The Scariest Thing Ever

Tuesday's viewing of Alien left me feeling both inspired and incredibly frightened at the same time. It's awesome. In my previous post, I had mentioned that I was eager to see what was going to happen to the man who became a victim of the vicious alien claw. Well, the man survived, but not for long. There was a scene in which all of the crew about the ship was eating dinner, and the camera zoomed in on the recovering man. As a ThunderClap student, and knowing that everything in this movie has a purpose, I quickly asked myself "now why did the camera zoom in like that?" Something didn't look right about that man's face. It was as if he put too much food in his mouth, or he was about to choke. Just moments later, he was gasping for air, struggling to survive. Clearly the alien wasn't finished with him. The dead claw that the other men found before the dinner was just a small part of it. And it wasn't soon before a nasty, slimy, disgusting snake-like creature sprung out of his chest. He was dead.

One of my favorite aspects of Alien is the use of foreshadowing. It's beautifully done: not too revealing, but revealing enough. Throughout the majority of this film, there is a hauntingly eerie feeling conveyed to the viewer. And it's not some cheap suspense music or visual cues, but frighteningly well-planned cinematography and sound effects, as well as spine-chilling music. When one of the men aboard the ship went searching for the cat, I noticed a few things that signaled trouble. First of all, it was raining, and there were metal chains clashing together like wind chimes. And then the camera showed a close-up of one of the chains for a few seconds. Again, I knew that this shot had to mean something; it wasn't done just because the cinematographers felt like it. As the man kept looking for the cat, I began to hear this heavy squeaking sound. It sounded like something big. And then a tell-tale piece of evidence appeared: old slimy skin. Usually when monsters or aliens shed skin, that means they have grown. That can't be good. And it wasn't long until the humongous beast had appeared right behind the man. His time was up.

Right after, the movie jumped to the control center, showing another astronaut sitting at the computer. Not only was the sound of the computer keys creepy, especially since it was so ear-piercingly quiet otherwise. More foreshadowing was implemented in this scene as well: when he was attempting to do research on the alien lurking around the spaceship, all the computer could say was: "unable to compute" and "available date insufficient". Once again I said, "that can't be good".

One of the scariest scenes was when another astronaut was crawling through the hatches, which were just about as small as air ducts, looking for the alien. The music gave me goosebumps, and I noticed how normal sounds were manipulated to sound terrifying. With every inch the guy moved, I kept wonder when the alien would appear. The rising tension increased when he found gooey fluid on the floor, which made it clear that the alien was nearby. But where? The guy did have a tracking device, and so did the alien. The other astronauts, particularly a woman, was watching his coordinate on the screen. You could see the fear in her face, especially at the gut-wrenching moment when she saw that the alien was moving directly towards him. That was the end of him.

I could go on for hours about how much I love this movie, but let me just say this: it's beyond amazing, especially for 1979. I can't wait to see how it ends, yet I'm also disappointed to see it end so soon.