home.

Right off the bat the first thing I noticed about this movie was the set and atmosphere. Almost immediately I was like ‘how much money did they sink into this movie?’ and uh it was $48 million so that explains it. But yea the set was absolutely fabulous and so intricately designed. I talk about it a bit in my thoughts about Aliens (1986) but I absolutely love this industrial, kinda grimy sci-fi aesthetic it really works for me. Maybe it’s because my biggest influences are Black Mesa which is slightly apocalyptic and Mass Effect where planets like Omega and the wards of the Citadel were some of the coolest planet environments in the game. But yea the set was super cool and the further into the movie you get the more claustrophobic it feels which I think is really cool.

I loved the camaraderie between the crew-mates it really sets up the emotional weight of each of the deaths and of Ash’s betrayal well. This is also a more general note but I love moments where movies with a large cast will have the characters talk over each other when the cast is all together, it creates a feeling of intimacy among the characters and it feels really natural. It also has the effect of simulating the audience actually being there as you pick up on bits and pieces of conversation almost as if you were sitting among them.

I think this movie did a really good job of playing with the lighting and sound design. The lighting throughout the movie is done really well giving you enough to see but not enough to feel comfortable and secure which I really thought was cool. The sound design is similarly cool, the movie likes to play with the contrast of quiet scenes to loud scenes and it works really well for me. Quiet moments emphasize the isolation of the crew while loud scenes heighten the emotion of the moment and get the audiences’ hearts racing with the characters. I think the movie does a really good job of knowing when to use which approach and I noticed it consistently being done well throughout the film.

Of course you can’t talk about Alien without talking about Ellen Ripley who I absolutely adored. She challenged Sidney Prescott for the coveted spot of best girlboss in my heart and even though it was a tough fight she came out on top in the end. She is the epitome of strength in an impossible situation such as literally being millions of miles away from earth, stuck on a space ship with a massive murderous alien, doesn’t get much more intense and impossible than that. She was honestly so fantastic and so willing to do whatever it takes to survive and I personally really appreciate that in horror characters.

While we’re talking about the characters, none of them particularly stood out to me other than Ripley but I do want to mention that I think the actors did an absolutely fantastic job and there was never a moment where I had anything to say other than absolute praise.

And finally, how can you review Alien without talking about the xenomorph. I think that it looked so cool and was sufficiently intimidating. I think in general with monster movies, the less we see of the monster the better, if he’s just hanging out then it kinda removes the scare factor, because you can really start to analyze how silly they look or walk or whatever since in reality it’s just a big monster suit. For example, when the xenomorph gets thrown out of the airlock I commented that he looked a little silly and it’s because it’s a full body shot that’s lit well and I could finally see the costume for what it was. Anyways, I think the Alien design was really cool and I think it was a really good idea to ask a horror illustrator to make the alien designs because they truly ended up looking terrifying.

All this to say, I thought this movie was expertly done and I really appreciate it. A very fun monster movie with space flavoring and I’m really glad I ended up watching it with my dad