10 Sci-Fi Movies Too Scary To Finish

Hellish alternate dimensions, hellish future realities, and... The rich eating us alive?

Event Horizon
Paramount Pictures

Not every sci-fi flick can be as uplifting as Tomorrowland or Star Wars, and sometimes you just want a vision of space, the vast and endless universe, extra-terrestrial contact, and humanity’s future which scares the ever-loving f*** out of you.

There’s nothing quite like a slice of horrifying sci fi to jolt us out of complacency and leave us shook, unable to get questions of technological overreach, mankind’s ever-uncertain future, and the absolute emptiness of space out of our heads once the credits roll.

You know, all those cheery themes that we love to leave bouncing around in our minds after a trip to the multiplex. But none at all sci-fi horrors are so easy to complete, with a select few entries into the genre forcing even seasoned horror fans to tap out long before their denouements.

It may be rare to see a battle-hardened horror veteran willing to give up on a gory or psychologically scarring sci-fi, but with directors like Paul Verhoeven, David Cronenberg, and Stuart Gordon blurring the line between intense hardcore horror and sci-fi imaginings, sometimes even the hardiest watcher is left with no option but to hit the pause button and try recovering from the cinematic onslaught they’ve made it through.

With that in mind, here are ten sci-fi films so scary, you might not even make it to the end of them.

10. The Void

Event Horizon
D Films

Produced in 2016, The Void manages the same feat as Harbinger Down pulled off a year earlier, providing a mid 2010’s tribute to the practical effects heavy sci-fi horrors of the eighties via some impressive make up and creature effects which lend the gritty affair a gross sliminess that CGI can’t hope to recreate.

The plot, such as it is, follows a pack of unfortunates caught in an abandoned hospital between the proverbial rock of some demented death cultists and the hard place of an undead deity-man and his disgusting once-humanoid creatures, conjured from whatever Lovecraftian dimension spewed out the monsters from comparable splatter spectaculars From Beyond and Re-Animator.

Unlike its campy eighties predecessors, however, The Void is surprisingly serious in tone, meaning there’s little comic relief from the shocking gore and gasp-inducing mutations on display throughout its runtime. Add in a bleak, cosmically trippy ending, and you’ve got a reliable recipe for audiences tapping out before this gross-out odyssey reaches it ending.

Contributor

Cathal Gunning hasn't written a bio just yet, but if they had... it would appear here.