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Rating: Warning: The following review reveals, in whole or in part, the plot of the work. You have been warned...
In the late seventies, the use of special effects in cinema, driven by films like "Star Wars", became massive and allowed Ridley Scott to give an updated and technologically advanced reading of one of the most popular "myths" of golden age science fiction: the invasion of an alien and hostile creature. In this sense, films like "The Thing From Another World", from 1951, set the precedent: in an isolated and claustrophobic environment, we find a group of people who can only rely on their own strength to face the arrival of a monster from another planet, often powerful and cunning, intent on decimating them. Scott takes this paradigm to its extreme consequences: what environment could be more isolated and claustrophobic than a spaceship traveling through space, millions of miles from Earth?
The cargo ship Nostromo, on the route of a long return journey to Earth, with the crew in suspended animation, intercepts a distress signal from an unexplored planet. The crew decides to land on the planet; during the reconnaissance, one of the members comes into contact with an extraterrestrial being that, while leaving him alive, attaches itself indissolubly to his body. Ignoring the warnings of officer Ripley (the "Cassandra" of the situation), the captain decides to bring his man back inside the spaceship, hoping to save him. A tragic mistake: they find themselves dealing with a horrid alien, a perfect and almost invincible killing machine selected by cruel evolution. The classic bastard as cunning as the devil, who evades all the crew's traps and picks them off one by one, like a spider at the center of its web...
The film immediately stands out for its dark visionary quality, and quickly becomes a piece of the collective imagination of the audience and authors of the genre. One can no longer talk about "cinematic monsters" without mentioning the horrid creature of H.R. Giger, an artist who transforms his and our nightmares into reality. Despite the profusion of gruesome details, Scott is rather sparing in showing us the alien, which appears in its complete form only in the frenetic finale. This approach could be defined as "erotic", contrasting it with the "pornographic" approach of today's horror films, where nothing is left to the viewer's imagination.
Numerous other layers of interpretation are evident. There is the fierce criticism, even in a clichéd manner if you like, of the technocracy as the armed arm of capitalism, personified by a technical officer ready to sacrifice the entire crew to bring the alien back to Earth and turn it into a deadly weapon, to the greater glory of the multinational that financed the mission. This contrasts with Ripley's purely instinctual attitude, the film's heroine, determined to protect her life with the same desperate irrationality of a lioness protecting her cubs. The showdown between Ripley and the monster is actually a challenge of primordial urges, a struggle between two fierce survival instincts.
Memorable is the scene of the gory "birth" of the creature in front of a table set for a meal; absolutely functional is the scenery, with a spaceship that is a maze of corridors, in which the crew wanders like a group of crazed guinea pigs during a cruel experiment. Notable is the choice of a barely hinted soundtrack, often absent, enveloping the darkest and most unsettling scenes in silence.
An essential film, that has generated many clones and followers, and which retains its allure unchanged even after thirty years.
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