ALIEN: EARTH Creator Says That Eyeball Alien Is the Most Disturbing Thing You'll See All Year
Hulu’s Alien: Earth has taken the Alien franchise in a really cool and fascinating new direction and it’s not just the xenomorphs or the eerie synthetic children that are creeping people out, like The Eye, which is a parasitic, tentacled creature that feels ripped from a nightmare and has quickly become one of the franchise’s most unsettling creations.
Series creator Noah Hawley knows exactly what he’s done. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Hawley broke down just how horrifying The Eye’s debut in episode four really is, and how it became the stuff of sci-fi horror legend.
It involves a live sheep, a deeply unnerving stare, and one of the most grotesque body-invading moments of the year.
“It’s one of the more disturbing things you’ll watch all year, I think. Every 5 percent improvement in visual effects made that sequence a 100 percent ‘worse’ in terms of its effectiveness—and by ‘worse,’ I mean better.
“I told director Ugla Hauksdóttir in London, ‘For me, the fact that you got the live sheep to back away from the camera [in seeming fear of The Eye], that made the whole sequence right.
“Because if that had been a CG sheep, there’s something about sheep—being like—us going ‘uh-huh!’ and backing away from camera really sold the gag.”
The Eye’s creepy design wasn’t always the plan. Originally, the alien had legs. But that all changed thanks to someone on the visual effects team who suggested suckers instead of limbs. That change amped up the horror and turned The Eye into something that could launch itself across the room in pursuit of its prey, like a tentacled, sentient missile.
“To me, there’s a relentlessness to this that is similar to the face hugger. Certainly in James Cameron’s movie [Aliens] where Ripley [Sigourney Weaver] and Newt [Rebecca Jorden] are trying to get away from these things, and they just keep coming, and they’re fast, and they’re scrambling, and they’re spider like a crab.
“[The suckers] was a really great upgrade for the original conceit where before, it just had to run as fast as it could at you. Now it can fly. And here in Austin, we have the Palmetto bugs fly. A giant roach that flies is always worse than a giant roach that doesn’t.
“So the fact that it can propel itself, that it can stick to you, and you’re basically trying to fight it off, and it has all these arms and it’s relentlessly trying to get in.”
While Cameron hasn’t offered any public reaction to Alien: Earth, Hawley confirmed he has been in touch with Alien originator Ridley Scott. Cameron, on the other hand, recently referred to the franchise as “trampled ground at this point” following Fede Álvarez’s film Alien: Romulus, possibly referring more to the challenges of modern sci-fi storytelling than throwing shade at the newer projects.
Hawley, for his part, holds no ill will.
“I did not have any contact with James Cameron. Not because I didn’t want to, but I don’t know where James Cameron is or what he’s doing. And there’s certainly no obligation for him to talk to me about a movie he made 40 years ago.”
With Alien: Earth, Hawley has managed to breathe new life into a storied franchise, delivering a creature that’s right up there with Facehuggers and Chestbursters. Thanks to its skin-crawling design and next-level VFX, The Eye may just end up haunting your dreams.