Ever since it’s film debut in 1979, Alien has inspired many sequels and has influenced pop culture throughout the decades. The classic served as a model for sci-fi horror during the ‘80s and ‘90s, not surprising since it was directed by the legendary Ridley Scott. Scott is an acclaimed sci-fi director with other notable movies including Blade Runner (1982) and The Martian (2015). Alien was the second movie he directed and won an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, two British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Awards, and three Saturn Awards.

The movie starts out with a shot of deep space with a saturn-like planet with giant rings in the forefront. The movie begins with the credits rolling and the title starts to take form. Funnily enough, from the first five minutes, there’s a very distinct Star Wars feel to the design of the planet and of the crew’s ship, the Nostramo. The story follows the horrifying journey of the ship’s crew as they investigate an SOS on a distant planet and deal with the consequences, which come in the form of alien terror. Once on the planet, a crew of three go out to investigate, during their expedition, the commander has a parasitic alien literally latch itself onto his face. They bring him back to the spacecraft to get him medically examined, during which time it seems like the alien dies and detaches itself from him. However, this was a huge misdirect so that audiences would be completely captivated by the next scene. Even though I knew what was going to happen, I still found myself retracting into my seat going, “Ewwww.” The alien erupts from the captain’s chest while he’s eating in such a way that it feels disturbingly realistic. The sound of bone-crunching in the background as the alien breaks through the ribcage is terrifying. What follows next is tale of survival for the remaining crew members, but in the end, only one survives: Ripley, the one who had warned them all against letting the alien back onto the ship in the first place.

While this movie is considered a classic horror due to its gory nature, people watching nowadays can find bits of humor, because of the ‘80s details that now seem ridiculous in 2018. Notable examples include smoking in the spaceship, Ripley wearing converse, the classic, curly ‘80s hair, the fact that they have a cat on the ship, and that this whole story is supposed to happen in the year 2039. It’s funny to see how people in 1979 thought space travel would be like in 60 years.

It’s also interesting to see how they laid out the design of the spaceship because even though the moon landing was ten years prior, it seems like they took little inspiration from the actual space crafts when they made the Nostramo. They only really seemed to take inspiration from reality when it came to the space suits.

The things that really made this movie a ‘horror’ movie were the sounds and the actual creature itself. The swelling violin music in cutaway scenes kept the tension high, but the creepiest factor was the entire lack of music when the alien appears. Or rather doesn’t. Throughout the movie, we only get glimpses and wavering shots of what the grown-up alien looks like, leaving the rest to the imagination. The fear that we feel is reflecting the fear of the unknown that the characters in the movie feel. What tied this movie up into a neat bundle of scary was the attention to sound. The switches from orchestral music to barely any noise at all keeps the sense on high alert, making the movie just that bit more engaging.

The tale seems to be like a fable because, in its own way, it teaches the audience a lesson. The whole reason that everybody got killed on the Nostramo in the first place is because they didn’t follow the quarantine protocol and didn’t listen to the person in command, Ripley. If the crew had done what it was supposed to do, there probably would’ve been only one casualty: the poor sucker who got infected with the alien.

Overall, Alien did meet my expectations for a horror movie. While it’s not as gory as other films, the suspense makes up for it and ups the horror ante. Alien is legendary within the genre for good reason. Even though it took awhile for the plot to take off, once it was going, I couldn’t take my eyes off of the screen.