‘Alien and Prometheus’s treatment of the Strange’ or ‘Why there is no such thing as Sci-fi horror’

One of the reasons I think Prometheus failed so hard to satisfy is that it is tonally and thematic juxtaposed to the prior works in its ostensible franchise. Alien is a work of horror while Prometheus is a work of science fiction. People might argue that we can call them both scifi horror and place them in the same genre but my position is there is no such thing as scifi horror.

What do I mean by that? After all there have been tons of hard science fiction movies and stories that tackle strange and disturbing concepts. This is true but these are science fiction thrillers. Horror and science fiction can not be merged together because they are fundamentally opposites and by that I don’t just mean that science fiction is largely optimistic to horror’s consistent pessimism. Science fiction and horror can be defined by two attributes: construction versus deconstruction and their individual treatment of the Strange.

In this context Strange doesn’t just refer to Lovecraftian nightmares but anything unfamiliar. The Strange can represent things as varied as fairies to a mysterious device in Star Trek to Cthulhu slumbering on the ocean floor. All of these are examples of the Strange and science fiction and horror differ primarily in how they treat the Strange.

Science Fiction is constructive in the sense that we go looking for the Strange; seeking to understand the Strange. In the simplest case we look at Star Trek, the poster child for optimistic science fiction. Star Trek has immense faith in human intelligence, ingenuity, and spirit. If Star Trek had a religion it would probably be described as a form of divine humanism. While the crew of whichever Enterprise you happen to be thinking of often encounter things they don’t understand, they always manage to understand it ‘enough’ to add it in some way to their understanding of the universe. In this sense science fiction is constructive. They don’t understand everything they encounter and perhaps will not be able to understand it until humanity is centuries more advanced but there is always the impression that humanity CAN understand it at an arbitrarily advanced point. In other words, in science fiction, the Strange can be comprehended because it will fit into our understanding of how the universe works.

In Star Trek, Babylon 5, and other similar works, the Strange is out ‘There.’ It is distant. You need to go looking for it, either by exploration in Star Trek or by becoming involved in an ancient galactic war like in Babylon 5. Although your star chart might have a big section on it saying “Here there be monsters” the point is that this area on the chart is clearly labeled. There can be a call to adventure or an invitation from the Strange but fundamentally, the Strange doesn’t come looking for you. The call can be refused. If Jean-Luc Picard had opted to stay safely on Earth and work as an archeologist, he never would have encountered Q or the Borg.

Horror is different. Horror may follow rules about under which circumstances you are in danger from the Strange (The Ring, Candyman, Bloody Mary) but the Strange can not be handled by simply staying out of its way. We can’t simply mark a spot on the map with “Here there be monsters” and avoid it. In horror the Strange not only comes to you, it is revealed that it was here all along. Horror doesn’t update your map, the original map is destroyed. Familiar settings and concepts are revealed to be sinister and threatening. The map from corner to corner is marked with the warning “Here there be monsters.” An audience leaves good horror feeling like they know less and their agency and power is reduced. They leave wondering if that creak at night means something is there, or if something is watching them when they close their eyes. Thus by its nature, horror isn’t constructive but deconstructive.

In the Ring, a particularly well done horror movie, Rachel accidentally stumbles over the death tape following a girl’s funeral. She didn’t need to go on a quest to find the tape, it was in her neighborhood all along unbeknownst to Rachel. Rachel’s discovery reveals her own ignorance of the safe and normal world she thought she knew. The Strange was never far away, it was just ignored. At the end of the movie, there is no return to normalcy. Rachel is forced to become a vector for the Strange, spreading it like a virus to save her son by making a copy of the death tape. Although Aidan lives, others will die and the Strange becomes empowered in places previously thought familiar as copies of the tape circulate.

The Ring is actually a good example of the deconstruction of a person’s understanding of the world. Rachel spends the entire movie trying to learn about Samara and seeking a way to stop her from killing her son. She’s a reporter so she investigates Samara as she would any other story. She’s using her intelligence and knowledge to try and understand and protected herself from the Strange.

The movie even throws a fake out and tries to convince the audience that she succeeded in propitiating the angry spirit of Samara by giving her a proper burial. This is something that successfully sets the dead to rest in a variety of traditional folk tales. Samara’s cryptic warning about seven days which is connected with the amount of time it took her to die in the well supports this theory as it implies that Samara is trying to connect with someone, trying to make them understand what she went through, and trying to achieve closure.

