Horror is a film genre seeking to draw a negative emotion from the viewer by manipulating the primal fear of human. Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginative content such as time travel, space travel, parallel universes, extraterrestrial life; all were involving with futuristic setting and high technology. Above these points, the film Alien combined the two factors in one movie, and introduced a new kind of science fiction horror, which also made it a classic movie ahead of all the other film that comes afterward.
The threat still comes from the unknown, but the environment and method of attack were different. Moreover, all the effect in the film were done before CGI, making the realistic appearing of aliens bursting out of chests and of bloody gory deaths all the more amazing since there is no help of computer. First, the idea of alien as the main plot is quiet unique at that time, since all the unknown thing makes people scared. As we watched the film in class before, such as the killer in the movie Time Machine and Psycho, or the demon that was not suppose to be dug out in The Exorcist.
One common thing in these horror films, all the female character is always vulnerable and weak who waits for help or to be killed somehow. However, in Alien, they created the first heroine character- Ripley, who is hard, competent and ruthless in the big screen that showed the spirit of independent female power. The film begins with an obvious hierarchy of male dominants; however, as the films goes and men are killed or fall under the chain of command to woman, another first.
The environment was also very distinctive from other horror film; a group of people out of nowhere in the space, lacking of substantial resource to call for help. It’s already a dangerous act to put a group of people in a sealed container, since you’ve known about how humanity works under the temptation of power and desire. If something bad happened no one can hear you scream from space. Ridley Scott surely knew how to create the atmosphere of fear and create the fidgety surprise to the audience. Many scenes in the movie successfully gave me a fright.
Dallas unsuccessfully attempts to remove the creature from Kane’s face, discovering that its blood is acid. Eventually, the alien detaches on its own and seems dead or not, which is terrified. Afterward, the small alien creature burst out from Kane’s chest and quickly escapes and began to haunt them one by one. It’s quite similar contrast from the film Psycho, instead of being haunting by the unknown slasher in a creepy old mansion, the crew startling and attacking by the alien creature and fears its dangerous ability and unpredictable hostility.
In the end, Ripley fought alone in the spacecraft against the alien, the fear from her eyes and a bit of desperation really expressed the feeling of “in space, no one can hear you scream. ” Always be careful of you ambition, it might cause a catastrophe. A famous quote form Neil Armstrong: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”. Since the great astronaut printed his footstep on moon for the first time, the outer space becomes a whole new paradise to human cover with mysterious color. People are so eager to find out what’s out there from earth.
In the film, Ash tried to preserve the skin-color squirmy stuff, this showed the character of curiosity and ambition in human instinct somehow always brought a calamity. It seems to be some kind of pattern in both horror film and science fiction film that people always looks for trouble through their ambition. It also exists in other film, the ambition of the time machine inventor who curious about time travel though he want it to be used in a good purpose, however, not only causing a lot of troubles also pay a huge price for his aspiration.
In The Exorcist, based on curiosity and the spirit of archaeology, they dug out the thing which draws the snake out of its hole. Humanity is a reverse track which rotating nonstop in the train of tragedy; human is the master of trouble-maker, but they know how to clean the mess up. In despite of facing the high form alien, it still defeated by a woman with courage. A spirit of pure and justice conquered the demon’s trick. With the strongest will, it can knock down any fear. So you can scream as loud as you like when you’re scared, however, shatter your fear is all that matters.
