12 Scariest Sci-Fi Movies Of All Time
1. Altered States
Ken Russell.
Anyone familiar with the controversial British director’s work, from the demented Who musical Tommy to the somehow still-semi-banned in Britain religious horror The Devils, will understand why those two words alone explain this flick’s place as the scariest sci fi film ever created.
For anyone unfamiliar, one, here’s your last opportunity to stay that way and hold onto your sanity, and two, the director is best known for combining relatively straightforward plots with boundary-pushing depictions of taboo imagery, often leaving his most provocative and shocking elements of his films unexplained.
This is the case with Altered States, a 1980 effort which follows a misguided doctor as he experiments with opening his mind and instead pushes too far, mutating both his mind and body back to primordial ooze—but not before enduring psychedelic nightmare trips which are some of cinema’s most disturbing sequences, and leaving the audience truly shook by the inexplicable horrors he witnesses.
Told you.