Review: Alien (1979)

Alien

IMDB rate: 8,5

Genre: Science-Fiction

I must admit that I've never seen any Alien movie, and well, it's kinda a must see as a horror fan, right? This weekend I watched Alien and Aliens and I'm not really a science-fiction fan but I quite liked this movie. 

I personally thought Aliens was not as good, but more about that in the next review. This movie is 34 years old but it looks amazing. Some movies being made the last couple of years don't look nearly as good as Alien. The acting is good and the story is really interesting.

While returning from a deep-space mission, the crew of the commercial spaceship Nostromo is awakened by a supposed SOS call from a system they are passing through. Descending to the planet's surface, they discover a strange derelict spaceship - the apparent source of the transmission - and one of the crew descends into the hold. What he finds are thousands of strange alien eggs. While examining one of the eggs, it hatches and the parasite inside attacks him. After returning to the Nostromo the crew takes off again to head for Earth. The alien parasite subsequently dies and all seems well again. But what no one knows is that another alien is quietly forming within it's host - and when it emerges, the crew finds itself in serious trouble.

I'm not a very big fan of Sigourney Weaver, at all, but I must admit that she acted excellent in this movie. Also the rest of the cast was amazing, there were only a few actors in this movie and none of them bothered me. It's nice seeing a younger Ian Holm and John Hurt. I find it a bit sad that the movie evolves mainly around Sigourney Weaver, I would have liked it better when you knew a bit more about everybody. 

I have seen the movie Prometheus which is a prequel to this movie. When I saw it I didn't understand much of it and I didn't like it that much. I can't remember much of it but I liked it when I recognized a few things in Alien that were also in Prometheus. Now I've seen Alien and Aliens I really want to watch Prometheus again, because I think things will be much clearer now.

The special effects in this movie look quite good. I'm not a big fan of 'older' movies but I hardly noticed  that Alien was already 34 years old. The alien looked quite amazing, also the alien parasite that was attached to Kane's face looks so real. The only bad part was when Ripley escaped the spaceship and when it blew up, it looked incredibly fake. It was just too much. The alien itself looked quite real and scary, until it started walking, that looked kinda ridiculous.

The movie is quite long but luckily you hardly notice it. You get so curious about what will happen to everyone eventually so the time ticks away. The beginning was a bit slow in my opinion, also there was not very much explanation about where they were and what the sleeping machine was for and what their mission was, it was said briefly but I would've liked a better explanation. When the first half of this movie is over the movie becomes really good,  I think you just need to sit through the first half.

Like I already said, I don't really like 'old' movies but Alien doesn't count as an old movie in my opinion. Not for one moment I had the feeling that I watched a movie that was made 34 years ago. I also don't really enjoy Science-Fiction movies but again, this movie is one of the few exceptions for it. There's a great cast in this movie and they all acted excellent. The special effects look amazing, especially for a movie this old. Some parts are a bit confusing but that doesn't really mind.

My personal rate: 8/10