Still the finest sci-fi horror

Rating: 10/10 (15 June 2012)

In light of the recent release of the terrible semi-prequels Prometheus and Alien:Covenant, I thought it was time to return to the original Alien movie to see how they compare.
To be honest, almost 40 years after it was made, Alien still has yet to be bettered as one of the finest sci-fi horror movies ever made. It's impossible for me to find fault in this movie, even after having seen it around 10 times. Everything about it is perfect - the set and costume design, the cast, the production, the script, the effects.... everything.
The claustrophobia of the Nostromo has only ever been bettered by John Carpenter's The Thing, and the vision of an alien planet when they set down on LV-426 couldn't be further away from the sanitised view of space that we see in the likes of Star Trek. This movie shows space exactly as I'd imagine it - cold, violent and inhospitable.
The HR Giger designed Alien has become an undisputed classic of design, and rightly so, with the practical effects looking infinitely better than the CGI of the later movies. The cast are all spot-on and believable - Dallas, Lambert, Ash, Parker, Kane, Ripley... all of them are absolutely real and believable (and in TOTAL contrast to the nonsensical and frankly ludicrous characters we find in Prometheus and Covenant). In short, Alien is still one of the finest sci-fi horror movies ever made even after almost 40 years... and that is some achievement.