Alien was released in 1979, and was directed by Ridley Scott. The film stars Sigourney Weaver, John Hurt, and Ian Holm. Woken out of hypersleep in the middle of space, the crew of a commercial freighter must investigate a signal coming from a moon to see if there is any sign of intelligent life. They find out, rather unfortunately, there is. 

     All of the acting is very, very good. All of the cast have excellent chemistry. Their reactions to big moments feel genuine and real. This is in part due to Scott’s directing style, which we’ll discuss later, but in general, the acting is high quality. 

     Something that is very important to know going into this movie is that the pacing is extremely slow. This is deliberate in the script. For example, it takes about 2 minutes for the title card to fully show up on screen, 6 minutes and 40 seconds for dialogue to be spoken, and around 55 minutes until the Xenomorph (the alien) shows up.

     The script does a fantastic job at letting the audience very slowly understand what’s going on. It is also great at getting to know each character before killing them off, so we actually care when they die. There is one character, Lambert that is written terribly and you don’t like her, and when she dies you feel nothing. 

     Scott’s directing is fantastic. One of the reasons the reactions of actors is so good, is because for certain scenes, Scott wouldn’t tell everyone what was going to happen. For example in the scene where Dallas, Ash and Ripley are looking for the facehugger, they legitimately were looking for it because they weren’t told where it was. So when it falls on Ripley, Weaver’s reaction is 100% genuine.

     The set design, and design of the Xenomorph are some of the best in Sci-fi history. Some establishing shots of the exterior of the freighter ship are very reminiscent of A New Hope, but they won’t deplete your viewing experience. The ADR is not the best, and there are a few match to action errors.

     Alien is one of the best Sci-fi, Horror films of all time. Everyone should watch it at least once in there life. 

[My grade for Alien is an A]