Alien (1979): Favourite Films Series

Alien (1979): Favourite Films Series

When I was ten years old, a movie came out late in the summer that only one kid in my class had seen, but he told everyone about it. The movie was called Alien vs. Predator, a title that stuck in my mind. What kind of alien? Why was it fighting a predator? What sort of predator? My imagination ran wild, and when I saw the DVD cover at the video store, I was both creeped out and intrigued. 

I watched it about a year later with a couple friends who were vaguely familiar with both the Alien and Predator franchises, but I was going into it fresh. The only knowledge I had was what they told me. The movie blew my mind, and I quickly rented every other film in both franchises from the video store. I started with Alien, which I had been asking my mom to rent for me years before AVP came out, but she always told me it was too scary. Finally, she’d relented. 

When I watched it for the first time, I found it slow and dull, especially in comparison to Alien vs. Predator. I reacted the same way actress Carrie Henn did when she had to watch it before playing the role of Newt in the sequel, Aliens. This was supposed to be scary? Far from it.   

For my birthday the next year, I received Alien vs. Predator and Alien on DVD. I was excited about one of them, not so much the other, but out of curiosity, I re-watched Alien. Still, I found it dull in comparison to AVP. There wasn’t enough action. It was mostly just people talking and walking around a space ship. 

I watched all of the Alien films again a couple years later in order of release date with a couple friends, one of whom had never seen any of them. He thought the first movie was boring and slow, but I found that, while yes, it was slow, there was something suspenseful about waiting to see the creature, and then to never really see it at all? It was a little disappointing, and yet, for some reason, it was also a little scarier. Where was it the whole time you weren’t seeing it? You knew it was on ship, somewhere, but where? You never were sure, exactly. It made me watch the movie more carefully, to see if I had missed a glimpse of it when watching it before. 

We progressed to Aliens, which I liked a lot more, but Alien didn’t leave my mind. It lurked in the background. The giant derelict ship. The facehugger exploding out of the egg. The chestburster erupting from Kane’s chest. The alien leaping at Dallas in the air duct, which looked like it was trying to give him a hug (both a scary and funny moment). The ship self-destructing in an over-the-top, unending explosion. Ripley slowly getting into the space suit. All this haunting imagery, which I had barely noticed the first couple times, now stuck. 

Many years and many repeated viewings later, my feelings on the Alien series have changed significantly.  The two Alien vs. Predator movies were entertaining on the surface, but nothing more than generic creature feature fare. Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection? Mediocre sequels. Aliens I always loved, but Alien, the one that had at first disappointed me, only became more and more interesting. As I learned about the history of the film and watched more and more horror movies, I realized Alien was one of the smartest, most-original horror movies ever made. 

The parts of Alien that frustrated me as a kid no longer do, but they were almost all regarding the pacing and special effects. Admittedly, a number of the effects don’t hold up anymore, such as the aforementioned ship explosion and moment when the alien attacks Dallas, or when Ash is revealed to be an android. But it doesn’t take away from the entertainment value of the movie, and most of the effects that really matter—the creature, the Nostromo’s interior, even the shots of the Nostromo moving through space—look as good today as they did back in 1979. Special effects don’t always make or break a movie, however. What “makes” Alien (and keeps it from breaking) is the perfect trifecta of writing, directing, and acting. 

There’s a reason the Alien franchise is still continuing to this day, and that reason is the title creature. The basic concept for it is a creative masterwork. It evokes fear in ways few other cinematic extraterrestrials can. The idea of something having so many varied stages to its life cycle is weird and unsettling in itself, but the way the alien gets aboard the ship is the truly scary part. In the fifties and sixties, alien invasion movies usually had aliens invading earth with big ships and laser beams, but here, the alien invades us. It’s so personal and invasive and violent, you can’t help but be terrified. 

The creature’s adult form, while certainly scary thanks to H.R. Giger’s nightmarish design, works as well as it does because of how little we see it. It’s not quite like in Jaws, where the less we see, the scarier it remains, because when we see the shark in Jaws, we see that yes, it is indeed a shark, and that’s about the extent of it. But when we see the alien, we aren’t even sure what we’re seeing. A close-up of an eyeless face and silver teeth dripping with slime. A long tail with a point at the end. What are the things on its back? Are those pipes? Wait, how many fingers does it have? Is it human-like, or bug-like, or kind of mechanical? Or all three? By not getting a clear, steady shot of the creature from head-to-toe, it dually provokes more fear and more curiosity. I have no doubt that Ridley Scott’s decision to shoot the creature the way he did is what led to it becoming so iconic and returning for so many sequels. 

