As Slasher Week comes to an end, it is my pleasure to bring to you the beginning of Space Week! This week’s horror movies will be focusing on films set either in space or about extraterrestrials. To start this off, I watched one of the most iconic space-based horror films, Alien by Ridley Scott starring Sigourney Weaver.
Alien is a classic space horror film and really establishes a foundation for future films in the subgenre. A group of astronauts on a commercial spaceship are traveling home to earth when they answer a beacon on a mysterious nearby moon and encounter what appears to be an extraterrestrial parasite. What follows is a tense story with twists and turns throughout and a franchise-spawning movie that established Sigourney Weaver as a queen of sci-fi.
Despite being from 1979, Alien has aged remarkably well. The monsters look great and have a such a terrific and frightening design. The classic monster movie atmosphere sets the tone well as each crew member gets picked off, and it offers one of the best twists ever done in a horror film in my somewhat-humble opinion. The set design and imagery truly set the standard for future space horror films and sci-fi movies in general. Alien is officially 40 years this year, and after several sequels (some better than others), comics, and video games (some significantly better than others), it still gets some great scares out of the average viewer and nails its visual horror. The general paranoia that pervades modern space-exploration movies owes much of its existence to the atmosphere established in Alien, and it is well-worth both a rewatch for the classic horror fan and a first-time viewing for people new to the genre!
Join me tonight for Day 2 of Space/Alien Week with another, more recent classic: Signs! Available on HBO.
