10 Alien Invasion Movies Where Humanity Loses

Matt Reeves’ found footage monster horror Cloverfield took the world by storm in the late noughties, basing its marketing campaign around the iconic poster image of a headless Statue of Liberty, and an accompanying trailer showing the head itself landing in a Manhattan street.

While the film does its best to obscure its antagonist, giving us tactful glimpses of something towering over NYC, there is no mistaking its alien nature and destructive tendencies. Nicknamed Clover, the attacking kaiju and its accompanying parasites tear apart the city and lay waste to its human occupants, leading the military response with one improbable option: carpet bomb the city, sacrificing the citizens below en masse, in order to eradicate the threat.

But it only appears to work. Clover is still alive and kicking at the end, as evidenced by end-credit audio that says “help us”, with the hidden, backtracked message “it’s still alive” (heard when played backwards). And the film’s sequels tell us that between now and then the monster, and others like it, succeed in taking Earth and sending humanity underground.