All The Pretty Aliens

This week, Halloween season begins, and I continue with the Alien franchise, look at Victorian Psycho, and recommend an Abel Ferrara gem ...

(Not much in the way of spoilers below, but the usual warnings apply.)

From the Grave.

Three ideas from horror cinema's past.

◆ Aliens, dir. James Cameron, 1986.

Double Vision. It’s an iconic moment in Aliens—the blinking blue blue dots on the handheld motion sensor getting progressively closer and closer to Ripley and the marines. The tension heightens, especially, as the dots appear to reach them but there’s still no sign of any xenomorphs. It’s a paradigmatic example of a potent function for technology in horror (especially horror-sci-fi)—as another sense, as a different way of perceiving the world around us. On the screen, the aliens are approaching. Through our eyes and ears, we’re getting nothing. There’s energy in the disconnect. (The creatures are, of course, in the ceiling). 

Plural. Aliens of course depicts an encounter with many xenomorphs rather than the solo predator in Alien. Alien reads firmly as a horror movie and the addition of many aliens in the sequel could conceivably heighten the horror vibes. And yet a bunch of xenomorphs in a scenario like the original’s wouldn’t really make sense—the crew of the Nostromo would be annihilated quite quickly. Cameron matches the many xenomorphs here with marines who are heavily armed: carrying machine guns, flame throwers, and grenade launchers. There are genre consequences to the move. Aliens comes across more as an action sci-fi movie than a horror movie (though it is that too). The original Alien’s crewmembers, without all the weaponry, are more naked, more vulnerable—their peril more immediate, more primal.