But remember, Horror is deconstructive: we learn that what we thought we knew is wrong or simply doesn’t matter. Samara has no interest in resting, she wants to spread her influence. After telling Aidan that Rachel arranged for Samara’s burial, Aidan reacts with horror. You can’t negotiate with or appease the Strange in horror. It’s not something that can be intellectually understood or interacted with. Samara is going to keep doing what she does and there’s nothing Rachel can do about it. She can either get out of the way or get run over. The very best case scenario for Rachel is simply for Samara to kill people who aren’t Rachel and Aidan. However to accomplish this outcome, Rachel must actually murder someone else by showing them Samara’s tape. Thus the ostensible return to normalcy has a hard twist. Now they know the tape is out there and they have made more copies.

Let’s look at the Matrix. The Matrix is obviously not a horror movie but it would seem like it would be by our rules. We’ve defined horror as deconstructive and an intrusive forced encounter with the Strange. The Matrix movie is deconstructive. Neo discovers that the world he thought he knew was nothing more than an illusion so there is no return to normalcy at the end. Why isn’t the Matrix horror?

Well applying our rules, the Strange invites Neo into its world in the form of Morpheus, however it is an invitation, not a demand. Morpheus explicitly gives Neo the right to refuse. Agent Smith doesn’t initially WANT to kill Neo or draw him into the ‘real world.’ Smith even offers to give Neo a way to go back to his normal life if he cooperates.

The Strange doesn’t go looking for you in the Matrix unless you deliberately interact with it. The franchise beats this horse to death: You need to chose reality or the Matrix. Being in the Matrix may be illusionary but it doesn’t seem to do you any harm. You could spend a long and happy life in there if you so choose. Neo’s perpetual interaction with the Strange is by his own choice and as Cypher proves, there is a way back to Normalcy if Neo choose to do so. Thus by our rules the Matrix is not horror.

Let’s apply these rules to a slasher flick like “I know what you did last Summer.” The kids don’t go looking for the Strange, they are actively trying to avoid it. The kids accidentally hit a man while driving too fast on a dark night and the vast majority of the movie is spent with the kids attempting to forget this experience ever happened and return to normalcy. However the Strange, here personified by the faceless Fisherman, refuses to let them. Here the Strange goes after them and their normal town is revealed to be full of frightening shadows. ‘I know what you did last summer’ is actively deconstructive as with every reveal the cast knows less than they did before. Every credible suspect is systemically eliminated until the finally it is revealed that they never committed a murder at all and that the man survived. In addition there is a final jump scare, like in most horror movies, where the return to normalcy is subverted and the cast is still vulnerable to attack in what would normally be considered a safe environment.

The same analogy can be applied to any horror movie. The character doesn’t want to experience the Strange but are caught up in something and it’s beyond their power to escape back to normalcy. Horror requires normal people in a normal situation rendered Strange. A family moving into a haunted house is just seeking a new home. They have no desire to encounter spirits especially if this puts them in danger. Teenagers daring to complete some old town urban legend don’t expect it to be true, they just want to get laid.

Let’s think about ‘the Others’ which is a gothic horror movie staring Nicole Kidman. In this we’re introduced to Grace and her family living in an isolate farm house. The children suffer from an odd type of photosensitivity but aside from this their situation is very normal for the early twentieth century. The family doesn’t want to to deal with the Strange, they’re just sitting here patiently waiting for the father to return from war. However the Strange continues to interact with them in the form of strange and confusing hauntings until at the end of the movie the twist is revealed that Grace and her family have been dead for sometime and are haunting the house which now belongs to a new family. Once again, we see basic knowledge possessed by both characters and audience undermined, a return to normalcy rendered impossible, and the revelation that things were never normal to begin with.

An even better example can be found in Daniel Radcliffe’s The Woman in Black. Here a ghost haunts the eerie Eel Marsh House who has a simple rule: Anytime she’s seen by anyone, she goes to the nearby town and makes a child there kill itself. Daniel Radcliffe’s character isn’t seeking out the Strange he goes to the Eel Marsh House to find legal documents to do his job which he’s in danger of losing. The entire town attempts to get rid of him because they are aware of the Woman and know that their children will be in danger the entire time he’s at the Eel Marsh House. Ultimately Daniel learns that the Woman started haunting the town after having her son taken from her and then accidentally drowned in the marsh. He manages to recover the boy’s body from the marsh and lays him to rest beside his mother hoping that this will propitiate her spirit and leave her at peace.

