Alien

Alien is a haunted house film that happens to be set on a freighter, and every decision in it follows from treating the crew as workers rather than explorers.

Nobody on the Nostromo is an astronaut. They are a tow crew hauling twenty million tons of ore, they are behind on a bonus, they eat badly, they argue about shares, and two of them are engineers who do not come to briefings. Dan O'Bannon's script and Scott's direction give them overlapping dialogue and no exposition about the future, which is why the world holds up: nothing is explained because nobody on board finds any of it remarkable.

The ship is the other half of it. The Nostromo is a corridor film — low ceilings, dripping water, chains, strobing lights, a galley that looks like a kitchen. Giger's creature only works because the environment is already biological: the Derelict's interior is ribbed and wet before anything is alive in it.

It is almost bloodless until it isn't

For an hour the film shows you nothing. The chestburster sequence is the exception and it remains the most effective single shock in the genre, partly because it is the only moment in the film where the camera stops being discreet and partly because the cast's reactions are genuine — Scott did not tell them how much blood there would be.

After that the creature is barely seen. A tail, a head, a hand, a shape in a doorway. The film's restraint is the opposite of every sequel.

Sigourney Weaver and the thing the film does not do

Ripley is not written as a woman — the script used surnames and the part could have been cast either way — and the result is a lead whose competence is never commented on. She is right about quarantine in the first act and overruled, and the entire film is the consequence of that. She is also the only person on board who follows procedure.

For the same crew-under-pressure with paranoia instead of a creature, The Thing; for the same body horror from the same decade's other great practical effects film, The Fly.

The short answer: Ripley sets the Nostromo to self-destruct and takes the shuttle Narcissus. The creature is aboard with her. She starts a slow decompression, forces it into an airlock in a spacesuit, and blows it out, burning it with the shuttle's engines as it clings on. She records a final log noting she is the sole survivor, and sleeps with the ship's cat.

What were Ash's real orders?

Special Order 937: bring the organism back and treat the crew as expendable. Ripley finds it on Mother's screen after Dallas is killed, and it recontextualises the whole film — the diversion to the signal was not a rescue, the quarantine override was not a mistake, and the company sent a synthetic to make sure nobody refused. The creature is not the antagonist. It is the cargo.

How does the alien lifecycle work?

Four stages, all shown. An egg in the Derelict's hold; a facehugger that attaches to a host and implants an embryo; a chestburster that kills the host on exit; and an adult that moults and grows to full size inside the ship's ducts within hours. The film never explains the biology and never needs to — everything about it is demonstrated rather than described.

Why does the crew go to the signal at all?

Because their contract requires it. Mother wakes them early and the terms of employment state that any transmission of possible intelligent origin must be investigated, with total forfeiture of shares for refusal. The film's most quietly bleak detail is that the crew are not curious. They are contractually obliged.

Is Ash a robot?

Yes, and nobody on board knows until Parker decapitates him and he leaks white fluid. His behaviour across the film reads as officious science officer until the reveal, after which every one of his decisions — admitting the facehugger, preserving the specimen, attacking Ripley when she reads the order — becomes consistent. His severed head's last word for the creature is admiration.

Scored against the published rubric, here is what the numbers mean.

The threat at 015 is near the floor — only 11 works score lower. That looks wrong for a film with no supernatural element, and it is the correct reading of the axis: the creature cannot be reasoned with, bargained with or understood, which is what the low end of this axis measures. The humans who doom the crew are offstage.

Viscera 062 is higher than most people remember — 77 works score lower, almost all of it concentrated in two scenes.

Era bias 014 is deep analog — only 25 works score lower. Anamorphic 1979 Panavision, miniatures, smoke, practical sets and a creature in a suit.

Pace 042 sits on the dread side, with 59 works slower. The first forty minutes are a working day.

Tone 020 is bleak — 54 works score lower. Six of seven die, the company intended it, and nothing is resolved beyond one person's survival.

Reality anchor 048 is almost exactly the midpoint, which is right for a film that is procedurally plausible and contains a creature that makes no biological sense.

On jump scares: three, and the first is the best in the genre.