12 Scariest Sci-Fi Movies Of All Time

Who says sci-fi needs to be fun?

We all want the pants scared off ourselves sometimes, but it can’t always be by creepy old count Dracula when the more morally ambiguous man vs science fears of Frankenstein’s monster lay lurking around the dark corner (hubris, by the way, is what Frankenstein’s monster really was, rather than the hulking tragic bolt-neck bloke. Think about it).

Yes, it’s often up to sci-fi flicks to probe our deepest fears when conventional horror simply can’t reach into the darkest recesses of the mind and conceive of some unimaginable horrors. Sure, we wouldn’t want to come across Freddy Krueger either, but it’s hard to stay scared of a razor-fingered janitor when there’s the vast, impossible-to-comprehend emptiness of space out there, and poor Mr. Voorhees and his rusty machete seem a lot less threatening when we’re reminded of the endless horrific futures which mishandled technological advances could hold in store for us.

With that in mind, we’ve collected a list of the ten scariest sci fi films ever created for your (probably pretty uneasy) viewing pleasure, ranging from nightmarish deep space isolation to standard body-hopping alien monster shenanigans.

We’re starting this list with the inevitable prerequisites, the ones we couldn’t forget or leave off the countdown no matter how much we may want to go against the grain.

Everyone wants to uncover a new hidden gem, but there’s denying that Ridley Scott’s incredibly effective “haunted house in space” chiller is one of the finest sci-fi horrors ever created, and as much as dystopias and more realistic space disasters may get our pulses pounding and our adrenal glands pumping, there’s nothing quite like the bloody first appearance of the eponymous xenomorph to perfectly embody sci-fi’s potential for creating utterly inescapable terror.

This Sigourney Weaver vehicle was originally released to critical applause in 1979 with the now-iconic tagline “in space, no one can hear you scream”, and despite a steady stream of inconsistent sequels and a needlessly messy franchise mythos, the film itself is still as brutally bracing as that chilling one-liner was way back then.