When you are terrified and expendable.

Rating: 9/10 (23 January 2008)

Sci-fi movies often deals with the theme of survival. Humans in a strange and hostile environment that they are trying to adapt to while they are facing some sort of predatorian enemy. The underlying fear that these stories work around is probably that if we one day will meet intelligent life in outer space what kind of encounter can we then expect? There are many ways to answer this question as we have seen in "Close encounters of the third kind", "Contact", "Pitch Black", "Stargate", "Doom", "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Starship Troopers" to mention a few.
In "Alien" we follow the crew on board the cargo vessel "Nostromo" as they are returning to Earth with ore. They pick up what at first seems to be an SOS from a planet that they pass. They send out a rescue team and from here on it's a matter of survival.
Many elements come well together in this film; the characters are very well developed and the atmosphere of claustrophobia and desperation is being portrayed with great skill. As others have pointed out the score is truly unique.
The scene where Dallas (Tom Skerrit) dies is in my opinion the one that frightens me the most. He gets into the air-shaft with a flame-thrower in order to chase the alien. The movement-sensors that they use to track the Alien malfunctions and his anxiety, in a very convincing way, slowly gets the best of him until the point where his brain is "emotionel hijacked" and he makes a very irrational and fatal move. This scene alone makes the whole movie worth your while.
I saw it again the other day and was a little disappointed in what I would call some minor flaws; That the alien is able to get into the ship is a very unlikely event as I see it. Even though the rescue mission passes quarantine after returning then it is still unbelievable that the crew doesn't detect the alien in Kanes stomach. And the death of Brett is, although the suspense builds up extremely well in this particular instance, still hard to accept as he does the worst thing imaginable; walks alone back to get the cat.
Besides these minor flaws, that none the less irritated me as I would have liked the movie to be flawless, there is nothing I can put my finger on. One thing that makes this film stand out is the pace that it is told in. It is slower than expected but this doesn't make it a boring movie but instead it allows you both to engage yourself in the various details and last but not least it makes all the difference in building up the before mentioned atmosphere.
I would most certainly recommended this movie if the genre in any way appeals to you.
Regards Simon
Ps. When you read reviews that gives max score check to see if the user has made more than one review. If not consider the possibility of a lobbyist. If you agree consider putting this post scriptum at the bottom at your own reviews.