Don't Tell Anyone I Didn't Like Alien

Any good divisive opinion should start with a preface, and here’s mine:

• I watched Alien a couple years ago, long after its initial release, and I’m sure it was unprecedented for its time. I am not in that time. I am in now.

• There is something to be said about the fact that this plot was never spoiled for me before a watch, so it did have that going for it.

• I liked the cat.

• Spoilers abound, you’ve been warned.

Alien is a beloved 70s/80s-cusp sci-fi horror movie—is what I thought before going into it. This movie is less of a horror and more of a sci-fi psychological thriller, if even that. It's more like a creature film in a thriller costume, handmade by your mom. Yes, there’s gore. Yes, there’s suspense. But never in its runtime was I horrified.

If you’ve managed to miss all information about Alien since 1979, I’ll let you know that it is about a spaceship crew who wake up too early from hypersleep due to a distress signal. Spoiler that’s not really a spoiler: It ends up being an alien that then boards the ship and terrorizes them.

The acting is slow and subpar, the plot is lackluster, and the monster…I’m sorry, that monster is not scary. The baby alien that bursts from Kane is borderline cute. 

My argument here is not that Alien didn’t set the scene for many movies to come and create some iconic ideas. My argument is that I went to finally watch this classic movie that every list ever says you need to watch before you die, and I was kind of bored. 

The scene I heard the most about before watching this movie was easily the ventilation scene, which you will know instantly if you’ve seen the film. If not, let me set the tone: one crew member, Dallas, is in the vents, trying to track the creature and contain it. Meanwhile, another crew member, Lambert, is holding a tracking device that shows where he is…and also another movement. Gulp.

This scene has the power to be the most bone-chilling, tense back-and-forth culminating in a death that should up the ante and tension tenfold. 

It does not do that.

I was initially excited for this scene. The swapping from the vent where Dallas is on edge and trying to stumble around blindly, listening for any kind of guidance, then back to Lambert who is helpless to do anything but try to warn Dallas about the approaching monster as everyone else watches and listens. The beauty of the shot of Dallas creeping through with the light and the flame of the flamethrower (yes, flamethrower, how cool?). The tight space, the steady beeping, the blip growing closer.

It sounds good, right? It fell so flat, though.

The angles, the acting, the lame look at the alien with its hands reaching like a toddler to get uppies, the music that is more akin to The Thing From Another World (1951). 

I’m sorry if I’m being harsh, but if this is the iconic scene…yikes for the rest of the movie.

Despite my criticism, I didn’t hate this movie, and it has its good marks. The look of the film is so pretty, and obviously Sigourney Weaver carries with her performance. The plot, while convoluted, is not ridiculous or uninspired, so I will give it that. The twist of someone being a robot sent to derail the mission and capture said alien, even at the expense of the crew, was a genuine surprise (for the first half of the movie, anyway).

However, its quiet slowness does less to create tension and more to make me wonder how we end up seeing a melting humanoid robot head later in the film. It's fights and goo and a cat and steam and less space than one would imagine in a space movie.

It’s disjointed.

A horror film it is not.

I think Alien is best left as an inspiration instead of a cult classic, trying but not quite hitting the mark of holding up after all these years. But, hey, at least it stayed strong, unlike other horror movies, and didn't give in and do a sequel.

It did have a sequel?...It's called Aliens, plural?

...Great.