Reviews by
On The Structure of Tension in Alien
The pacing of the movie reminds me of the concept of Nishikado Motion, the steadily increasing and decreasing challenge in a video game named for it's inventor, the creator of Space Invaders. Specifically in that the movie is constantly escalating in tension, while still providing a buildup and release to make it feel freshly scary the entire time. In combination with rich, detailed sets and human, natural dialogue the movie is adept at drawing you in and scaring the shit out of you. Quite possibly my favorite horror movie (yet). Also, Sigourney Weaver is possibly one of the most beautiful women ever put to film.
How Poor Direction Ruins a Good Film
For all the showy "Fuck AI, I do _real_ sets! I want it to be _real_!" stuff Del Toro was saying before this movie, his constantly moving direction is nauseating, and when combined with the color grading makes half the sets in the movie look AI generated. It's a genuine feat to make the beautiful sets made for the movie look that bad. To make matters worse, the movie has some absolutely atrocious CGI in it, which _surely_ goes against Mr. Realistic Authentic Auteur Guillermo Del Toro's vision for the movie, but made it in just fine. The only redeeming parts of the movie are the incredible set and makeup work that Del Toro tried his best to waste, and the strength of the original Shelley book. (This was originally written after seeing the film, I just wanted to move it to a review instead of a diary entry as it was when I imported it from Letterboxd.)
