10 Sci-Fi Movies Too Scary To Finish
6. The Thing
Some sci-fi is disgusting in its gruesome but inventive transformative treatment of human bodies, whereas other terrifying contributions to the genre rely on psychological tension and unease rather than gore for their scares.
However, John Carpenter’s 1982 classic is notable for combining both an intense atmosphere of foreboding wherein no character can be trusted and nothing is certain with extraordinarily gruesome special effects and some of the most jaw-dropping gore ever to grace the cinema screen.
It’s a potent combination, and a bit of a shame that this icy chiller was unleashed on audiences the same year as Steven Spielberg’s far more friendly extra-terrestrial.
Viewers in 1982 may have missed out on the slowly growing tension and terror as a group of taciturn Arctic researchers gradually turn on each other once they realise a horrific alien parasite is hidden in their midst, but there’s no reason you shouldn’t get a chance to get through this spine-chilling cinematic ordeal—provided you can stomach the sight of a dead man’s severed head sprouting slimy spider legs and running amok, that is.