when the villain is actually terrifying
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- Опубліковано 5 лип 2023
- Lots of monster movies make the mistake of showing their deadly antagonist too much. Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) does not. Here's why.
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Aliens
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what's scarier?? showing the monster...or hiding the monster?
(i suppose this extrapolates to horror in general too - slasher or supernatural?)
Both. Slasher and supernatural
both to the first question too
Existential horror is the best. How does "Being John Malkovich" fit into your paradigm?
Monster hidden is pretty good. Midnight Mass wasn't scary scary, but not seeing the monster at rhe first few episodes was just perfect. Then they showed the monster and it was meh.
Cloverfield sucked and the monster was silly. Jason and Myers managed to pull off the same fear in anticipation while being out in the open. Both styles make you question every corner turned. ALIEN is great but Jodorowsky's DUNE had to fail, Ridley Scott was nearly fired, Ripley's character was nearly killed off, the budget was doubled and still wasn't enough. Without the ALIEN, it would've been just another forgotten monster film. The father of Biomechanics and the Necronomicon had to give us his unearthly monster and biomechanical Derelict ship.
Mystique is always better for a while in the beginning
"There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it." -Alfred Hitchcock
Hitchcock 🤝Suspense
🗿
there is no sexiness in the bang
only the anticipation of xxx LOL
It’s kind of nonsense. Anticipation is great - it’s king - but the bang can be scary too and it’s consequences even scarier …
@whynottalklikeapirat I would think what happens after the bang is more reffered to as horror, as the first thought in aftermath of a 'terrific' event can still terrify, but more likely leaves a horrified sense before they think "what happened?"
My Dad still talks about how shocking it was for Tom Skerritt's character Dallas to die. He was the only really known actor in the movie and a lot of people went because they recognized him. Nobody expected him to die and it really makes that jump scare even more effective. Nowadays killing off a main character or well-known actor isn't unheard of, but you just didn't do that back then. You're watching him in these vents and it's scary but you still feel an element of safety. "Surely they won't kill off Tom Skerritt..." It makes the jumpscare (and the rest of the film) very unpredictable.
>Tom Skerritt
>Completely ignores John Hurt, the actual biggest name in that movie at the time, who was killed off first specifically because he was the biggest star they had and it would be shocking
No need to be a dick about it. He coulda said Hurt and I remembered the conversation wrong. Either way, both were famous and both were killed off because of that shock factor.@@Duothimir
OMG I had a similar experience with the movie Life (I recommend watching it before reading but whatever) I only recognised Ryan Reynolds and Jake Gyllenhaal and went "oh I guess they'll be the main characters!" nope. Those bitches were dead IMMEDIATLY
@@Duothimir I mean, it could also entirely depend on one's viewpoint. Skerritt is an American actor, so someone whose knowledge of film is primarily Hollywood-based rather than British films would possibly be more likely to latch onto him as "the big name actor" than Hurt. Especially since Skerritt featured in things like M*A*S*H, which would probably have been fairly well-known in general. Meanwhile the list of films prior to Alien that we see Hurt in are primarily British dramas, with only Midnight Express (and providing the voice of Aragorn in Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings animated film) standing out as something you can guarantee an American viewer would have seen.
It still works now because there's still the convention of the leading man surviving
The cat's reaction to a person getting violently killed by a monster is far too real.
The shot of Jonesy's reaction to tge appearance of the xenomorph is my favorite in all of cinema's history.
"What's the mater with u people.. Never seen a feline pounce on her meal before"- cats thoughts
@@christophertadeo6120 "Hmpf....who´s gonna open my next meal now?"
'Well that was slightly odd. Now what?'
The scene in the air vents is just a masterclass in suspense. The music, the lighting, the claustrophobia, that haunting beep then Lambert's screaming, I shit myself EVERY TIME.
maybe don't eat taco bell while watching alien? hehe
i wish the guy in the suit reached out and grabbed the camera- he just put his arms out and held it like he was asking for cuddles....
she should be whupped for her loudmouthed scream. lamberts a wuss
I think you're right - Alien works so well because you DON'T see the Alien. I went to see it on the big screen for the 30th anniversary (and having seen it several times on the small screen). It's SUCH a different experience. It was perhaps the tensest I've ever been in my life. Alien is a classic and I think it stands up well, it's a story about ordinary people overtaken by extraordinary events. I think what's missing is the shout out to the man in the Alien suit who helped make the creature into something real. Still, great and thought provoking piece.
axually, the story is about an entity that dehumanizes man. 'xenomorph' means "foreign, alien form"
that strange form is, in Ash's words "unclouded by consciousness, delusions of morality".
in other words, dudes who rule the system wants us to live like robots, psychos, without discernment of good and evil.
the same theme is explored in Blade Runner, where a dude claims he "builds replicants", but he dehumanizes humans.
