Perfectly Pitched Suspense

Rating: 10/10 (19 June 2012)

"A mining ship, investigating a suspected SOS, lands on a distant planet. The crew discovers some strange creatures and investigates." That's the summary of the plot you'll see if you read it on IMDb. But what does that really mean? Well, I could go on and on and on about it, but in short it simply means, one of the best science fiction films of all time. Basically the plot goes as follows; The Commercial Starship Nostromo is en-route back to Earth when the crew is awakened from Hyper-Sleep on orders from the Weyland-Yutani Corporation (who own the ship and employ the crew), to investigate what amounts to be an SOS from a downed Alien Spacecraft. Once the crew touches down on the planet, LV-426, the captain and two supporting crew members venture out into the crashed vessel, and soon a crew member has an alien life form attached to his face, and has to be returned to the ship immediately. After the crew determines that they can do nothing further while on the planet, the ship returns to space and the crew prepare for hyper-sleep again. Also by this time, the crew member with the alien attached to his face has mysteriously recovered and the alien itself seems to have fallen off and died. This proves to be WAY wrong when the true intentions of the creature become clear by way of an Alien bursting out from inside the crewman's chest. In the confusion, the creature gets away into the bowels of the ship, and now let the terror and suspense and the basis for most "Monster Movies" for the next 30 years ensue.
Now, one thing that this film does really well is create a feeling of tension and suspense. In every scene in this movie, even in the beginning before anything happens, you're on the edge of your seat because you already know going in that the title of this film is "Alien", so that can't be good news for the people in it, and the musical score is already ominous to the point of suggesting that at any moment the whole thing could just hit the fan. I honestly attribute this to the direction of Ridley Scott. The man knows, to this day, just how much to show you in a scene, and that's the key to this film. You don't see that much of the Alien. It's all up to you as the audience to make up for yourself what the creature can do and what it fully looks like. This film has some of the most spectacular film imagery in film history, and it's all thanks to Scott and his editor.
The writing (especially now adays) is really something to talk about. In most creature movies that have come out since Alien, you have a bunch of characters that mean less than zero to the ultimate conclusion of the story, and by the endgame, you just don't care about the last character standing because you're not emotionally invested in them. In Alien, you are absolutely invested in these characters. The script really lends itself to some very interesting, and often times humorous dialog between crew members, (more often than not involving Harry Dean-Stanton and Yaphet Kotto who play the ship's pseudo-mechanics Brett and Parker, respectively); and therefore it's monumental then one of them dies. Something you just don't find in sci-fi anymore, and you should.
Something that really goes hand-in-hand with the writing is the Acting. Everybody is at the top of their form in this film. Sigourney Weaver (in her feature film debut no less) embodies the strength, intelligence and subtle sexuality of the character Ripley. She absolutely IS this character. Tom Skerritt, John Hurt, Ian Holm and Veronica Cartwright all hit home runs with their roles as Dallas, Kane, Ash, and Lambert respectively. Again, good acting...something you don't see in sci-fi films like this anymore.
Overall, if you're a fan of sci-fi, suspense thrillers and/or just a fan or Ridley Scott, I highly recommend Alien to you. It's masterfully crafted to be nerve shatteringly suspenseful, and it's one of my favorite films of all time, period. And yes, because it's the inevitable question, I DO love Alien more than Aliens, just so we're clear. In fact, if I had to pick some of the most important films of the past century, the list would include Star Wars, Casablanca, Pulp Fiction and Alien for sure.
10/10 easy.