Unbearable Tension and Fear of the Unknown.

Rating: 10/10 (20 January 2005)

"In space no one can hear you scream."  So goes the tagline for the film "Alien". While the tagline exposes one of the movie's flaws, it also neatly sums up the general feeling of helplessness and claustrophobia that the film achieves.
"Alien" is set in the future. The crew of a mining space ship are awakened early from their 'hypersleep' by an SOS from a nearby planet. Once on the planet, three of the crew set out to investigate, only to return with an unwelcome visitor (see the title of this film). As the movie progresses, it deals with the dwindling number of crewmembers and their fight for survival.
The plot of "Alien" is quite solid. While there is no real excitement or thrills during the first 45 minutes, it still never gets boring. This time is always filled with information for us to absorb, yet we still only know as much as the crew of the ship. When things do start to happen, there are quite a few genuinely shocking moments, with only a few cheap scares. As the movie begins to end, the tension created is almost unbearable, thanks mainly to the excellent set up. An excellent score, which must surely go down as an all time great, aids throughout the movie. The most glaring flaw in the film is that it has sounds in space. Since the film is fiction I would usually have no problem with this, but space noise contradicts the tagline of the movie.
Ridley Scott's direction in the film is superb. No one has created such tension and suspense since Alfred Hitchcock. Scott decides to scare us by NOT showing much of the alien. The result is more a fear of the unknown than a fear of the creature.
Visually, the film is beautiful and remains beautiful. Modern films full of the best CGI do not look as good as this film. The models look near perfect, which means that the film will never look dated (except for one scene close to the end that looks poor); whereas, what looks like good CGI now, will look poor in ten years time. The sets used for filming also work well and add to the general feeling of claustrophobia.
Overall "Alien" is a fantastic motion picture. It has excellent visuals, direction and a great plot. Also featuring some of the best opening credits ever, it will surely hold up as one of the best films of all time.