20 Horror Films Where Humans Are The Real Monsters

13. Alien 3 (1992)

David Fincher’s Alien 3 is nobody’s favourite Alien movie, sitting uncomfortably up against its beloved, action-heavy predecessor Aliens (1986) and scaling everything back. Yet it offers one of the more tangible portrayals of its monsters, and the xenomorphs they seek to unleash.

Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) crash-lands on the foundry-cum-correctional facility Fiorina "Fury" 161, where she must fend off the male prisoners, reckon with the alien life growing inside her, and come face-to-face with the intentions of the megacorporation that sent her out into space to begin with. Because, while the xenomorphs are one of the ultimate movie monsters – literally spitting acid and destroying anyone or anything that gets in their way – there is always the sense in the Alien films that the people operating behind the scenes are the real evil.

Of all the entries in the franchise, we feel this most keenly in Alien 3, which winds the action down from Aliens and presents us, for the first real time, with a Weyland-Yutani willing to come out of the shadows and make their intentions clear. In the final act, Michael Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen) arrives with his team and boldly states that he wants the alien queen growing inside Ripley for use in the company’s bioweapons – all else be damned. And so, to prevent something much, much worse from happening, Ripley is forced to sacrifice herself.