Alien Review

The unnerving, lethal silence that opens Ridley Scott’s Alien is enough to solidify the classic status of this well-regarded thriller. A definitively tense film, one that captures the shifting tones of Hollywood’s waning golden age with great success. I’d not seen Alien in years, long enough for my brain to erode any memory of the film away, but I remember thoroughly enjoying it way back when. Returning to the series was always something I’d wanted to do, but never found the time to do so. Inevitably, there’s be a return to the Nostromo and a rekindling of my interest in the crew that found themselves coming into contact with lifeforms beyond their understanding, but I was on the fence about how it would hold up as a piece of thrilling media.  

The impact and inevitable fanfare do impact the phenomenon surrounding Alien, a well-acted piece that sees the crew of commercial spaceship Nostromo pick up a warning signal from a faraway planet, it has all the tensions and trivial nuances that any surviving group would have. Investigating the signal leads to the disasters we’d expect from a film so literally titled. Upon a rewatch, it’s remarkable to see how Alien manages to hold its own, even when the thrills are known to its audience. Encroaching fear is waiting around every corner, there’s a nice level of competence from Scott’s direction that we don’t get to see in his later works. He hits it out of the park with this one, though, from the set design that still feels oddly contemporary, to supporting characters that are so crucial to the story, despite feeling relatively disconnected from one another. It’s a nice example of group dynamics, the twists throughout are as surprising and fresh as they were when I first gave this one a watch years ago. 

By far the strongest aspect to Alien is its consistency. Scott is riding a career high here, he’d go on to direct Blade Runner soon after, so it’s safe to say that this period is his creative peak. Tension is found in every pocket of the Nostromo, the characters that linger in the hallways, vents, and stern are captured entirely by fear. A great dissection of fight or flight responses, and how a group of unsuspecting crew members will do everything and anything they can to fight against mounting tensions, and a giant space alien residing in the dark corners and cramped vents. Scott and Sigourney Weaver work tremendously well together, there’s no doubt about that, an exceptionally memorable piece that has survived the test of time, solidifying itself as a refreshing embarkment on what it takes to piece together a truly incredible science-fiction thriller.