This Ageless, Silent, Haunted House Floating in Silent Space

nycritic

score 10/10

Before gore, special effects, and the denouement of the alien itself in future sequels, this was the movie that revolutionized the concept of the "haunted house" and merged it in a seamless sieve with "body horror" and its ultimate intrusion into our own most intimate space.

The story had been done before, in different genres, never veering too far from its horror origins. Lovecraft (and others) had written about expeditions that had gone to "investigate" and "collect important data" only to find themselves being hunted down one by one, be it an unseen terror or their own fears.

Ridley Scott's ALIEN looks and feels like a science fiction movie. However, it is not. Everything in its look and tone suggests horror of a more cerebral kind. When three crew members come across what seems to be a large space-jockey with a thing attached to its face, dead, we feel our stomach turn. If something that small was able to take over a creature this large, they are in deep trouble here. The scene is masterful, restrained, but a classic in the horror-movie sense: it's as if we had been witness to terrible events which had taken place and decided to get to the bottom of it. Scott tightens the noose employing age-old tricks of the horror genre and only once shows blood and guts -- one which follows a calm dinner sequence. He never allows the viewer to get a true glimpse of this sadistic killer much like Spielberg in JAWS and this becomes nerve-wracking because again, fear of the unseen is more powerful than what comes into view. The theory dictates: "I was afraid of that thing? I thought it was bigger!" All we see of this alien are his teeth and in one memorable, twisted scene, his tail snaking up Lambert's (Veronica Cartwright) leg. Later on, as Ripley (Sigourney Weaver in her breakthrough role), the quintessential Final Girl, makes her escape, it is possible to hear Lambert shrieking. What the alien is doing to her we can only imagine and recoil.

nycritic 18 February 2006

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1294467/