As great as the creature’s concept and execution were, it would’ve been totally ineffective had the human characters not been compelling. There isn’t much information divulged about them, but it’s largely thanks to the charismatic actors and their chemistry together that they really come to life and seem believable. These are average Joes at work. They just happen to work on a space ship. We’re given enough time with them to understand their dynamic and feel like we know them before things go south, making everything that happens after that more interesting and more impactful.     

I can’t convince someone that Alien isn’t boring if that’s what they think of it. But if you really tune in to the story and feel of the movie, I don’t see how it couldn’t be scary, or at least entertaining. It’s a slow-burn, for sure, but every time I re-watch it, it feels faster paced, for some reason. Maybe it’s because of the elaborate set designs, or the little improvised lines of dialogue that are sometimes so quiet you have to make an effort to hear them. The first time seeing it, it’s all about the suspense of not knowing what’s going to happen. The second time, it’s knowing what’s coming and waiting for it. Every subsequent time, for me, is about seeing how the story progresses, noticing the tiny details, and revelling in the incredibly well-crafted scenes that have been burned into my mind, and the minds of so many other Alien fans.   

I could divulge every little facet of what makes Alien one of my favourite films, but what it comes down to, is it’s really a simple movie. Seven people on a space ship. One alien. They have to survive. That’s about it. The realism, the build-up of tension, and the intensity all make it work to maximum effect. It may not be quite as scary today as it was upon release, and that might have something to do with the mystery being peeled away with every subsequent sequel and prequel and spin-off. No matter how many more times the xenomorph bursts onto cinema screens, the original film will still stand as one of the greatest horror movies ever.  

Kong: Skull Island (2017) Review

Kong: Skull Island (2017) Review

The original 1933 King Kong is one of my all-time favourite movies, and the 2005 remake, while certainly no classic, is one of my favourite remakes of all-time, and one of the most-memorable theater-going experiences I had as a kid. So when I heard they were rebooting the eighth wonder of the world and linking him to the new American incarnation of Godzilla for an eventual clash in 2020, I was beyond excited. However, as more footage was revealed, I tempered my expectations, and I’m glad I did, because Kong: Skull Island was, unfortunately, quite disappointing, but not necessarily a bad movie. 

Right from the opening scene I was concerned. I really disliked the opening prologue, for a number of reasons. I’ll try to remain mostly spoiler free, but if you’ve seen any of the trailers, then you’ve seen most of the big moments from the movie already, so I just won’t talk about anything that wasn’t shown in trailers. Kong is shown in the very first scene, not in his entirety, but still quite prominently. It’s a cool reveal, but having him appear this early takes away the suspense and build-up of seeing him later, so when he is shown in full later, it’s not as big of a moment as it should be. After the prologue the opening titles are shown over old stock footage in a format nearly identical to 2014’s Godzilla, except with significantly less-epic music (the score in this movie was completely forgettable). Even the opening title font was bad. Only five minutes in, and my hopes were already plummeting. 

The first act is solid. All of the characters are introduced, with John Goodman and Samuel L. Jackson at the forefront, as a scientist and colonel, respectively, but it’s the characters played by Tom Hiddleston and Brie Larson who become the main human protagonists. Act one sets up an interesting team with lots of potential—there’s a mix of scientists, explorers, and Vietnam soldiers—and as they arrived at Skull Island, I was starting to get into it. Then, as seen in the trailers, Kong shows up out of nowhere, throwing trees and smashing apart helicopters in a fit of rage. It’s a cool scene, albeit with way too much slow motion (but the slow-mo overkill only just begins here). In the aftermath of Kong’s destruction, the group is split up into different factions on different parts of the island, and from here, the movie starts to fall apart. 

Act two feels like scene after scene of cool stuff happening, and that’s it. There’s no clear direction or theme or flow. Characters move from one part of the island, encounter some kind of generic monster, maybe some of them die, and then they move on. Kong pops in here and there, but for the first time in any King Kong movie, the titular giant monster has nothing to do. Seriously, Kong is just, there. In the original, he grabbed Anne Darrow, protected her from dinosaurs, and the team pursued Kong to get her back. A simple and effective concept. Here, Kong has no objective and little connection to the humans. Some characters want Kong dead, some want to help him, and everyone wants to escape the island. This movie should have been called Skull Island, with Kong as the subtitle, or just Skull Island, as originally planned. People complained that 2014’s Godzilla wasn’t in his own movie enough, but at least he had a clear reason for being there. 

This brings me to another major issue I had with Kong: Skull Island. If this movie is supposed to take place in the same universe as Godzilla, why make it so utterly dumb? I’m not saying that just because Godzilla and Kong are in the same universe that their movies should have the same tone and style. But if you compare Godzilla and Kong: Skull Island, they are vastly different in terms of believability and lore. Godzilla took the outlandish concept of a giant, ancient monster and crafted an acceptable back story for Big G, while also making it feel real, like he was some kind of natural disaster. But, director Gareth Edwards was also aiming to make Godzilla serious and as grounded as possible.

