(Photo by Janus Films / Courtesy Everett Collection. Solaris.)
40 Best Space Horror Movies
The latest: Whether it’s the original or the remake, Solaris haunted and melted our minds.
“In space, no one can hear you scream.” Yeah, you knew we were gonna hit you with that Alien tagline in a guide to the best space horror movies of all time, and can you blame us? It’s the best one-liner fused to the best movie of this breed, perfectly encapsulating the far-flung cosmic terror that draws horror hounds and audiences to the subgenre.
So what defines space horror? The first rule is a biggie but ought to be obvious: Most of the movie cannot be set on this island Earth, so nothing about space vampires walkin’ on Ventura Boulevard, even if it’s got a killer opening riff or first act set off-world. Then with Alien setting the standard, the label of space horror calls forth a fleet of spacecraft from movie history, like the Nostromo or Covenant or Prometheus, the Event Horizon, and the Icarus II from Sunshine. Often, the way they confine and trap their passengers elevate these interstellar ships as characters in their own right.
And space horror can also go planetside. Within Alien, the sequel was quick to kick Ripley and her Colonial Marine pals off ship and onto a moon colony where the terror xenomorphed into new dimensions. And you can’t run in a straight line in Prometheus if you’re not outside with lots of room around. Predators had unsavory folk waking up in mid-air hurtling towards a hostile game planet, and not even Pitch Black‘s three suns could cool off Vin Diesel.
We ranked our space horror guide by Tomatometer score, with Certified Fresh films first, including Prospect, which maximized its low budget, High Life, a surprising joint effort from Robert Pattinson and director Claire Denis, and popular sci-fi sequel Alien: Romulus.
#1
Critics Consensus: While Alien was a marvel of slow-building, atmospheric tension, Aliens packs a much more visceral punch, and features a typically strong performance from Sigourney Weaver.
Synopsis: After floating in space for 57 years, Lt. Ripley's (Sigourney Weaver) shuttle is found by a deep space salvage team.
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#2
Critics Consensus: A modern classic, Alien blends science fiction, horror and bleak poetry into a seamless whole.
Synopsis: In deep space, the crew of the commercial starship Nostromo is awakened from their cryo-sleep capsules halfway through their journey
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#3
Critics Consensus: Solaris is a haunting, meditative film that uses sci-fi to raise complex questions about humanity and existence.
Synopsis: A psychologist is sent to a space station orbiting a planet called Solaris to investigate the death of a doctor
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#4
Critics Consensus: One of the most influential of all sci-fi films -- and one of the most controversial -- Stanley Kubrick's 2001 is a delicate, poetic meditation on the ingenuity -- and folly -- of mankind.
Synopsis: An imposing black structure provides a connection between the past and the future in this enigmatic adaptation of a short
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#5
Critics Consensus: Oxygen gets the white-knuckle maximum out of its claustrophobic setting, with director Alexandre Aja and star Mélanie Laurent making this a must-watch thriller for sci-fi fans.
Synopsis: Oxygen is a French survival thriller directed by Alexandre Aja. The film tells the story of a young woman (Mélanie
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#6
Critics Consensus: The V/H/S series shows no signs of the tape wearing out with this terrifying entry, boasting an assortment of shorts that'll sate the appetite of horror and sci-fi aficionados alike.
Synopsis: Six bloodcurdling tapes unleash horror in a sci-fi-inspired hellscape, pushing the boundaries of fear and suspense.
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#7
Critics Consensus: Fueled by character development and setting instead of special effects, Prospect is a sci-fi story whose style is defined - and enriched -- by its limitations.
Synopsis: A man and his teenage daughter encounter nonstop danger while searching for valuable gems on an alien moon.
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#8
Critics Consensus: Effective space alien horror with a Soviet-era twist, Sputnik proves there are still some scary good sci-fi thrillers left in the galaxy.
Synopsis: Summoned to a secluded research facility, a controversial young doctor examines a cosmonaut who returned to Earth with an alien
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#9
Critics Consensus: High Life is as visually arresting as it is challenging, confounding, and ultimately rewarding - which is to say it's everything film fans expect from director Claire Denis.
Synopsis: Monte and his baby daughter are the last survivors of a damned and dangerous mission to the outer reaches of
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#10
Critics Consensus: Claustrophobic and stylish, Europa Report is a slow-burning thriller that puts the science back into science fiction.
Synopsis: When unmanned probes suggest that a hidden ocean and single-celled life exists on one of Jupiter's moons, six astronauts embark
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#11
Critics Consensus: Honoring its nightmarish predecessors while chestbursting at the seams with new frights of its own, Romulus injects some fresh acid blood into one of cinema's great horror franchises.
Synopsis: While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonizers come face to face
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#12
Critics Consensus: Danny Boyle continues his descent into mind-twisting sci-fi madness, taking us along for the ride. Sunshine fulfills the dual requisite necessary to become classic sci-fi: dazzling visuals with intelligent action.
Synopsis: In the not-too-distant future, Earth's dying sun spells the end for humanity. In a last-ditch effort to save the planet,
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#13
Critics Consensus: Ridley Scott's ambitious quasi-prequel to Alien may not answer all of its big questions, but it's redeemed by its haunting visual grandeur and compelling performances -- particularly Michael Fassbender as a fastidious android.
Synopsis: The discovery of a clue to mankind's origins on Earth leads a team of explorers to the darkest parts of
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#15
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: An astronaut (Barry Sullivan) and his partner (Norma Bengell) flee from walking-dead astronauts on a volcanic planet.