It keeps the tension always high because it never gives you an out by giving it screen time. You never know where it's going to show up next, which keeps the tension high and constantly coiling.
A old friend of mine, his dad was the stunt man in that suit, and for Aliens as well (two of them did Aliens I believe). Agreed, did an amazing job.
Tbh I find this movie so boring I slept
@@cothinker680 you're so cool and brave
The sound of Lambert's death may be the most horrifying use of audio I've ever heard in a movie.
On repeated viewings it seems more and more artificial and unrealistic, but the first time I heard it, it was utterly terrifying.
"Alien is...painfully slow by comparison...". No sir, Alien is exquisitely paced. As Ridley said, that pace is deliberate and brings the viewer into the reality he's trying to sell. I wouldn't change a second of it. If anything, the newer movies are too fast and don't allow viewers to settle in but that's another conversation, one about familiarity.
There's a film I saw a trailer for recently called The Last Voyage of the Demeter, and the first half was amazing they built up the monster by showing what it had done and the legend behind it.
Then the second half of the trailer happened, which showed off the full monster every second it could and killed almost any tension they had built
Yes!! They could have hidden the monster but nope. I don't get why these corporate entities want to show everything in a trailer.
That is why Alien's trailer is, for me, the perfect trailer. Shows confusion, tension, mystery. In the end you want to know wth was that and you have seen 0 from the creature itself.
What makes the Demeter segment so good in the original Dracula novel is that you never see Dracula.
You only get accounts from the captain’s ship log as he watches his crew slowly go crazy as they get picked off one by one.
He has no idea what’s going on. He probably doesn’t even know what a vampire is, but his crew are still dying, and the segment’s eldritch, existential dread is peak literature.
In my mind, a perfect adaptation of that segment would’ve probably been a cross between Alien and The Lighthouse.
Veronica Cartwright delivered an absolutely GOAT level performance in Alien. The despair, and the terror she portrayed was deeply unsettling.
One of the best horror game I ever played is "Prey", it has its basic monster to be able to mimic anything nearby. This make the game super fun and scary as most of the horror are in my mind, I have no idea which object is real and which is fake, and that make the tension high and the whole game really really great
_NOT A MIMIC_
Give alien isolation a try. With headphones it damn near gives me panic attacks listening to the bugger running around in the vents etc.
Oh hell yeah, one of my top 5 favourite games ! While everyone cites mimic as being the scariest enemies, I'm personally more frightened by poltergeists
@@sugoha_2548 Yeah! That enemy sound simple on paper, but the build up and reveal of it is so cool and scary!
Try Alien Isolation or Resident Evil 7 in VR :D. Those have scared me significantly more than the vast majority of horror films.
Tremors did the same to an extent. Every little piece we think “Ah, there’s the monster” and then, that was just a tiny part of it, so we’re left thinking “So how did THAT happen then?” And even AFTER the full reveal, the entire premise of “even if you know what it looks like, you can’t see it coming anyway” added a whole other level of scary
Hell! Fuckin love tremors. It's too damn good like alie in my opinion.
getting very strong "Every Frame A Painting" vibes over here....
you deserve a WAY bigger audience, love your video essays!
no one's ever topping Tony and Taylor, but appreciate the compliment ✌
I just joined, so it is getting bigger.
When he says "her death is heard, it's probably more frightening hearing it than seeing it." it immediately made me think of Lethal Company, and how even though its such a simple game one of the more terrifying aspects is when you are playing with others, and generally all of you are at first goofing off and having a good time until the monsters and accidents pick you off one by one, hearing people scream and then abruptly get silenced either in the distanced or through the walkies only adds that much more tension to an already eerie situation.
