[Editor’s Note: This list was originally published in July 2022. It has since been updated with new entries to coincide with the release of “Alien: Romulus”]
Aliens are never far from the pop culture hive mind. It makes sense that audiences would look to the sky in the 21st century: a time of existential ennui that leaves many clamoring for escape and wondering, “What else?” But where is the lingering nostalgia for “E. T. ” or the effortless charm of “Earth Girls Are Easy” might have created an emotional connection in the past, a burning desire to feel something festering.
The scariest alien movies terrify in the same way that the scariest terrestrial horror movies do: they build (and kill) sympathetic characters; generate otherworldly visual presentations with very sinister implications; getting the shocks, if any, just at the right time; and dare to put the incredibly horrible on the screen. Alien movies are especially prominent because of the subgenre’s unheard-of ability to explore the unknown, evoking heinous fates for humans so deeply sadistic that few other movies can try.
“The Fourth Kind,” by director Olatunde Osunsanmi, lays out the taxonomy of interactions between humans and extraterrestrials well: “They have other categories for these things, other levels. One of the first encounters is when we see a UFO. The moment is when you see evidence of it: crop circles or radiation. The third is where you make contact. But the fourth: there is nothing scarier than the fourth. That’s when they take you.
John Carpenter, Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, M. Night Shyamalan, James Gunn and Jordan Peele are among the Hollywood heavyweights who have put their twisted imaginations at the service of creating those encounters for the big screen. Along the way, those filmmakers have brought to the fore salient aspects of human nature, asking ourselves what we owe others in the face of certain catastrophe.
From the most bizarre and disturbing (“Bad Taste”, “Slither”, “Mars Attacks!”) to the most menacing (“Alien”, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”, “No”), here are the 32 most aliens Terrifying Movies Never Made. To maintain interest, there are two restrictions: (1) only one film consistent with the franchise and (2) is it the remake or the original.
With editorial contributions by Alison Foreman.
Thrown at negative reviews at the time, “The Blob” is a film easy to describe as kitschy and dated. And yet, Irvin Yeaworth’s timeless story about a small town attacked by a giant carnivorous amoeba from the outside has endured for decades and remains an incredibly entertaining watch to this day. Much more ironic and funny than expected, the movie Faith fully follows the moves of the monster movie as Blob attacks the small town and an organization of heroes emerges in an attempt to avoid his violent path. with a strong and memorable beat, which makes it very easy to put on and enjoy. The main character of the film is noteworthy, a guy named Steve McQueen, who will move on to bigger and bigger things but who will fully demonstrate everything. the skill that has made him a star. -BATHROOM
It’s not unusual for a franchise to start out in horror mode before temporarily evolving into direct action. “Alien” and “The Terminator” are old examples, and a clever decade after the harvests of the ’80s came “Pitch Black,” David Twohy’s 2000 hit about spaceship passengers stranded on a desert planet and attacked by creatures attacking them on their journey. . a solar eclipse that leaves Planet Dark Stars action star Vin Diesel in his decisive role.
Later sequels would offer some zany B-movie action. But “Pitch Black” is a genuine horror and also very effective. It’s a bit of a derivative of “Alien”, but “Pitch Black” executes its formula well, with plenty of scares and action scenes to make the darkness scary again. -BATHROOM
Admittedly, including “Event Horizon” on this list is a bit of a stretch; There are no physical alien beings in Paul W. S. Anderson’s cult classic. This can also make the movie scarier; An almost Lovecraftian film about the unknowable, which arouses much interest in the terror of extraterrestrial beings beyond our understanding. Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill and Kathleen Quinlan play team members of a rescue shipment sent to assist the missing Spaceend event team. Horizon. When they locate the sterile steel casing, they notice a sinister presence inhabiting it; However, it is unclear if this is an alien or a spirit from hell. Some will possibly find the lack of answers frustrating, but that only makes the horrors experienced through her team even more terrifying. -BATHROOM
If you’ve ever thought your best school teachers weren’t from planet Earth, “The College” is here to verify your suspicions. Robert Rodriguez’s underrated horror film features a cast of incredibly young ’90s actors (Jordana Brewster! Clea DuVall! Elijah Wood! Josh Hartnett! Usher!?) as a ragtag organization of Herrington High School students who become in the last resistance against an army of alien parasites that invade the teachers and directors of the school. This skill is played through another absurd cast, adding Bebe Neuwirth as director, Salma Hayek, Piper Laurie, Famke Janssen and Jon Stewart. The film’s intelligent discussion (Kevin Williamson of “Scream” wrote the script) makes it fun rather than scary. However, the film still has a lot of emotions and is smart. in how it uses its central parasitic villains as a vehicle to explore teenage isolation, conformity, and alienation.
