Alien - Ridley Scott

This was my first experience with the Sci-Fi horror classic Alien. Yes, I am one of those people who saw Prometheus first, and yes, I enjoyed it. More importantly I also enjoyed Alien. Considering the film is from 1979, I was really impressed with the effects and filming techniques used to overcome the limited technology. I can count on one hand the number of scenes that looked disruptively hoaky, which is no small feat for a movie coming out of this time period. Many high budget modern horror flicks have failed to reach the level of tension I felt during key scenes in Alien.

            The first factor that contributed to the effectiveness of this film even decades later, is the cinematography. The film deliberately shied away from showing the alien in close up, well lit, and full detail. Instead the dark, claustrophobic, and inorganic aesthetic of the ship was reflected in the bits of the alien we were shown. As the film progressed, the setting and the monster seemed to blur until there was something hostile in every shot, even when the monster itself was nowhere to be scene. The feeling that the monster could be anywhere was more effective than actually having it pop up everywhere. In addition to the uncomfortable hostility of the setting, the parts of the monster that were shown with most detail were carefully selected to be the most dangerous and least human. The long glossy head, dripping double mouth, segmented tail, and perhaps the part I found most disturbing, the hands, which bore an unmistakable resemblance to human, but were corrupted, dark, wet, clawed things that moved with a disturbing fluidity in the scene at the end. In this way, the film drew attention away from the humanoid body of the monster (which was, in a few brief scenes, clearly a man in a suit) and kept the focus on the truly alien aspects of the beast.

            The second contributing factor to the success of this piece as a horror was the acting. I enjoyed the performance of every actor in the film. The screams were realistic; the growing terror in Lambert’s voice as she tells Dallas the alien is coming right at him was convincing. That scene was one of my favorites. There was something in the simplicity of the white blip on the radar marking the monster that served to heighten the terror, in the same way the static on your computer monitor makes you almost pee yourself when you play Slender. Weaver’s performance in particular struck me. Between her sweat drenched appearance, ragged breathing, and wide eyes, I felt anxiety with the character, who was also admirable and resilient to boot.

            The alien itself is an apex predator. It has multiple life stages, similar to many species of wasp. And like these wasps, each of the aliens life stages are terrifying, from the mouth-raping face-hugger, to the toothy little chest popper, to the fully formed adult (how did it get so big so fast anyway? What did it eat?).  Its blood is super corrosive, it’s incredibly adaptive, and it can probably eat four adult humans in less than twelve hours. On top of all that, it is also perfectly camouflaged with your claustrophobic spaceship.

            Oh, and there’s an evil android who’s most sinister quality is the level of ambiguity he operates in. for me, my inability to pin down how alike, or how unlike Ash was to humans made him particularly monstrous. He starts off seeming like he acted out of regard for Kane’s wellbeing (aw, how human), then we learn he only wants to preserve the alien and the humans are expendable (woah, how synthetic), and then right at the end he has that really uncomfortable scene where he tries to essentially orally rape Ripley to death with a rolled up nudie mag (WTF? What is up with this robot? Uncanny valley… *rocks*).

            In hindsight after conducting a little research, I’ve come to realize just about the entire Alien franchise is built upon the fear and horror of rape, but when first viewing the film, other than the obvious scene with the android, I was totally oblivious. I'm going to go ahead and keep the impression I had about the story of a tough girl, a scary monster, and a cat.