10 Things You Learn Re-Watching Alien
2. It's Full Of Horror Tropes
Alien may be many things, but at its heart it's still a horror film, and is even beholden to many of the stereotypical slasher film tropes that began to become popular at the time.
For one, the characters frequently split up despite the inherent danger, and there's even a scene where Ripley tells the remaining survivors to split up into pairs, before moments later contradicting herself and saying "we have to stick together".
Inevitably, of course, the Xenomorph has an easy time picking them off when separated, leading to the barely clothed "final girl" taking on the Xeno in an epic final showdown.
This is of course a rather simplistic reading of the film and a lot of these cliches hadn't yet become as tired as they are today, but it's still interesting to realise how much the movie's third act in particular is emblematic of that genre schematic.