Alien

A horror film set on a ship in space. The Nostromo is a commercial vessel. It is towing cargo and the crew is asleep on the way home. A signal comes in and the ship lands on a planet. There is an abandoned structure there, with eggs inside it. One of the crew is injured. He is brought aboard and after a while the thing on his face falls off by itself; the man appears to be well. Then something happens at the dinner table. From there the film is a hunt. The creature grows on the ship, moves through the ducts, and the crew gets smaller. What the narrative is interested in is not the monster but the company: the ship's orders state that the crew is expendable, and the real villain is there. The characters are not heroes. They talk like workers, argue about pay, and nobody is in control. Ripley does not stand out at first. The character was written without a stated gender and the text was not changed when the part went to a woman. The creature was designed by H. R. Giger, and that mixture of machine and body was made specifically for the film. The performer inside the suit was chosen for being over two metres tall. For the scene at the table the actors were not told the details of what would happen; some of the reactions on camera are real. The film won an Academy Award for visual effects. The music is by Jerry Goldsmith. Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt and Ian Holm are in the cast. Ridley Scott directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes slow-building horror rooted in a location. Who it is not for: anyone expecting pace; almost nothing happens in the first half hour and that is deliberate.