However we know that the Strange in horror is irrational and can’t be negotiated with in this way. The Woman in Black certainly reacts to Daniel laying her son to rest by appearing but what this means is left unclear. Following this is a long sceen where the disembodied ghost of the Woman in Black roams through the house, intoning over and over again that she will 'Never forgive.' She's moved beyond being interacted with rationally and can't be placated or controlled anymore than a hurricane can. Her behavior can not be understood or interpreted by human minds.

Ultimately the Woman in Black succeeds in killing Daniel and his son and continues to haunt the area. The Woman in Black exposes the uselessness of humans attempting to strike any kind of bargain or accord with her. She is revealed to have been haunting the area long before the audience or the main cast were aware of her, and makes any return to normalcy impossible. The movie is deconstructive because it is about people who don’t believe in ghosts being forced to confront their existence but unable to draw any meaningful conclusions or understanding from the experience. This is a solid horror premise.

Now let’s apply this to Alien. Alien’s cast are basically the intergalactic equivalent of truckers, hauling freight between the stars. These people are not looking for mystery or excitement they just want to collect a paycheck. They go to investigate LV-426 because they detect a signal from it and company policy requires them to investigate.

Early in the movie Alien we encounter the Strange, personified by the Space Jockey (later re-imagined as an Engineer in Prometheus) and his ship. The ship is massive, cavernous, and oddly temple-like. There is no object here which the audience can recognize or any technology in evidence the audience can understand. Any machinery here is so far beyond our understanding that it blends seamlessly into the walls. The Space Jockey is reclining on a strange phallic piece of machinery. We don’t know if it’s a ship controlling device, a medical system, or a place to sleep. The derelict ship does a fantastic job at framing the movie. Humanity is clearly out of its element here. There is nothing here we understand except for the mummified corpse of the Space Jockey. The Space Jockey in particular is enormous. While the Engineer was big, the Space Jockey is at least twenty feet tall and possibly larger than that. He looks humanoid but not at all human.

The size of the Space Jockey is actually very important. The movie is literally giving the audience time to appreciate the abject smallness and insignificance of humanity by showing the cast standing next to the massive corpse. This makes the audience suitably uncomfortable for the second act which essentially becomes a slasher/monster flick set in space.

Compare this with Prometheus. Prometheus is a scifi thriller not a horror film. Everyone on board the ship chose to be there and is specifically going off on an exploratory adventure into the unknown. The Strange isn’t coming to them, they are chasing after it. Here when we encounter the Engineer (who remember, is supposed to be the same species as the Space Jockey), he is far smaller and clearly human. Yes he is bigger and paler than a normal human would be but he is not gigantic or grotesque. Moreover, he speaks to the crew. They have a dialogue with him. He asks questions and supplies answers, even if he ultimately grows angry and begins to murder people. Humanity is not beneath his notice he interacts with it on more or less equal footing.

The difference between the Space Jockey ship and the Engineer’s base is equally important. David manages to turn the base on in Prometheus. The technology here is not so far advanced from ours that we can’t figure it out and use it. Humanity can’t duplicate it yet but the technology is clearly comprehend able and manipulable to the point where David is able to use it to track down the Engineers and bomb them into extinction. The Engineer’s technology is more like Apple in another 80 years than something beyond human understanding.

In Prometheus the crew is constantly moving toward the Strange. They are pursuing it and trying to unravel it. At the end of the movie, rather than retreat back to normalcy, Shaw and David deliberately explore deeper in the unknown, seeking a place which David translates as “Paradise.” Essentially the movie has come full circle and Shaw is re-beginning the exact same quest she had at the start of the movie. Rather than withdrawing, she is now even more motivated to unravel the mysteries of the cosmos.

In Alien the crew only approach the Strange because they are legally forced to. They attempt to flee from it as soon as possible and have no desire to explore it or bring any part of it back with them.

The same basic rules apply to the sequel Aliens, a horror/action movie and probably the best entry in the series. Ripley clearly wants to flee from the Strange. She’s suffering from PTSD and survivors guilt. She refuses to return to LV-426 for most of the first Act and ultimately only agrees because she’ll be guarded by highly skilled mercenaries and her economic situation will go from precarious to desperate if she doesn’t get her license reinstated.

