Spooky Movie Month Day #6 – Alien

October 6th 

This morning and afternoon was chaotic- full of running errands, going to all our extracurriculars, then just a few hours home to rest up before making dinner and heading to tonight’s Zombie Pageant rehearsal. With only a few hours to spare while it was still daylight, we decided to introduce the kids to what is arguably the best monster movie in space. 

A classic for us, but new to the kids, today we watched Alien and introduced them to the world of Weyland Corp. 

Alien

Written by Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett and directed by Ridley Scott, this 1979 picture is almost as old as me, but still packs a punch. The crew of a tug ship called Nostromo encounters a signal unlike any they’ve heard before. Required by company law to check it out, they land on an unknown planetoid and encounter a deadly alien species while simultaneously battling one another’s survival instincts and ulterior motives.

Mild on the gore but officially one of the first truly “scary” movies we’ve seen, we prepped them by letting them know the cat doesn’t die, but almost all the people do.

The kids noticed right off the tech seemed more realistic than most space movies and shows. Lion observed that because it feels more like what a space ship might actually look like rather than what we’ve seen in stories like Star Trek and Star Wars, it makes it more real, like it could actually happen. 

They also observed it felt like “The Office, Space Edition” because everyone’s arguing, bickering about their jobs and if they’re getting paid.

Dragon thought it felt like the future if the computer in WarGames had been in charge.

The “big moment” reactions:

First Face-hugger: 
Lion – “Wow. Wow. WOAH. WOW!!! Thats…. horrifying.”
Dragon – “I want one!”

First chest burster:
Dragon – “Congratulations, it’s a boy!”
Lion – “Awww…. gross…. awww”

Ash is a robot:
Lion: “Oh, well that makes sense”
Dragon: “Woah what is happening?!?! *robotics revealed* “Ohhhh that makes sense, only a robot would do that”

“We’re gonna blow up the ship”
Lion: “It’s about time”
Dragon: “Hooray arsen!”

Alien discovered on the shuttle:
Dragon: “aww baby sleeping”
Lion: “I mean… she didn’t think it would be that easy, right? At least the cat’s asleep and safe”

Final thoughts:

Dragon loved it, said it was scary, fun, the alien was awesome, “how do I get one!?”.
Lion said it was amazing, loved the artwork and the alien’s design, but made it clear they’d never, EVER watch it again. They’ll watch the sequels, but probably never that one, because it’s terrifying. In fact, they said, “this is probably the scariest movie we’ll see this year”.

Little do they know…. Muaaahahahahaha!!

Until tomorrow, friends!