Alien underlines its spooky atmospherics right from the jump: In the 1979 film’s opening scene, a commercial vessel floats in vast, dark space, and an eerie silence is cut by the sounds of whirring ...

In space, no one can hear you scream, but they can sure hear you scratching your head as you try to make sense of the sprawling “Alien” universe. While Ridley Scott’s 1979 haunted-house-in-the-cosmos ...