Before John Boyega was with Chewbacca in a galaxy far, far away, he was fighting alien beings in a construction site far, far away. Joe Cornish’s acclaimed directorial, “Attack the Block,” stars Boyega as Moses, the leader of a teenage gang, whose stoic demeanor masks a natural golden center. He gets the chance to show off this golden centerpiece one night when, in an attack on nurse Samantha (Jodie Whitaker), a meteorite containing a dog-shaped alien with glowing green fangs falls from the sky. What at first turns out to be one easy-to-kill pest turns into many more, as more and more meteorites fall, and Samantha and Moses become the unlikely first defense against a true alien invasion. “Attack the Block” has an undeniable premise, but it is enhanced by the film’s South London elements, the thrilling and suspenseful direction of Cornish, and Boyega’s charismatic and stellar performance. -BATHROOM
Humans are the real monsters in “District 9,” director Neill Blomkamp’s sobering sci-fi thriller, which imagines crustacean extraterrestrial beings cornered and placed in ramshackle camps in the filmmaker’s homeland of South Africa. It’s a business metaphor (with claws?) for apartheid, yes. But it’s also a darkly genuine attention to what could plausibly happen if extraterrestrial beings were to make themselves known to our traditionally volatile species: one that tragically flips the script and seriously considers Earth a risk to the universe.
Spoiler alert: Steven Spielberg’s alien scale in Vintage isn’t scary in its context, but it does tell a nonviolent story of exploration. Still, the 1977 alien drama superbly performed by the legendary director, starring “Jaws” actor Richard Dreyfuss as a man witnessing a UFO: is intensely immersive and includes scenes that are particularly chilling for younger viewers. Yes, it’s usually flashing lights and silhouettes of little aliens. But we also think of a certain baby sucked out of a cat door.
Tim Burton brings a quirky B-movie twist, not for everyone, to this colorful crop of Ed Wood that has a cult crop, with an all-star cast that includes Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Pierce Brosnan, Jack Black, and Sarah Jessica. Parker, Danny DeVito and more. The “Attacks on Mars!” “Martians have an abjectly unpleasant appearance, with this exposed brain scenario happening. But beyond that, they are strange because of the diabolical excitement that seems to derive from our disappearance, like idiots just for laughing. “Beautiful planet, we’ll take it!” »
There’s an almost rogue risk for the modest poufs that descend to Earth in the movie “Save Yourself!”co-writer-director Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson. The perfect cast of John Reynolds and Sunita Mani plays a Brooklyn couple who first mistake alien invaders (with the ability to levitate, spear-shaped tongues, and more at their disposal) for furniture. Big mistake.
“Edge of Tomorrow” is, like most of Tom Cruise’s films, a muscle action film above all else. Still, Doug Liman’s underrated 2014 invasion film gives a memorable and malleable alien force to the alien cannon. Known as Mimics, the enemies that the world makes the citizens fight these sprawling abominations with quick, agile reflexes and the ability to go back in time when they die: an enormous credit to humanity that becomes its Achilles’ heel when Cruise’s cowardly recruit inherits the force and uses it to find a way to destroy them. Without the temporal paradoxes, the Mimics are memorable and creative creations, with a well-thought-out mythology and a beehive-like brain twist that makes their defeat all the more satisfying.
Paul Verhoeven’s “Starship Troopers” is unsettling, of course, but the biting satire remains the film’s main promotional point. Casper Van Dien plays Johnny Rico, a soldier who fights for the entire army of humanity in an epic war against an alien enemy known as the Arachnids. This 1997 film introduced a five-film franchise.
