Ridley Scott’s Alien Arrives on Netflix

Science-fiction and horror pair together naturally. Both categories frequently feature stories about people exploring the unknown alongside strange creatures. Movies like Cloverfield and A Quiet Place succeeded in recent decades because their combined science-fiction and horror elements complement each other. Despite those successes, nearly all science-fiction and horror films still pale in comparison to the 1979 classic Alien, which is streaming on Netflix as of October 2026.

Directed by Ridley Scott, Alien takes place in the year 2122 aboard a freight ship in deep space. A small crew remains in a prolonged state of sleep until a distress beacon from a nearby moon awakens them. During their exploration, the crew finds a ship that crash-landed years earlier with no survivors, along with several large mysterious eggs. When officer Kane, played by John Hurt, inspects an egg, a spider-like alien latches onto his face. The crew leaves the moon in a hurry and tries repeatedly to remove the creature. The creature eventually falls off, and Kane seems okay.

Not long after Kane appears to recover, a creature bursts out of his chest and kills him. The creature then runs into the darkness of the ship. From there, the rapidly growing alien begins killing off members of the crew one by one.

What is Alien about?

Alien was not the first movie to combine science-fiction and horror. The two genres have intermingled ever since Mary Shelley created the science-fiction genre with Frankenstein in 1818. However, Alien stands as a landmark work because Scott combined classic horror storytelling with unique state-of-the-art production design and creature design.

At its core, Alien functions as both a monster movie and a haunted house movie. Both horror subgenres feature people running from a mysterious force while getting picked off throughout the narrative. The alien serves as the monster, while the darkly lit, industrial spaceship acts as the haunted house.

Because the story structure remains straightforward, the characters are able to shine. The cast primarily consists of character actors who were prominent in the late 1970s, with Tom Skerritt serving as the closest thing to a leading man. After more crew members perish, Sigourney Weaver emerges as the true star. Part of the film’s appeal lies in how it begins as an ensemble piece. Strong female leads were far less conventional during that era, and Scott turned Weaver into the star she remains today.

The most impressive element of Alien is its visual presentation, ranging from unglamorous production design to a creature design that remains among the most memorable in film history.

The haunting imagery of Alien

Unlike many science-fiction movies that romanticize the future, Alien looks cold and grimy. The original Star Wars introduced some of that lived-in texture two years earlier, but Alien pushed that aesthetic further. The ship, known as the Nostromo, was dirty, industrial, and claustrophobic.

The alien creature made the biggest impact of all. Swiss artist H. R. Giger designed the creature, which would later be named a Xenomorph, giving it a biomechanical and slightly erotic appearance. In 1979, the design was terrifying and completely unprecedented.

In a 2018 interview with Yahoo!, Scott discussed the creature, stating, “In my career, which has been pretty long, there’s only been, with the greatest respect for the people I’ve worked with, two real, real originals. Funnily enough, I came across a guy called H. R. Giger and if I hadn’t got that monster, you would not have had that movie. I saw the drawing – the drawing was drawn for the book, not the film – and I was so kind of taken, I flew to Switzerland where he lived because he didn’t want to get the plane as he was scared of flying. I met him in Zurich at his home and I persuaded him to travel by train to come to England and live at Shepperton studios for ten months. And he did.”

Scott added regarding Giger’s contribution, “It wouldn’t have been the same movie. Whilst the cast was wonderful, with Sigourney [Weaver] and Harry [Dean Stanton] and those people, but without that eighth passenger it wouldn’t have been the same film.”

Alien laid the groundwork for numerous sequels and crossovers. The only entry besides the original film to receive near-universal praise is Aliens, released in 1986 and directed by James Cameron. While Aliens offers plenty of thrills, it leans much further into the action genre than its predecessor. Although filmmakers have explored many interesting directions with Xenomorphs since 1979, the creepiness of H. R. Giger’s designs always remains most at home in the shadows of a horror picture.

Alien is streaming on Netflix.

Source: Polygon