Alien **
Ridley Scott, 1979
US
@ Egyptian Theater

Wow, did the guy next to me ever have some awful breath. Also, I sat down (in the most desirable row) two seats away from the only other person in the row. These two dudes come in and sit right next to me, leaving a couple seats open toward the aisle. Then the original "only other person" is joined by her two friends who sit to her left, leaving me squeezed between two groups even though the row was only half full. I was baffled.

I was struck by how, in some ways, horror is an essentially empty genre. That is, in most genres the protagonist wants something, strives to get it, and then succeeds, achieving a goal of some sort, perhaps many sorts. But in horror, the hero is having a fine time as it is, then normalcy is disrupted by the horrific monster, and the objective is to restore normalcy or escape to somewhere resembling it, simply to obtain what's been lost over the course of the film. There's something kind of nice about that.

See also: IMDb | Manohla Dargis review (2003)