“Killer Klowns from Outer Space” will be the most annoying for audiences who fear clowns, or “Coulrophobia. “But rest assured, it’ll be enough to get everyone writhing in this disgusting, silly 1988 horror-comedy about circus-like extraterrestrial beings landing on what planet. Terrestrial lands. ” What are you going to do with those cakes, guys?
With one of the most compelling premises in alien horror, Wolf Rilla’s “Village of the Damned” is a black-and-white mystery that begins with 10 miraculously conceiving a group of alien babies. The pale blonde creatures giving birth anchor a petrifying invasion plot and one of horror’s most illustrious hidden gems.
Arnold Schwarzenegger takes on the main antagonist of director John McTiernan’s original “Predator” film. On a rescue project in Central America, Major Dutch Schaefer will have to outwit a burning alien fighter, even though he is still surrounded by human enemies. sides. Also appearing are Carl Weathers, Jesse Ventura, Shane Black, Richard Chaves and many others.
Dan Trachtenberg’s claustrophobic film “10 Cloverfield Lane” stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Michelle, a young woman who wakes up in a bunker after being stocked by a man (John Goodguy) and his son (John Gallagher Jr. Array) in the alien apocalypse. At least that’s what they told him.
In John Carpenter’s “They Live,” Nada (Roddy Piper), an action hero turned aimless drifter, acquires a pair of sunglasses that allow him to see alien invaders lurking among the highest ranks of humanity. observation and some of the funniest lines ever written by Carpenter (“I came here to chew gum and kick ass, and I ran out of gum. “)
Scarlett Johansson stars in Jonathan Glazer’s “Under the Skin,” a strangely low-key sci-fi film from A24. Set in Glasgow, the twisty drama may not be terrifying in the classic sense, but its melancholic portrait of humanity is one of the darkest outings in extraterrestrial cinema to date.
A religious successor to “The Thing,” this 1987 John Carpenter film infuses religious terror with extraterrestrial elements to produce a unique nightmare. When a Catholic priest (Donald Pleasence) discovers a mysterious canister of liquid in a monastery, he recruits a professor (Victor Wong) and his scholars. “The Prince of Darkness” isn’t the classic alien horror, but it creates a biblically encouraged overarching story that’s too disturbing not to include.
Directed by and starring John Krasinski, along with his spouse Emily Blunt, Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe, “A Quiet Place” imagines a world in which ferocious alien predators come to Earth to hunt only the sound of humans. The film follows a family’s struggle to survive.
Natasha Henstridge makes her debut as Sil, a dangerously horny alien humanoid who seeks to mate with a male host in Roger Donaldson’s “Species. “This 1995 sci-fi horror is “Fatal Attraction” combined with “Alien” (assuming you trade a rabbit for an incessant preference for collecting genetic material). At least be sure to check out the homicide in the hot tub in this one.
Previously adapted by Don Siegel for his 1956 black-and-white film, Jack Finney’s novel “The Body Snatchers” is experiencing a wave of terrifying new scares in director Philip Kaufman’s 1978 horror heavyweight. Donald Sutherland, Jeff Goldblum, Leonard Nimoy, Brooke Adams, Veronica Cartwright and many more appear in this strange new version about parasitic hosts that first arrive hunting like flowers, before taking on the appearance of those we love.
The extraterrestrial beings in Denis Villeneuve’s most important film come (for the most part) in peace. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t, objectively, frightening, largely because Villeneuve wisely helps keep them more commonly mysterious. It stars Amy Adams in the role of her career as a metal linguist recruited through the U. S. military to make contact with extraterrestrial beings who have parked their spaceship over Montana. No compromises are made to humanize what they locate on board the ship: creatures in the shape of hands and 8 limbs, nicknamed “heptapods”, extraterrestrial beings converse with a complex language based on symbols, unlike anything that exists on planet Earth. A contemplative drama rather than a natural horror, “Arrival” is far more interested in the implications of what the wisdom and equipment of those aliens means. Human beings can do to replace the course not only of human history but also of human thought. Still, the nature of the visitors from beyond the stars and the cost of the equipment at their disposal make it unclear whether the consequences are worth the reward.