It's definitelly a masterpiece, all the elements of the movie are crafted with love and care
I agree that hiding the monster is always beneficial. I also think Alien works as well as it does because it is such a slow build. It takes so long for anything to happen, and that makes an audience nervous, jumping at things that don't deserve it, looking for some clue, focusing too hard, and BAM!
Beautiful filmmaking
Also, the film starts out with such a weirdly casual air of the crew waking up and going about business as normal, that from minute one you're waiting for the other shoe to drop. That's part of what makes the scene with the chestburster so horrific when it does happen, is that things are so perfectly normal. You could almost presume that things were just fine, that everything was okay and back to normal now that the facehugger was dead, and then _THAT_ happens. There's a whole lot of by-the-numbers "we're just doing our job" feel to so much of the early part of the film, such that you know something really horrific must be waiting in the wings, but you're still not expecting that to go down right in the middle of _dinner!_
I felt the same about "The Thin Red Line", when there is like half an hour just catching runaways, and then an entire invasion onto an abandoned beach, and suddenly a bullet whips out from the fog, and you don´t even know where it came from, never mind spotting the shooter. That was absolutely terrifying, because you were already biting your nails after 40+ minutes of suspense
The first time I saw this movie as a kid, I definitely thought it was slow. Now, watching it with matured eyes, I have a different level of appreciation with Ridley's craftsmanship.
I think The Descent (2005) nails hiding the monster well too. The movie was set underground so shadows and silhouettes from a distance worked well for the terror.
or "Event Horizon".
Fun Fact: At the premiere of the movie, religious zealots set fire to a model of the Xenomorph that was displayed outside, believing it to be the work of the devil.
HR Geiger was inspired by demonic imagery
did little facehugger models jump out of it?
would've been 4D chess from the marketing department
The prop that someone tried to burn was actually the space jockey.
Those losers will always exist unfortunately.
I couldn't agree more - "hidden" is way scarier. I remember being terrified by the Amityville Horror when it was out (the late 70's, I think ) because my imagination produced far more terror than any descriptive prose or illustration. Alien is the same - the hints and glimpses let your mind run rampant and that lets us give ourselves the scare and thrill we're after.
Movies that seem slow are one of two things: details matter and people who don't notice or don't understand details are watching.
Definitely scarier having hidden monsters
I first saw Alien when it was on tv in the early 80s, I remember everyone loving it, there was no talk about it being slow or boring. I think it is close to perfect.
If i remember correctly, Terry said that even him couldn't put the finger on what made the movie so good and scary. For me Alien is a masterclass in multiple areas and it is what happens when everyone involved focus on the same objective (the horror). In a lot of other movies in the genre i get the sensation that the light is too plastic, or that the editor is in a hurry, or that the sound design is taken over by the score and etc... That goes to show that if even ONE element is not on target with the vibe that the movie needs the whole thing can fall apart.
(Note: there is no right or wrong in horror, i think you can make any vibe work, but is the director and producers job to communicate that well enough so no one get it wrong and if someone gets it wrong it need to be changed, check the history behind the score made by Jerry Goldsmith and how it was used).
The environment is absolutely the star of the show in Alien. It heightens all the tension by being what is shown for the whole length of screen time, feeling very uncomfortable and alien in itself.
I see the "hiding the monster" approach to horror as having earlier roots than Jaws. If you watch Rosemary's Baby, little of the actual horror in that movie is shown onscreen. You only see Satan in quick flashes during the assault scene. And at the end, you don't see the baby. You just hear Rosemary ask "What have you done to his eyes?" Whatever we imagine is far worse than what Polanski could have shown us. There are more examples of this kind of subtlety and restraint throughout the movie.
That one Godzilla movie that came out in 2014 used the same method as Jaws and Alien. Godzilla is shown in only 10 minutes of the film, and that might seem like a little, but it is not! Everything in that film has an amazing payoff.
The scariest villain in my personal opinion isn't a monster, it actually not even in a book, movie, or television series. The scariest monster in any media that I've encountered is a game called 'Darkwood', and the monster in that game isn't a "Thing" it's the Forrest itself that you are trapped in. It is trying to kill you, or at the very least stop you from progressing further into the Forrest. Every morning is a fight for survival, every night terrifying anticipation of what's in the darkness, ready to hunt you down. I've had moments where I have to put the controller down and come back to it after a few days to a week I was so shaken and scared to keep going. The Forrest in Darkwood is truly the most terrifying villain I've ever encountered, and they do such and amazing job building the anticipation and tension.
