Terrifying, captivating, and thrilling; this film is something special.

Rating: 10/10 (5 June 2009)

I love this movie! It scared the living hell out of me when I was seven. I couldn't even read a horror-picture book at the library describing the movie without experiencing the gnawing sensation of fear creeping into my gut. This is one of the first films to come out firing on all cylinders, and man, it sure does hit it out of the park! For one thing, take the title, Alien, and apply it to any aspect of the film, including Ash and the titular antagonist. The cargo ship is a freaking nightmare of steampunk imagination and industrial irreverence gone wild. It's no wonder the crew sleeps through most of the voyage. Would you want to be awake and living in that thing? The music is also sinisterly effective; its sole purpose is to manipulate you into either a false sense of security or to accentuate the already obvious menace of the scene; otherwise, it isn't even there.
Ridley Scott and crew did an excellent job in recognizing that trying to portray computers in the future from a 1978 perspective was futile; rather, they kept it simple, included some flashing lights (because as we all see now, flashing lights are the future), and kept it cold, precise, and doing exactly as it was told.
As was Ash. His every action makes sense once his true purpose is revealed. And his words, describing the Alien as perfect, echoed by Bishop in the second film, are particularly significant; computers and insects have very little in common except for one thing; they do exactly what their environment implores them to do. It is no surprise that the only emotion the computer expresses is awe when it encounters an equally simple and effective entity.
The characters are not given the time to explain their motives or describe their characters; yet, their responses to their increasingly degrading situation flesh them out in a way that hours of dialog could not have possibly achieved, Ripley chief among them. Easily the least likable person at the moment of the the alien's entry onto the ship; she ends up becoming your only hope of rescue from this horrible situation; and her responses to each situation turn out to be the correct one; if her crew had listened to her from the beginning, they would all be alive.
The alien itself is also terrifying. Equally anthropomorphic and insectoid; easy to understand yet unstoppable in action; its motives are clear but its next move cannot be predicted; it is as Ash put it, a perfect organism.
This is one hell of a ride from beginning to end. It still scares me, and to this day remains my one and only benchmark in the genre of horror.