I can tell what director Jordan Vogt-Roberts was trying to do with Kong: Skull Island. He tried to make a fun throwback to the monster movies of old, and for the most part, I’ll admit it was fun and did feel like a throwback. It wasn’t trying to be an epic beauty-and-beast adventure like the original, it’s a straight-up action movie. However, I found the retooling of the Kong mythos significantly sub-par, not just in comparison to Godzilla but just in general, and in the end, this movie only really serves to reintroduce a bigger, badder Kong who can later take on Godzilla. The movie itself is pretty much inconsequential. 

Getting into the Kong mythos, I found some of the choices odd when it came to referencing previous Kong movies and redesigning Skull Island itself (Side note: there’s a very specific reference to Jurassic Park that’s one of my two favourite lines in the whole movie). With Peter Jackson’s King Kong, it was a very different situation, because he was straight-up remaking the original movie, but in doing so paid lots of tribute to it. Kong: Skull Island isn’t a retelling, it’s a brand-new tale, which Kong just happens to be a part of, so I was open to any new directions they took with the story and human characters.

Unfortunately, they left out the best part of any Kong movie next to Kong himself: the dinosaurs. The 1976 remake of King Kong did the same thing, and that was part of the reason that movie was so unsatisfying. There are other creatures on this new version of Skull Island, but none of them are remarkable. A giant spider, a giant octopus (which I believe was a reference to a scene in the original King Kong vs. Godzilla), and the never-before-seen species called skull crawlers, which resembles the two-legged lizard creature that crawls out of the chasm in the ‘33 King Kong. The skull crawlers just didn’t do it for me. They felt generic and unworthy as opponents for the humans or Kong. I think the reason generic monsters replaced dinosaurs is likely to connect it more to Godzilla, and yet other traditional Kong elements are still included, like the natives, the perpetual storm that surrounds the island, and huge wall to keep creatures out (all of which are made dumber in varying ways). 

As for Kong himself, this was one of the highlights of the movie for me. He isn’t as sympathetic as in past incarnations, but he still expresses emotion, and looks less like an ape and more like the ‘33 original, a real movie monster. He’s huge, tough, kicks a lot of ass, and the cgi is terrific (though still not quite as good as Peter Jackson’s cgi Kong). But, as I said, Kong doesn’t have a lot to do, and he’s absent for a large portion of the movie. I like what they did with recreating the Kong character, I’m glad he’s back, and I’m looking forward to seeing him return, but his role in this movie was poor, and looking at Kong: Skull Island as a whole movie, it’s unexceptional.

As I was sitting there, slightly bored leading up to the finale (which sort of picked up but still never had me anywhere close to fist-pumping), I wondered why Kong: Skull Island was so disappointing, especially in comparison to Godzilla, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Somehow, a Godzilla movie can get away with being just the same thing every time, but King Kong is held in higher regard. Godzilla had pretty bland human characters, and so does Kong: Skull Island. The difference here is, the Skull Island cast is really good. Like, too good. I saw the actors instead of the characters most of the time, and it was distracting. I haven’t talked much about the characters because there isn’t much to talk about. All I know about Tom Hiddleston’s character is he’s a tracker and doesn’t care about people being killed and can suddenly use a sword to fight monsters when the time comes. Brie Larson is a photographer who gapes at everything at every turn and does little else. Samuel L. Jackson wants Kong dead. John C. Reilly is there to be funny. That’s about it. I don’t need incredibly deep human characters in these kinds of movies, but at least give me more than crappy dialogue and boring people stumbling into cool action scenes. 

In the end, Kong: Skull Island had moments of greatness that didn’t amount to a whole lot. I can’t even get upset about it because it’s nothing more than just another monster movie. 2014’s Godzilla was a B movie trying to be an A movie, and ended up being a B+ at best. Kong: Skull Island is a B movie, trying to be a B movie, but ends up being maybe a C+, and that’s being generous. If you’re a fan of King Kong or monster movies in general, then of course go and see it, but otherwise (and I hate to say this), just skip it, and wait for Godzilla vs. Kong in 2020. Final note: there’s an end-credit teaser that’s perhaps the best thing from the entire movie.   

Santa Clarita Diet Season One Review

Santa Clarita Diet Season One Review 

Santa Clarita Diet is a new Netflix series that premiered last week, starring Drew Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant as the Hammonds, a successful real estate couple with a normal Santa Clarita life, until one day, Drew Barrymore’s character Sheila gets sick and, well, kind of dies. But, she’s not dead, she’s undead, and now she needs to eat human flesh, which her husband Joel (Olyphant) so graciously helps her obtain. Okay, yes, they become murderers, but they only kill bad people! They are still good people! At least, that’s the façade they try to maintain (to varying levels of success).