Duuuude! Darkwood rules!!! It's such a bleak game, but it ends with a sliver of hope.
Hiding the monster until the big reveal done correctly. But let’s also appreciate that they actually had a monster to reveal- the design is fantastic. A monster movie with an underwhelming reveal at the end is still disappointing
True! No point building up to something underwhelming
This channel is filling the void in my life that appeared when Every Frame a Painting stopped uploading. Please please keep going.
I watched alien when I was a kid, and it scared me so much I never wanted to see it again. When I finally did, several years later, it became my favorite horror film… and still is
I love this movie so much. I watched it after over a decade again, and was amazed how slow the plot progressed and how the scenic elements where shaped by taking the time to transfer emotions through the screen.
Such a masterpiece. Will watch it again and return to your video.
Thank you :)
",I read it, and I thought it was absolutely terrible." The documentaries and interviews in the "Alien Quadrillogy" DVD set were top notch! I loved that everybody was able to be honest about their feelings on the project. You could tell that these guys did not like each other and that Dan O'Bannon was still upset with the changes made to his story.
The scene in the vents is perfect. You see it for just a second. And I think that’s just enough
According to Ridley Scott, the alien is not a monster. It's better than a monster.
Alien is one of the few horror movies where the characters arent stereotypes.
Which it is able to do due to its slow buildup.
“Whatever exists in creation without my knowledge, exists without my consent.” -The Judge
The Boogie Man is another good example that was recently released. Since it was based off of a Steven King book, id expect nothing less than amazing horror.
I’ll give it a watch! I think Barbarian last year was pretty good example too (at least for the first hour or so…)
man the lighting and the composition or arrangement in this film is so flawless, it still looks amazing!
This is VERY quickly becoming my favorite channel!!!!
Every video is so interesting and engaging. Man, I love this channel.
I’ve always said that “Alien” was a great great movie. (Not just in the horror or sci-fi genre) The art department (sets) are absolutely brilliant.
Budget constraints have made movie-makers hide the monster ever since movies.
Showing the monster costs more, so monsters are people, people-shaped, invisible, people with funny noses (a whole other trope), and Humans in some almost-familiar uniforms.
Alien is my all-time favorite movie. Absolutely gorgeous cinematography, sound and art design. Slow paced but huge focus on tension building rather than overdone and predictable jump scares. A simple plot with great revelations. Also some breathtaking sequences, like my favorite of Ripley running back and forth between the bridge and the shuttle with the self-destruct sequence counting down. The shot at 6:21 of Ripley's finger nails bristling in the light and then focusing on her face of abject terror coming up the ladder, knowing the Alien could be anywhere, is burned into my brain. Every time I watch it, I find more reasons to love it even more.
While Aliens is fantastic and above all an incredible sequel and genre change, I still feel like Alien will always be the better of the two simply for the art and impeccable horror, in great part thanks to barely ever showing the xenomorph.
The fear of the unknown it's the ultimate fear...Alien is prodigal in that. Everything around the creature is a mystery: the origin, its purpose, intention with other creatures, way of thinking,
The movie defines what horror is with all the elements combined: the creature, the setting, the atmosphere, the crew.
Offtopic:
You're giving me/us a continuation of "Every frame a painting" and similar channels that stopped uploading long ago.
I absolutely love your content and I hope you grow and dive down into more fantastic topics about cinema and film in general.
What also leant into the unease was the ship was designed partially with the Xenomorph in mind. With it being biomechanical in design, it could blend in with the background noise of the ship, meaning it could be anywhere. The first shot you actually see of the Xenomorph is it hangin around the chains dormant above lambert, looking like just a piece of machinery hoisted up.
Alien did something simple and yet so very underutilized... It established the mundane before introducing the extraordinary.
The film showed us believable, relatable humans behaving reasonably in a calm environment. That calm felt like a fragile thing that audiences expected to shatter at any moment. The divergence from normality was drip-fed, building tension until it eventually burst to the forefront. Best film in the franchise and one of the best horror films to date.
we remember feelling powerless right after the leader Dallas disappeared while watching in the cinema
You can’t see the monster, but you can hear him.
