Stranded (2013)

This is definitely not a film for those who are sensitive to violence. You have much to look forward to if you can handle gore, blood, and monsters. Stranded (2013), directed by Roger Christian, follows the desperation of astronauts stationed at a lunar base on the moon's surface. Here's a brief but adequate summary:

“The Lunar Base Ark is hit by a meteor shower and has severe damage. Colonel Gerard Brauchman sends Ava Cameron to repair a wing that is full of carbon monoxide. Dr. Lance Krauss warns that the gas may cause paranoia and hallucinations. Ava brings a sample of the meteor for analysis and Dr. Krauss finds that there are spores attached to the meteor. Ava accidentally cuts her finger in a sample but she hides the cut from the doctor. Soon Ava gets pregnant and delivers an alien offspring. Brauchman and Kraus believe that Ava is delusional. The offspring bites the crewman Bruce Johns and produces a clone of him. - Claudio Carvalho (IMDB.com)”

Brauchman (Christian Slater). The most challenging aspect of horror is believability, the convincing dread that's both the result of eerie filmmaking and the minute expressions of the actors. Horror requires deep, multi-level analysis that typical viewers can't comprehend.

According to H.P Lovecraft, humanity's oldest and strongest emotion is fear. Inducing fear sounds unethical, but it is the most primal sense of empathy we can experience because we feel the terror. On IMDB, the reviews don't make sense because they look at Stranded in a less seasoned and appreciating tone--they do not want to experience the effort Roger Christian put into with a "shoe-string" budget. Christian understands the dread he must induce. Inspired by Ridley Scott's Aliens (1979), he adopts recognizable characteristics from Scott's film.

The Ship in Alien (1979)

The following gallery is an example of Stranded's inspiration roots. It is clear that Ridley Scott sought to create the antithesis, the total dread of men, in alien. The alien's ship is in direct contrast to the humans' ship (a biologically dependent ship whose pipes and overall design resemble an organ vs. the human's sterile white environment). The aliensare born in a chaos of bacteria, dirt, and slime, while humans live in a clean environment. This biological entity seeks to assert itself through humans, using humans as an incubator/host to satisfy its essential nutrients before forcing its way out.

Tracing Roger Christian's Stranded typology is interesting because Alien and Stranded are directly related. Aliens always have a dirty, unknown birthing method. They can't reproduce within their own species but must find a host. Humans are always the most susceptible, the weakest species in the universe.

Stranded is filled with imagery that needs more in-depth exploration. It needs to be known the motives behind Roger's work. He moves through sequences very fluidly and almost misses some critical lines. The following stills are simply for your reference, but what's notably the same is that in Stranded, the ship is also very similar to the boat in Aliens (see behind Christian Slater and the interesting corridor shot!