Horror Lovers Challenge

On the hunt for the best space horror movies? Then you’ve come to the right place.

In space, no one can hear you scream. That’s the tagline for Alien and a stone-cold fact because there is no sound in the vacuum of space. Unless, of course, you’re in a spaceship or on an alien planet. Those are just some of the settings for the very best space horror movies and we’ve picked out the true highlights of the genre.

Horror, particularly in space, is a tricky one to pin down as, often, it can feel more like a thriller than a true horror film, but these five movies are still bound to make you rather unsettled and very relieved that you’re not actually in space.

Read on while we guide you through these creepy, and sometimes gory, space horror movies, and if you’re a little too nervous to check them out.

1. Alien – Best space horror movie

Release date: September 6, 1979
Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright, John Hurt

The space horror film that changed everything, Alien is a classic. Not just a classic space horror film but a generally gripping tale for all. It’s another one where a spaceship encounters an evil creature – the simply titled (at this point) alien.

Steadily working on taking out the seven member crew, there are many iconic moments that you may or may not already be aware of. We won’t spoil them but we will confidently tell you that Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver, is a truly memorable hero amongst many other memorable performances including a certain film-stealing scene from John Hurt.

Much of Alien is about what you can’t see and the anticipation of what could be around the next corner, and it’s genuinely tense stuff. While many space horror films delve purely into gore or use special effects that soon become hideously dated, much of Alien is actually quite understated and subtle. It keeps you in a constant state of suspense, waiting to see just what could happen next.

Many Alien films followed (and we’re featuring another one here) but when it comes to the best Alien movie, you just can’t beat the original. Unless, of course, you watch Aliens.

Get Alien on Blu-ray at Amazon

2. Aliens – Best space action horror movie

Release date: July 18, 1986
Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen

Aliens is the best Alien movie! Or is it? A contentious battle, we have a sneaky feeling that both Alien and Aliens are joint-first in this competition with the big winner being you.

Aliens is a much faster-paced movie than its predecessor. Directed by James Cameron, coming hot off the heels of The Terminator, it has Ripley team up with a group of Colonial Marines to investigate a growing influx of aliens and, ultimately, work towards killing them all. A great supporting cast including Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen, and Bill Paxton ensure that this is an ensemble piece with a bit more development-focused towards Ripley being a maternal figure.

At its heart though, Aliens is a much louder space horror film than Alien. Expect a lot more explosions and a lot more fighting, but with an undercurrent of fear, horror, and more than a few jump scares. Sure, it’s rarely subtle, almost capturing the spirit of most 1980s blockbusters, but what a ride it is.

Get Aliens on Blu-ray at Amazon

3. Event Horizon – Best space psychological horror movie

Release date: August 15, 1997
Cast: Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, Kathleen Quinlan

Poorly reviewed at the time, Event Horizon had a troubled production which makes it all the more fascinating. Ultimately though, it’s an incredibly gory and violent space horror film that is guaranteed to unsettle.

Following a crew of astronauts sent on a rescue mission to save another spaceship, things go from bad to worse when it turns out the ship – the Event Horizon – is a test bed for an experimental engine that’s opened a rift in the space-time continuum. It leads to some incredibly horrific monsters creeping into the regular world, a descent into madness for much of the crew, and for the ship itself to become possessed by evil spirits.

It’s a sometimes surreal film to watch but with a strong cast including Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, Jason Isaacs, and Joely Richardson, it just about veers away from being too cheesy. Some of the violence is hard to watch including eye gouging, vivisection and some sexual violence, but if you have a strong stomach, it’s a gripping take on space horror as we watch a spaceship turn into a vision of Hell.

Get Event Horizon on Blu-ray at Amazon

4. Pitch Black – Best space survival horror movie

Release date: February 18, 2000
Cast: Vin Diesel, Radha Mitchell, Cole Hauser, Keith David

The movie that propelled Vin Diesel to stardom, and a seemingly never ending number of Fast & Furious films, Pitch Black isn’t necessarily a great picture but it’s one that’s acquired a cult following over the years for good reasons.

It follows the story of Riddick, a dangerous criminal, transported to prison via spacecraft. Along the way, the vehicle is damaged by comet debris and is forced to make an emergency landing on a seemingly empty desert planet. It’s not empty, of course. Instead, vicious alien creatures begin attacking the survivors of the crash and they find themselves having to rely on Riddick’s violent talents to survive.

As the name suggests, darkness is a key element of Pitch Black. The creatures only come out at night to kill and, luckily, Riddick has surgically modified vision which means he can cope with the dark but not the daylight. That explains both why Riddick is worth sticking with during this escapade and why Vin Diesel looks so cool wearing shades at all times. They’re not just for his looks but because he requires them to avoid a nasty migraine!

It’s not the smartest of movies but Pitch Black is a lot of fun and still likely to make you jump a few times.

Get Pitch Black on Blu-ray at Amazon

5. Sunshine – best space thriller

Release date: July 20, 2007
Cast: Cillian Murphy, Rose Byrne, Cliff Curtis, Chris Evans

Potentially more a thriller than a traditional space horror movie, Sunshine still has its moments of horror, particularly later on in the somewhat bleak tale.

Set 35 years in the future, the sun is dying and it’s down to a group of astronauts to attempt to reignite it. Obviously, that was never going to be a smooth mission. With the team under a huge amount of stress, much of the horror stems from their gradual mental decline as well as moments of philosophy and spirituality. It’s a thinking person’s space horror then but there’s still room for some fairly nasty moments as well as a few cares you won’t have seen coming.

While the death of the sun isn’t particularly realistic here, there’s a wise message in there too about threats against humanity relating to climate change. At least until things turn more into traditional slasher horror territory. Still, it’s an intriguing watch and a genuinely different take on the conventional space horror genre.