Makes it far worse.
Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett Alien is a fantastic movie, and Ridley Scott did a great job directing. H. R. Giger creature design and such was awesome. James Cameron's Aliens took O'Bannon and Shusett's Alien universe to another level. Two of the best movies out of the whole franchise.
Studio: "Look, nothing is happening for 45 mins"
...Classic example of why the studio should have little to no creative control over a film...
I mean think of the garbage heap we'd have gotten if they had full reign over it....Take the Justice Leauge as a modern example.
This is super underrated content!
“Nothing happens for 45 minutes” “LORE HAPPENS”
Alien is the only horror film I've ever watched, a phenomenal masterpiece of character development and suspense. That chest-burst scene was pure genius.
Great video essay! I actually just saw this in theaters for its re-release! It's also important to note that the slasher film trope in horror (of the villain killing off the group of people one by one) had literally just been introduced (Halloween came out in 1978), and Alien probably inspired a lot of later horror movies with the "final girl" trope. Also Sigourney Weaver was such an unknown actress at the time that no one expected her to be the true main character.
Also, Bravo released a documentary about 20 years ago detailing what they thought were the 100 top scary moments in horror (in their opinion). #1 was the first scene from Jaws, #2 was "the scene" from Alien, and #3 was "the scene" in Misery. IMO Alien and Misery should have been #1 and #2 respectively, the Jaws scene is not very scary and the former two scenes have scarred me for life. Alien's famous scene IS definitively the scariest scene ever put to film.
For me, Alien 1979 final cut will always be an amazing return to the series whenever I pick up new content on the lore.
After watching Prometheus for the first time I came back to this movie with a fresh perspective and it instantly felt like a chilling callback to that classic horror/unknown feeling. To actually have some insight that suggests the already old movie was actually a baby compared to it's parents lore was insane. To get that juicy scene of the Engineer sitting behind it's unfathomable technology and having no clue just how long it was actually there for, who they were, or for why, until literally several decades after the original film released was just a perfectly engineered formula for success.
Only a Ridley Scott film can pull that off for me.
Fans complain about Prometheus, but I loved it and it fits perfectly within the Alien films. Any complaints about it could also be applied to the first Alien movie I think.
I had no idea this was Ridley's second movie. Really his first major one. I thought he had been a seasoned director when he made this. It's a masterpiece.
What's also amazing is that the studio didn't meddle with his vision.
This video is very well-made. A Blade Runner: 2049 analysis would be awesome.
Shout out to the actors too. They all did a sublime job. Utterly believable and natural characters.
I like alien because for a horror movie it was well organized and not everywhere, I mean it was but could map everything in your mind on what's going on and where it might be happening.
is it you SkillUp? glad you're also producing great film videos 😊
In hindsight, this movie was a great foundation for a franchise. The audience barely knows about the monster and it barely showed on screen, the only thing they experienced was the sheer tension and horror it caused.
That first alien reveal of Signs (2002) was truly horrifying than any monster I had ever seen. I think it has something to do with being similar enough to us while being different enough than us.
On a second thought, it might have been scariest for me because it was believable
My Brothers saw this in the movies when it first came out..... they slept with the lights on for quite some time after that...
Amnesia the bunker really makes a good game of both, you can hear and sometimes see the monster I'm the tunnels it's made and if you do too much noise, it comes out of it's hole to hunt you.
The benefit of a movie versus book is that people will be patient through way more establishing scenes because watching is way easier than reading
To this day the beeping of the motioncensor still gets to me. It was the movie that got me hooked on horror and it wil always be my favorite.
The most terrifying thing to come out of Alien is probably the video game it has the best AI I have ever seen the monster actually feels smart
When having a crafted story supercedes the effects
Its amazing that so many people thought the movie was super bloody and violent. It goes to show you how much good suspense can make the audience imagine what they are not seeing. Its really incredible what tricks you can play on the audience with good directing
It depends. Alien is a creeper, it doesn't need jump scares. It's also better that the alien was mostly hidden, it was way creepier.
But when you have something like the Borg in Star Trek, the terror is when they're up close and personal.