Initially the Marines are dismissive toward the Xenomorph which they dismiss as a bug. They doubt if it’s real and even if it is, Ripley has described an animal with little intelligence and no weapons. The Marines bring the best training and equipment available and they are confident that they can handle anything. The Xenomorphs, of course, take them apart without much effort.

The only member of the colony who survived the original Xenomorph infestation is Newt, a small girl. This isn’t a fluke but a core concept of the film: The Marines come with advanced technology and superior training to confront the Strange and they trust this will give them the edge against any foe. However the Xenomorphs reveal that human skill and ingenuity is not just insufficient, it’s irrelevant. The soldiers die rapidly while the little girl survived for six weeks with no training and no supplies. The powerful marines are in shock, their confidence and agency reduced.

Science fiction shows how human intelligence and ingenuity can overcome anything. In horror we realize the smallness of the human intellect and ability. This point is brought into sharper focus by Alien Resurrection. Here an entire space base has been constructed to contain the Xenomorphs but they break out without effort. The Xenomorphs use an attribute which has been well documented by now (acidic blood) to break out of their cage and catch a heavily funded military outpost specifically designed to contain them completely by surprise.

Aliens:Covenant is not a great movie but it is attempting to be a horror movie. We see settlers exploring a new world, exploring it with expressions of wonder. These settlers aren’t attracted to the Strange, they’re seeking the familiar. Ironically, Alien Covenant subverts the normal formula because the wonder of the situation is that they’ve found something familiar so far away from home. They are exploring the Strange unknown realms of deep space as a means to an end and the planet they find is unrealistically Earth-like. When they confront the unexpected, they instinctively retreat as much as they can. At the end of the movie, there is no return to normalcy because they’re too far out in deep space to have any normalcy. The closest they come to is when Walter is putting Daniels back into cryogenic stasis and she realizes he’s actually David, subverting normalcy and revealing the hidden danger in a formerly safe place.

My personal theory is that the Prometheus franchise was never intended to be part of the Alien franchise. I have no proof of this but it’s what I believe. Ridley Scott wanted to tell a classic scifi story about humanity and our place in the universe but the studio wasn’t really interested in funding it because this is a very niche project which would likely attract a small audience. The studio offers to fund it as long as Scott ties it in with the profitable Alien franchise and he reluctantly agrees. The major issue with that is that Alien and Prometheus can not exist in the same universe. They have diametrically opposite views of their universe and how humanity fits into it.

Let’s apply these rules to the Netflix smash Stranger Things. Most people do not consider Stranger Things to be horror per se, even if it does have creepy moments. However at first glance it would satisfy our rules. For starters, the Strange does come after people in this series. The Strange, represented by the demagorgon, attacks Will Byers in his own home, a place of safety and normalcy. Will isn’t looking for a great adventure, he’s just on his way home after playing with his friends. The same effect occurs when the Demagorgon attacks Barbara. Barbara isn’t looking for the Strange she’s just keeping an eye on her friend Nancy and trying to talk her out of having sex with a boy she thinks is bad for her. Mike and his friends aren’t specifically looking for the Strange when they encounter Eleven (another harbinger of the Strange), they’re looking for their missing friend Will. Even the ending of season 1 resembles a horror film since after Will gets home safely, we see a final scene where the bathroom inverts itself, reminding us the audience that the Strange isn’t far away and was in fact here all the time. The return to normalcy is inverted.

So is Stranger Things horror? Or could it be both scifi and horror?

No. Remember by our rules that horror is deconstructive. The cast and audience leave feeling enfeebled, their sense of power and agency reduced. Mike and his friends use their brains to solve their problems. They readily recognize that their understanding of the universe is incomplete but it is never dismantled. The school science teacher (who probably knows more than he’s letting on) helps the boys solve the problem, first by explaining extra dimensions and then helping them build a sensory deprivation tank for Eleven. Eleven disappears at the end but shows that she’s managed to master her powers sufficiently to send back the demagorgon. The children end the season empowered having solved their problem, recovered their friend, and with renewed confidence in their ability to ultimately understand the Strange. Stranger Things is constructive and therefore is not horror.

The same rules can be applied to horror movies like Event Horizon with its scifi themes and scifi thrillers like Sphere which tries to make us afraid of the dark and human imagination. Science fiction is constructive and respects the human mind and ingenuity. Horror is deconstructive and seeks to undermine the same. You can not have a scifi horror film anymore than you can have a Western movie set in feudal Japan.