Get Sunshine on Blu-ray at Amazon

POLTERGEIST (1982)
Director: Tobe Hooper
Cast: Craig T. Nelson, JoBeth Williams, Zelda Rubinstein

Poltergeist’s climactic backyard splashdown is a masterwork of horror intensity. Actress JoBeth Williams, fleeing from a house overrun by demons, tumbles through a rainstorm into a hole dug for an impending pool. As Williams wails and flails, skeletons continually pop up from the mud all around her in a nonstop onslaught of terror.

By any circumstances, that’s scary. Now consider that the skeletons had actually once been inside of living human beings. According to JoBeth Williams herself:

“In my naivete, I assumed these were not real skeletons, I assumed that they were prop skeletons, you know, made out of plastic or rubber or something. But the skeletons were not synthetic. I found out from the crew that they were using real skeletons, because it’s far too expensive to make skeletons out of rubber and stuff. And I think everybody got very creeped out by the idea of that.”

Bruce Kasson, who worked as Assistant Prop Master on Poltergeist, confirms the claim, stating:

“Yes, the skeletons were real. They came from Carolina Biological. Replica skeletons did not exist, as far as I remember, at that time They’re now common and relatively cheap. And the rush to the bottom line for cost will dictate.” [Blumhouse]

DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978)
Director: George Romero
Cast: David Emgee, Ken Foree, Galen Ross

Dawn of the Dead, George Romero’s landmark zombie apocalypse epic, showcases makeup and special effects by Tom Savini that elevate the art form to new heights of gross-out greatness.

On one of the props, though, Savini had some help from Mother Nature. He unwittingly worked with a bona fide skeleton that appears early on, sitting up in the hall of an apartment complex, wrapped in a sort of hooded sheet.

Savini had borrowed the skeleton from a prop collector named Larry Winterstellar, who wasn’t sure where it came from. Afterward, Winterstellar sold the bones to Marilyn Wick, owner of a shop called Costume World. Once there, the skeleton sat in the front window as a decoration.

While dropping by Costume World one day, a police officer noticed the skeleton and thought it looked too convincing. He turned out to be right. A coroner determined the skeleton belonged to an unidentified 35-year-old woman, and she had died about 100 years prior to her movie debut.

In 1982, a judge ordered the remains to be properly buried in a cemetery. The woman was laid to rest in an unmarked grave until 2014, when fans of the film raised money to buy her a proper headstone. Costume World proprietor Wick donated the bulk of the money.

Today, the mystery woman is properly laid to rest under a marker with a name given to her by DOTD devotees: Dawn Doe. [Dread Central]

MEN BEHIND THE SUN (1988)
Director: Tung Fei Mous
Cast: Jianxin Chen, Shu Gou, Linjie Hao

Inspired by the all-too-horribly-true World War II atrocities committed by Japan’s General Shirō Ishii, Men Behind the Sun is a largely unwatchable cavalcade of human cruelty.

Chinese writer-director Tung Fei Mous has said he created the film to bring awareness to the crimes committed against his imprisoned countrymen (and women and children) as part of the sick and horrific biological warfare experiments undertaken and overseen by Ishii in the notorious “Unit 731.”

Boasting convincing visual effects too heartbreaking and stomach-emptying to even describe, Men Behind the Sun goes beyond fake blood and rubber guts. For a scene where a young boy is anesthetized and has his organs removed while alive, Mou uses footage of an actual child’s autopsy. Yes, you read that right. [Birth. Movies. Death]

BEYOND THE DARKNESS (1979)
Director: Joe D’Amato
Cast: Kieran Canter, Cinza Monreale, Franca Stoppi

Over the course of an almost impossibly prolific exploitation flick career, Italian splatter-horror guru Joe D’Amato churned out some of the most insane, explicit, and gloriously over-the-top outrages to ever stain movie screens blood-red.

Beyond the Darkness (BTD) is brutal and berserk even by standards befitting the filmmaker who also brought us Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals (1977), Erotic Nights of the Living Dead (1980), and Porno Holocaust (1981).

BTD, which played in America as Buried Alive, chronicles a mad taxidermist who digs up his fiancée’s corpse and attempts to resurrect her via home surgery. It doesn’t work, but we do witness him torturing, dismembering, and cannibalizing other victims in the process.

As noted, Beyond the Darkness immediately stood out upon arrival and then became legendary once rumors swirled that D’Amato illegally obtained human corpses and used them for the movie’s rambunctiously repulsive gore segments. A new extras-packed BTD Blu-ray explores the film’s frantic history in full. Don’t miss it — if you dare. [Severin Films]

UNREST (2006)
Director: Jason Todd Ipson
Cast: Corri English, Scot Davis, Joshua Alba

Unrest is an unsettling horror thriller centered on a dead body in a hospital morgue that seems to curse anyone with whom it comes in contact.

The movie’s atmosphere feels uncannily true-to-life (and death) and, in terms of jolts, autopsy imagery abounds. The former might be chalked up to writer-director Jason Todd Ipson being an actual medical doctor and a formerly practicing surgeon. The latter proves especially effective because Ipson incorporates film footage of legitimate post-mortem medical examinations.

When asked about the use of real human remains, Ipson said:

“I absolutely will not deny that, but I absolutely cannot verify it … Prosthetics are make-believe. I want people to really understand human anatomy and what death means … What we did was very respectful of the dead and their spirits.”

Ipson went on to make the comedy Everybody Wants to Be Italian (2007). In keeping with his commitment to authenticity, that film contains the use of some actual Italians. [Skewed and Reviewed]