Hey Jack - Mr Scene it! All your videos are good. Please do one on Sean Penn. He cries in almost every movie and I seem to be the only one who's ever noticed it
I’ll look into it 👀
bro they should do a movie where they combine alien with jarasic park
Hereditary is a perfect example of this, absolutely terrifying movie, probably one of the scariest horror movies ever, no real jumpscares, it also waits nearly 90 mins before showing the main "monster" of the movie
That which is unseen and unknown commands the greatest fear
I would say James Cameron followed the same narrative in Aliens. It was a slow build to introduce the creatures. And even then it wasn't bloody. We didn't get to see all those Marines get slaughtered. And it wasn't gory like the following sequels. So the first two movies are almost similar.
Agreed the start is close - POV headcams when they get killed was a great way to hide the xenomorphs/build suspense. But once Ripley drives the ATV in to save them, and the xeno sticks it’s head in the door, it’s a pretty high octane action movie. Heaps of different sets, facehuggers, the pilots get murdered, Newt gets dragged away by one, they get stuck and ambushed in the vents, then the final showdown vs the Queen. Incredibly entertaining (and I probably like Aliens better than Alien tbh), but the first movie is scarier imo. Geeez they’re both miles better than any of the sequels though.
One of my favourite films of all time.
Great video mate
Spectacular movie with the classic premise of Chekhov's gun. This movie truly is amazing.
I'd say it's scarier if you can't always see them... but you can hear them... or some other form of that.
Imagine your second feature film is a masterpiece and a runner up for the greatest film ever made 🤯
Jonsey: you're on your own, bro.
This movie defined my childhood. It had been out for nine years even by the time I was born, but it has always been at the forefront of my mind. What does it say about a monster that only appears for a minute and fourteen seconds during the entire course of its introductory movie... and yet it has gone on to be one of the most recognizable 'horror' movie monsters in cinematography history? I love the Alien franchise as a whole, but the original will always be my favorite. It was - in a word - perfect. Not the perfect movie, or even the perfect horror movie... it was just... perfect.
Another movie that comes to mind is Jaws. The only reason to delay showing the shark was because of mechanical and production costs but nonetheless the delay made the movie famous and incredible.
I think a lot of horror movies have a hard time toeing the line between hiding the monster, and the big reveal at the end. I see it fumbled so much.
Its just like when was a massive spider in my room. This thing was a beast! I saw the top of it behind something on the floor, desperately hunted for it but didn't see it again until 2 days later (where I again only caught a glimpse!) Seeing parts of - or hints to - the monster occasionally rather than its full build many times throughout the film evokes fear in films as much so as with pesky spiders who think they own your house!
Great Video!
ALIEN is NOT painfully slow. It is a perfectly paced masterpiece. So many that were born after this time period have no attention span.
Por isso Alien é um dos meus filmes de terror favoritos :)
What a lot of these behind the scenes shows featuring now-classic franchises shows me is just how little Hollywood executives and professional reviewers actually understand about what people like and want to see. Then I look around today and realize nothing has changed.
It's a sci-fi ghost story/haunted house story. But I think the atmosphere and world building is lowkey doing a lot of the heavy lifting.
I also think the world building allowed sequels and one of the best sequels of all time, Aliens.
It worked in Alien: Isolation as well. Short but extremely tense encounters
The original Alien movie was the most horror movie of the franchise. By far.
And playing the game is even more scary you sometimes feel cold and want to take a piss
I saw it as a kid and it changed my whole world...
Watched Alien today and have seen it many times before and still feel anxious from the tension.
Horror is not walking into a room where the walls are splattered with blood and entrails drape from the light fixtures. That is denouement. The horror was ten seconds earlier, when you reached out to open the door.
So yeah, the monster you do not yet see is definitely scarier.
Here I am, watching this video just talking about Alien, nothing special.
Then I turn off the lights.
I'm surrounded by darkness.
And it could be anywhere.
This is such a good movie to be able to trigger that kind of response just by talking about it.
Monster you can see scares me more personally.
I don’t think this film is slow at all. I had seen it as a kid then watched it again when the 4k box set dropped and was entranced the entire time. The set design is incredible and it’s so claustrophobic and the tension just builds and builds, and that tension comes not just from a rarely seen alien but the unseen menace of the crew’s individual feelings about each other and even themselves. It’s a masterpiece.