11 Most Terrifying Sci-Fi Movie Monsters
6. Pod People - Invasion Of The Body Snatchers
What could be more terrifying than a mass-reproducing alien flora that sucks you down to a husk and spits out perfect doppelganger with all of your memories but none of your own emotions? Okay, that does sound a fair bit contrived, but if any of the four different Body Snatchers films are anything to go by, they're goddamn terrifying.
Originating in Jack Finney's 1955 pulp novel, the "pod people" as they've come to be known are an alien lifeform that start life as airborne plant spores that can survive in the harshest conditions of outer space, flying from planet to planet, whereupon they attach themselves to the nearest plantlife and quickly grow into pods that'll latch onto nearby lifeforms with tendrils, and produce perfect carbon copies while reducing the originals down to dust.
Beyond the body-horror of the half-formed, fetus-like gelatinous blobs growing inside of the pods and sucking the life out of their victims, the real terror of the pod people is the paranoia they create. They're not just clones of their victims, they absorb all of their memories and essentially become that person, only now with a single-minded drive to reproduce and replace all life on Earth with they're own kind.
Anyone could be a pod person - your family, your best friend, your cabbie, anyone. And since they operate on a hive mind, the moment one finds you out, they all find you out.