M. Night Shyamalan gives a scare in “Signs”. (You already know that. )Centered on a small circle of relatives living in rural Pennsylvania, this simmering invasion mystery begins with the mysterious appearance of crop circles around the world. the ruthless destruction of the house of humanity as we know it.
Tom Cruise and 10-year-old Dakota Fanning directed Steven Spielberg’s radical remake of the original 1953 film, based on the 1938 radio series that replaced science fiction forever. When the first tripod lands in Brooklyn, you probably don’t know what hit you. “War of the Worlds” was nominated for Best Editing, Best Sound Mixing and Best Visual Effects at that year’s Academy Awards.
A nasty sibling prank war turns into a night of supernatural terror in the final act of “V/H/S/2,” the first sequel in the uncovered footage horror anthology series. Directed by Jason Eisener (“Hobo with a Shotgun”), “Alien Abduction Slumber Party” would sound familiar if it weren’t presented as if it were filmed almost entirely via a camcorder attached to a dog. Get ready to finish it.
If you haven’t yet fallen under the bloody, ridiculous charm of “Bad Taste,” then miss out on one of Peter Jackson’s most productive deep tracks available. When an entire city disappears, special agents notice a race of extraterrestrial beings hunting humans for a fast-paced intergalactic food chain. Sloppy and buffoonish, Jackson’s first film is adorably low-budget and features the filmmaker battling himself in a cliff scene.
Starring Milla Jovovich as an actress who recreates the self-reported kidnapping of psychologist Dr. Abbey Tyler (Charlotte Milchard), “The Fourth Kind” is a mockumentary that cleverly uses tropes of discovered footage, jump scares, and intentional ambiguity. The scariest detail in writer-director Olatunde Osunsanmi’s 2009 horror film: the option that a user could be unknowingly kidnapped.
Michael Rooker, Elizabeth Banks and Nathan Fillion star in James Gunn’s repulsive and ridiculous “Slither. ” Easily the grossest name on this ranking, the 2006 horror comedy unleashes mind-altering alien parasites on a South Carolina town. Much of this horror film is splattered with goo and guts, but it’s the implications that come with those injuries that will really worry you.
The joy of watching the scathing spectacle of a Jordan Peele film is best summed up in its title: “No. ” When Hollywood horse breeder OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) sees something in the sky, his sister Emerald (Keke Palmer) begins an adventure. mission. which animates the rest of this deliciously disgusting, stupidly terrifying, and sometimes perfect horror. Steven Yeun, Brandon Perea and Michael Wincott also appear.
John Carpenter’s “The Thing” sounds a bit like a spy drama if you swap the foreign intelligence network for a remote survey outpost in Antarctica and a mole hunt with an alien parasite hunt. Kurt Russell stars in what is possibly his most productive role (sexy Santa Claus notwithstanding) as pilot R. J. Macready, a cunning hero almost defeated by terror. From practical effects fueled mutations to that blood test scene, this 1982 film is a staple of sci-fi excellence with the scares that come with it.
All 8 installments of the popular xenomorph franchise are terrifying in completely different ways. (You can read IndieWire’s full franchise ratings here. ) Still, nothing beats the gut-wrenching anxiety of Ridley Scott’s “Alien. ” Aboard the spaceship Nostromo, Petty Officer Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and the rest of her team pick up an unwanted stowaway. Array The 1979 film won the Academy Award for best visual effects and includes one of the most disturbing cliffhangers in science fiction films.
Featuring what is arguably the most terrifying alien abduction scene ever performed, Robert Lieberman’s “Fire in the Sky” examines quintessential sci-fi abduction from two perspectives: the tortured preoccupation of those Array noticed at the home of his father and faithful friend Mike Rogers. . (Roberto Patricio); and the incredible agony of the abductee, captured in this harrowing adaptation of Travis Walton’s (D. B. Sweeney) of 1975.