Let me start by talking about the actors. Timothy Olyphant practically steals the show. I’ve always enjoyed his work, but I didn’t expect him to give such an awesome performance here. He delivers his lines with such sincerity (even his most-absurd lines, and there are a number of them) and is genuinely hilarious. I haven’t seen Drew Barrymore in anything for quite a while, so it was nice to see her in something current (I’ve been a fan for some time now), but to be honest, she isn’t terrific. Her joke delivery is hit-and-miss—in the pilot episode especially, she has more misses than hits. But, her comedic timing becomes better toward the end of the season. And she looks great, even as she consumes raw, bleeding flesh. 

The two leads are pretty consistent and have good chemistry, but the supporting cast is a bit of a different story. In the trailer I saw for the series, Nathan Fillion makes an appearance, and his presence is one of the things that drew me to watch it, which I’m sure is true for many other people. Without spoiling too much, I’ll say he’s great in the pilot, but his role is far too short-lived, which I found pretty disappointing.

The unsung hero of the show, someone I didn’t expect to like at first, was the Hammond’s teen neighbour Eric (Skyler Gisondo). He might not end up being everyone’s fave, but he made me laugh out loud at least once in every episode. Sheila and Joel’s daughter, Abby (Liv Hewson), seemed like she might be annoying at first, but she ended up being another one of the funniest supporting characters, despite frequently having little to do except be shocked by her parents antics and hang out with Eric just to make for comedic moments. There are some entertaining side characters, like Eric’s mom (Mary Elizabeth Ellis) and Dr. Wolf (Portia de Rossi) who comes in at the end, and some annoying side characters, but no one particularly annoying sticks around for too long.

I didn’t know what to make of this show when I began watching it. The first episode gets things off to a rocky start. A lot of “shock” jokes are thrown in seemingly at random—by “shock” jokes, I don’t even mean jokes, necessarily, just random shocking comments meant to come off as funny because “OMG can’t believe he/she just said that!” but it doesn’t work. One example is when Eric and his mom are introduced. She tells Abby that Eric really likes her, and mentions she’s at the top of his spank bank. Of course Eric is embarrassed. That’s it. That’s the “joke”. It’s not that funny, and there are a lot of moments like that in episode one and two, which made it hard to determine what tone the show was going for. There are parts that are weird, and parts that are just plain dumb. 

Then there are the parts with shocking violence and gore, as well. This didn’t bother me, but it will definitely be a point of contention for some viewers. Horror-comedy is difficult to do well, but I wouldn’t call this horror-comedy, per se. It’s not trying to be scary, it’s more about, once again, the shock factor. Sheila and Joel kill people, and it’s bloody, and brutal, but played up in a light-hearted way. And it works pretty well most of the time. The effects look good and are mostly practical. There are moments where Drew Barrymore bites into body parts that look totally real. 

Santa Clarita starts out as a sort-of-realistic world, with some obvious wackiness to the characters, and the mysterious illness that befalls Sheila is recognized as being akin to a zombie, but as its further explored, it becomes clear that this is a slightly more original take on the undead. As the series progresses, it starts to find its footing, and goes less for shock humour and more for just genuine jokes and laughs. However, part of the initial appeal of the show, for me, was how unpredictable it was in the first few episodes. I’m not saying it was like early Game of Thrones level of unpredictability, it was just enough to keep me wanting to see more. By around episode five, it started to feel like they were running out of ideas, and things started becoming more predictable, but also funnier, so it was a bit of a trade-off.  

Ultimately, this show is, on multiple levels, difficult to recommend. I don’t think it has any kind of mass appeal, it’s going to cater to a niche audience. If you like gory, bloody TV shows/movies, stick with me. If you like gory, bloody shows that are serious, then this isn’t for you. If you like horror-comedy, such as Ash vs. Evil Dead (which this series seriously pales in comparison to), this won’t satisfy in those regards, because it lacks the horror aspect. If you like irreverent humour AND gory stuff, then you might like it.

Santa Clarita Diet season one consists of ten, half-hour episodes, so it’s very easy to watch the whole series really quickly. I’d give it a soft recommendation, if you like intermittent scenes of gore, zany characters, and general weirdness. I didn’t love this first season. It’s not really a spoiler to say things end unresolved and it feels like there should be another episode to watch next. But, I didn’t really feel like I needed to see more right away. In fact, I’m not sure I need to watch more at all, or even go back and re-watch season one anytime soon. That doesn’t mean I didn’t like it, I laughed quite a lot at many points. It just didn’t hook me.