Rating of
3.5/4
It's suspenseful! It's scary! It's Alien!
memento_mori - wrote on 07/08/13
Possible Spoilers
I saw this film for the first time a couple of hours ago, so don't judge me.
I personally loved Prometheus. Other raged about the film because it wasn't the prequel to Alien that they wanted. I personally had never seen any of the Alien films, so I went in completely blind and didn't view it as a prequel, but as an original science-fiction film by visual master Sir Ridley Scott.
Let's start with the negative: I think the weak point of this movie is the pacing. They spend waaaay too much time in the beginning, spanning almost a third of the movie's runtime to get things going. They have a designated length, and they could have filled it with something to help the story, but instead we got half an hour of computers whirring. At least we got to know the characters.
Speaking of characters, they're great. You feel for them because they have personalities and don't want them to die. The acting is never thin, we get what these guys are going through and that they want to go home.
The suspense in this movie is beyond belief. Many times was I sweating and clenching my fists whenever a person was cornered or the music became menacing. I knew the alien was around somewhere and I knew it was going to pop out and it did, but it worked so fantastically.
I also loved the music. In most sci-fi/horror movies, music will just be used as a cop-out to set the mood and tell you how to feel at certain times. Here, it's not just ominous sounds. It is a suspenseful score, that really gets your blood pumping whenever someone is looking for the alien.
The pacing is excellent near the end of the film. When Ripley got on the shuttle and the Nostromo self-destructed, I thought that was the ending. No, that was just the tip of the iceberg. And after a few minutes, the thickness of suspense was still in the air, and I loved how they could maintain that.
Alien is a very original sci-fi classic with Oscar-winning Special Effects that somewhat hold up, enough suspense to send a chill through your body and a finale that will not let you relax.
