Alone and Afraid or Together and Afraid?

By Dr. Michael Robinson 

Alien (1979) poster retrieved from IMBD

All movies require viewers to suspend disbelief. The movie-making process is complex and artificial, so it’s an achievement when any film can convince us to follow along and pretend that the final product is really happening. While that’s true for the most standard drama or cliched romantic comedy, some genres, like horror, ask audiences to work much harder to achieve that state. 

There is something to be said for how we watch a horror film. Or at least who we are with when we do. 

I saw Alien (1979) when I was alone. I watched it on cable TV in my aunt’s living room on a sunny afternoon. My mother and my aunt were chatting away while a few rooms away, I sat in mortal dread, watching a xenomorph pick off humans one at a time. In contrast, I saw its sequel, Aliens (1986), with friends in a crowded theater. There was joy in that group, fear and excitement as our packed theater audience saw a doomed group of colonial marines go up against a wave of xenomorphs. 

The contrast in experience is fascinating to me. I love both films, but I also think that the way I saw them contributed to their horror.

Part of this is because I am an only child. Only children are quite content with their own company. People often need clarification on what I mean by this. It’s not that I dislike people. It’s just that I can be okay on my own. Only children can and do experience loneliness (seriously, please check on us occasionally), but not all time alone is automatically lonely for us. We’re good at keeping ourselves busy. 

I consider that ability a personal superpower, but it worked against me with Alien. As the famous tagline for the original film reminds us: “In space, no one can hear you scream.” Alien is about isolation. As the cast winnows down, the prevailing sense is that the characters’ chances of survival are quite slim. Oddly, I was alone too. Sure, people were just a few rooms away but lost in their rapid-fire sisterly conversation, my mother and aunt may have been on another planet while I was absorbed in the goings around planet LV-426. 

The sequel’s true genius is that it tries to duplicate that experience. Instead Aliens amplifies the fear by giving us an illusion of safety but then showing us that even a trained group of experienced military combatants will fall before a collective onslaught of xenomorphs. In many ways, it is as much an action movie (or even a war movie) as it is a horror film. These kinds of films give an audience license to defy the movie theater rules of silence. The theater audience can become quite active. Viewers shout and gasp and jump. My friends and I certainly were into it when we first saw that movie all those years ago. I have seen arguments that this raucous behavior offers a collective comfort for horror viewers. However, this is a small comfort because Aliens are still an intense experience. I always plan to watch a movie with others. I think catching Alien was a happy accident. But I’m glad I was alone and afraid of that one. It made things so much scarier.