Alien

For as much as Alien casts a long shadow over the world of science-fiction, it's undeniably a horror film first and foremost, no matter what sci-fi trappings it might have. Oh, there's a lot of Star Wars on display here, from the dirty, lived in spaceships to the cluttered displays, and there are hints of the visual splendor that Ridley Scott would push to its limits with Blade Runner. But for all of that, Alien is a slowly building nightmare, delivering a truly unsettling, unstoppable horror and pacing its scares out to the point where you end the film deeply afraid to look under any cabinet or into any opening. True, Alien takes a little while to get going, especially once you've seen it already, but watching it unfold on the big screen in a gorgeous 35mm print allows you to take in Scott's world-building - the coffee cups hanging above the sink, the terminals whirring and clicking in the silence, the beds filled with sleeping astronauts. And that's before you even get to the alien ship, which remains unsettlingly enigmatic even all these years, no matter what gaps Prometheus tried to fill in. But once the creature gets loose, all hell breaks loose, and even all these years later, watching Alien reminds me of the first time seeing it and the absolute terror it evoked in me. Yes, Aliens is a great sequel, but it's hard for me to not prefer the "purity" of the original, to steal from Ash. It's a focused, pure nightmare, one that uses its science-fiction trappings to enhance its mood, rather than simply making them feel tacked on. 

-Josh Mauthe

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