15 Most Terrifying Sci-Fi Movie Scenes Ever

You can’t talk about James Cameron’s Aliens without mentioning this scene, the performances are brilliant, the red emergency lighting gives the scene extra tension and continuous beeping of the motion tracker just puts everyone edge.

The way the Xenomorphs are represented on the motion tracker also does a lot to increase the tension and fear, as there is no single tracking dot, they’re just shown as a massive swarm that some how is just getting closer and closer.

It really is the motion tracker that makes this scene so brilliantly terrifying as it’s the only sound in the room. There is no score just the constant “beep beep” of the machine that represents their impending doom. It heightens the sense of terror even more, when Hicks (Michael Biehn) goes to check the ceiling, as by this point the aliens are so close, and the machine is beeping so fast, that it seems to resemble Hicks’s (and the audiences) pounding heartbeat.

The eventual reveal though is what makes this scene both iconic and terrifying. The way the Xenomorphs move just creates this sense of effortless power, and the way the swarm through the vents, almost climbing over each other is just monstrous. Then, they start spilling through the roof and the red lighting causes them to just appear as these horrific black masses that just keep coming in a terrifyingly endless and inescapable wave.