One of the two great horrors, ever

Rating: Null/10 (7 February 2004)

On subsequent viewings, I can be clinical, so I'll have to admit it doesn't scare me at all anymore. But when I saw it first day of release in the theaters, Ridley Scott's ALIEN was the scariest thing I had ever seen up to that point and long after. The mounting of atmosphere was the thing: By the point, about 20 minutes in, that Hurt, Skerrit and Weaver descend to that intestinal-looking ship, anyone seeing the film for the first time in 1979 felt so uneasy they wanted to leave, literally just get up, go shopping or driving, call a friend, and forget this unsettling film entirely. I have talked to other people who had the very same reaction. We were so scared, we actually thought our choice to see the movie had been a mistake --specifically, because the sense of foreboding was so thick.
It's hard for me to explain that reaction, not feeling exactly the same way about it any more. But I can see clearly, still, even after much of its impact has worn off on me, that it did something exceedingly well that most films these days fail at miserably: it created a sense of extreme dread and unease by the slow incremental building of atmosphere, block by block, without resort to a lot of juicy/gory violence. It accomplished this by the natural evolution of events and subtle revelation of terrain. The Ring did that exceptionally well, too, as did Carpenter's The Thing.
There is little more violence in ALIEN than in Hitchcock's PSYCHO from 20 years before. Like PSYCHO, ALIEN is an elegantly spare, judicious and intelligent attempt to scare the hell out of you. These films were made by really smart artists who realized that the geysers of gore their imitators latched on to as a major influence, and multiplied to the point of comedy in their films, are ultimately reductive. They force us to retreat into a cool appreciation of the FX and the scope of spectacle, and nothing more. The scares of PSYCHO and ALIEN are primal. Their feeling, distinct from the FX, taps the makers' deepest dread, and ours.
Ten stars. Approached in the right spirit, setting aside all the reams of films ALIEN inspired, it might still pack a wallop. It's hard for me to tell at this point. But it will always be, with PSYCHO, one of the two scariest films of my life.