Alien (1979) trailer review

Name of film- Alien
Genre- Horror
Year released-1979
Your mark after viewing- 9/10

What happened in the trailer?
The trailer starts by showing a rocky surface, resembling a planet’s surface but after zooming out to a wide shot it turns out to be an egg that cracks and emits a blue light. Following this, the trailer becomes a highlight trailer showing certain scenes from the movie before finishing on a shot of the Nostromo and the caption “In space, no one can hear you scream” before cutting to the name of the film.

What positive, clever or interesting aspects do you think you could include in your own trailer? What generic features are well fulfilled?
There were many positive aspects of this trailer that covered a variety of horror genre conventions. The trailer featured a slow paced montage, in the form of the rocky egg with the planet like surface. This in turn reinforces the representation of the link between the alien being from a strange and uninhabited world and how it first appears in the film. This gives connotations of tension and suspense, to make the audience feel paranoid and uncertain about what’s going on. The trailer also had a quick paced montage, in the form of the highlighted shots from the film that are edited together to give connotations of excitement, mystery and fear.

This change between the quick and slow paced montage is collision cutting and happens at a point in the trailer when the egg cracks to emit a blue light connoting a supernatural fear and danger that then leads into the quick paced montage. The egg crack is also accompanied by a loud scream that also acts collision cutting between the quiet howling wind parallel music and the loud high pitched drone plus quickening heart beat that connotes fear and tension. The trailer ends with the parallel music cutting out rapidly and screaming taking its place as a shot of the Alien egg hatching appears representing that if the Alien hatches then it only results in screaming and fear. This representation of the Alien only making you scream plays with the tagline of the film; ‘In space no-one can hear you scream’. This tagline and the wide shot of the Nostromo ship in space gives the ideology that screaming is useless as there’s no-one there to help and gives connotations of hopelessness and futility.

The trailer also features shaky, handheld shots in a creepy location featuring low key lighting of someone running to connote fear of the unknown and keep the alien threat a mystery to the audience.

Which aspects of the trailer did you think were unsuccessful and would put off its target audience? How is it disappointing?
I thought there was little that acted as disappointing or off putting for the target audience except maybe the fact that the narrative isn’t explained at all in the trailer and could lead to confusion from the audience members.

Why did it receive the mark you gave it?
It received the mark I gave it due to the use of haunting parallel music, collision cutting and the fact that the narrative isn’t given away from the variety of the shots shown, giving the trailer connotations of mystery, horror and suspense and thus represents accurately the main ideologies of the film.