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#16
Critics Consensus: Dazzling, but a little dull, ANIARA's impeccable production design is undermined by its underwhelming philosophical pondering.
Synopsis: When a spacecraft carrying settlers to Mars strays off course, the consumption-obsessed passengers are prompted to consider their place in
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#17
Critics Consensus: Life is just thrilling, well-acted, and capably filmed enough to overcome an overall inability to add new wrinkles to the trapped-in-space genre.
Synopsis: Astronauts (Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, Ryan Reynolds) aboard the International Space Station are on the cutting edge of one of
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#18
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: A space ranger (Jesse Vint) lands at a research station where a flesh-eating mutant is loose.
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#19
Critics Consensus: Slow-moving, cerebral, and ambiguous, Solaris is not a movie for everyone, but it offers intriguing issues to ponder.
Synopsis: Based on the classic science fiction novel by Stanislaw Lem, "Solaris" centers on a psychologist (George Clooney) sent to investigate
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#20
Critics Consensus: Alien: Covenant delivers another satisfying round of close-quarters deep-space terror, even if it doesn't take the saga in any new directions.
Synopsis: Bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, members (Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup) of the colony
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#21
Critics Consensus: After a string of subpar sequels, this bloody, action-packed reboot takes the Predator franchise back to its testosterone-fueled roots.
Synopsis: Brought together on a mysterious planet, a mercenary (Adrien Brody) and a group of coldblooded killers now become the prey.
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#22
Critics Consensus: Despite an interesting premise (and a starmaking turn from Vin Diesel), Pitch Black is too derivative and formulaic to fully recommend to sci-fi or action fans.
Synopsis: When their ship crashes on an unexplored planet, the survivors of the crash soon discover that this planet that is
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#23
Critics Consensus: Brazenly strange and uneven in its execution, Lifeforce is an otherworldly sci-fi excursion punctuated with off-kilter horror flourishes.
Synopsis: When a space mission involving American and British astronauts encounters an alien craft, the humanoids within are brought aboard the
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#24
Critics Consensus: While Sigourney Weaver's feral performance as a resurrected Ripley restores some fun to the Alien franchise, the acid blood running through this fourth entry's veins corrodes whatever emotional investment audiences had left.
Synopsis: Two hundred years have passed since Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) died on Fiorina 161. Aboard the medical research vessel USM
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#25
Critics Consensus: Alien³ takes admirable risks with franchise mythology, but far too few pay off in a thinly scripted sequel whose stylish visuals aren't enough to enliven a lack of genuine thrills.
Synopsis: Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is the only survivor when she crash lands on Fiorina 161, a bleak wasteland inhabited by
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#26
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: Resurfacing on an alien planet, the Leprechaun (Warwick Davis) abducts a member of the world's royalty, Princess Zarina (Rebekah Carlton),
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#27
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: A group of UAC Marines responds to a distress call from a top-secret scientific base on Phobos, a Martian moon,
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#28
Critics Consensus: Despite a strong opening that promises sci-fi thrills, Event Horizon quickly devolves into an exercise of style over substance whose flashy effects and gratuitous gore fail to mask its overreliance on horror clichés.
Synopsis: A spaceship missing for seven years finally re-emerges and sends out a distress signal. But when a team is sent
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#29
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: Neurotic astronauts (Edward Albert, Erin Moran, Ray Walston) face a giant worm and other monsters on a distant planet.
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#30
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: A madman (Harvey Keitel) and his shiny robot chase a May-December couple (Farrah Fawcett, Kirk Douglas) doing food research on
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#31
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: Cmdr. Joe Hendricksson (Peter Weller) and new recruit Ace Jefferson (Andy Lauer) set out across the surface of Sirius 6B,
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#32
Critics Consensus: While it might prove somewhat satisfying for devout sci-fi fans, Pandorum's bloated, derivative plot ultimately leaves it drifting in space.
Synopsis: Astronauts Payton (Dennis Quaid) and Bower (Ben Foster) awake in a hypersleep chamber with no memory of who they are
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#33
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: An alien-thing stalks corporate rivals from U.S. and German spaceships on one of Saturn's moons.
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#34
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: Three generations of the same family deal with the consequences of unleashing the forces of hell. In 18th-century France, Paul
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#35
Critics Consensus: A boring, suspense-free Paranormal Activity rip-off that feels long even at just 90 minutes.
Synopsis: Apollo 17 was the last U.S.-sponsored lunar voyage -- or was it? Hours of found footage, classified for decades, point
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#36
Critics Consensus: John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars is not one of Carpenter's better movies, filled as it is with bad dialogue, bad acting, confusing flashbacks, and scenes that are more campy than scary.
Synopsis: Long inhabited by human settlers, the Red Planet has become the manifest destiny of an over-populated Earth. Nearly 640,000 people
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#37
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: Two space-station astronauts (Robert Horton, Richard Jaeckel) destroy an asteroid, then face monsters formed from viscous cells.
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#38
Critics Consensus: Brilliant casting is overshadowed by a muddled mix of genres and storylines that scratch more heads than sci-fi itches in The Cloverfield Paradox.
Synopsis: A crew aboard a space station finds itself alone after a scientific experiment causes the Earth to disappear. When a
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#39
Critics Consensus: The FPS sections are sure to please fans of the video game, but lacking in plot and originality to please other moviegoers.
Synopsis: A team of space marines known as the Rapid Response Tactical Squad, led by Sarge (Karl Urban), is sent to
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#40
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Synopsis: A group of U.S. Navy engineers, led by Capt. Laidlaw (Taurean Blacque), are building an underwater base when they inadvertently
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94%
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