The robots, alien invaders, and technological mishaps of science fiction movies can be scary, but the genre is generally not intended to frighten. On the other hand, by relying on too much repulsive gore and cheap jump scares, horror films often fail to provide a thought-provoking message. However, some movies perfectly blend sci-fi and horror and successfully petrify the audience.
Creating a truly terrifying sci-fi horror film takes skill. Whether they feature otherworldly beings or creepy creatures, a sci-fi horror movie must be believable enough for audiences to get scared. The scariest sci-fi horror movies put audiences on the edges of their seats with a sense of impending doom and never leave them feeling safe for a moment.
10 A Quiet Place Is Set In A Terrifying World
It's bad enough when a race of alien invaders have wiped out most of humanity, but it's even worse when the monsters have an acute sense of hearing. As a result, the few survivors can't make a peep. This is the premise for Netflix's A Quiet Place, and it makes for an incredibly tense and terrifying film.
The Abbott family has survived the alien apocalypse on their rural farm by going to extreme lengths to limit their noise level. No living creature can be completely silent, so the threat of triggering an alien attack is ever-present. This constant worry never gives the audience a moment of rest.
9 The Rage Zombies Are Unstoppable In 28 Days Later
In 28 Days Later, scientists developed a "rage" virus and injected chimpanzees with it. Animal liberation activists then decided to break into the lab and release the infected apes, which triggered a pandemic. By the time of the movie, most humans are infected with the virus and have become rabid zombies.
Unlike traditional zombies, these brain-eaters are fast, strong, and unpredictable. As hard as they are to stop, it's even harder to avoid being turned. If one drop of their blood gets on a survivor, the human will turn into a zombie in matter of minutes. The fear level in 28 Days Later never drops as the heroes are up against a seemingly unbeatable and terrifying enemy.
8 The Hunters Become The Prey In Predator
Predator seems like a run-of-the-mill action flick, but it quickly becomes a tense and terrifying film. A group of commandos, who are used to being at the top of the food chain, are targeted by a creature with technologically advanced weapons. Suddenly, the muscular soldiers are little more than prey for an extraterrestrial hunter.
With a cloaking device and cunning, the Predator picks off the soldiers one by one, driving up the terror with each trophy kill. These highly-trained humans, who have the most lethal weapons available, are powerless against the alien apex predator. This sense of helplessness fills the audience with dread.
7 M3GAN Creeps Through The Uncanny Valley
The only thing more unsettling than killer clowns are killer dolls. While most killer doll movies will focus on a doll that's possessed by an evil spirit, M3GAN feature's a life-sized humanoid robot who's enabled with artificial intelligence. The technology powering the Model 3 Generative Android goes awry, which sends the doll on a killing spree.
What makes M3GAN so scary isn't that it features a killer doll, but rather that M3GAN closely resembles a human girl, just not enough. Traversing the uncanny valley, the doll is creepy and unnerving to look at. Adding to the terror, M3GAN's AI allows her to learn how to become a more efficient killer.
6 Scanners' Darryl Is Haunting
An exploding head was certainly a shock in 1981, but Scanners is so much more than that. The story follows an experimental drug that's administered to pregnant women. However, the drug creates super-powered individuals who suddenly possess terrifying psychic abilities.
Scanners' antagonist Darryl Revok provides the real horror of the film. He's a powerful scanner with absolutely no empathy. With the limitless ability to cause harm and no moral barriers, Revok is one of the most frightening movie villains ever. No one in the film is ever safe from him, so the audience is constantly unnerved.
5 There Is Terror In The Mist
The Mist is one of the many terrifying Stephen King adaptions. When a mist from the local military base envelops a small town, it appears to unleash terrifying creatures from another dimension, ranging from deadly spider-like beings to enormous monolithic beasts.
A group of survivors holes up in a grocery store and try their best to keep the creatures out, which creates a desperate and claustrophobic situation. The tension rises as the survivors turn on each other, but it's the unknown horror in the mist that makes the film so spine-chilling. The Mist also has an incredibly dark and shocking ending.
4 The Haunted Spaceship In Event Horizon Is Terrifying
The terror in Event Horizon doesn't come from hideous alien creatures or killer cyborgs, but rather from an unseen evil entity. A crew of astronauts is sent to rescue a missing ship, but they find out that it went to another dimension and brought hell back with it. The force that haunts the ship quickly begins to affect the crew.
The malevolent energy exploits the crew members' fears and regrets, which eventually drives them to murder. The story plays out like The Shining in space, but with a higher level of carnage. Although Event Horizon was initially a flop, the movie has since attracted a cult following for its timeless scares.
3 The Terminator Is A Cybernetic Michael Meyers
Most films in The Terminator franchise are action movies, but the first was a horror film about an unrelenting killer. The T-800 was a cybernetic organism with living tissue over a metal endoskeleton who was sent from the future to kill Sarah Conner. Fans knew that the machine felt no empathy, remorse, or fear. It was just a relentless killer.
The T-800 is every bit as terrifying as Micheal Myers lurking in the shadows or Jason Voorhees crashing through a window with a machete, especially because The Terminator can't be stopped with conventional weapons and just keeps coming. Sarah Conner's fear is real, and the audience is sucked into her panic.
2 The Thing Could Be Inside Anyone
John Carpenter's The Thing took sci-fi horror to a new level with ground-breaking effects and a chilling concept. In the film, a parasitic alien organism that mimics life forms has infiltrated an Antarctic research facility. The isolated location adds to the tension, but the unknown nature of the alien is what drives the audience's fear.
The Thing focused on the organism's potential to spread and cause death. The characters didn't know who had it or when it would manifest itself. While the not knowing aspect was scary, when The Thing revealed itself in bloody mutations, it was downright horrifying.
1 Alien Is Bursting With Terror
The first Alien movie didn't invent sci-fi horror, but it is one of the most iconic films of the genre, largely because it blended the two genres exceptionally well. After an alien xenomorph bursts out of Kane's chest, there isn't a moment in the film that isn't tense.
Every shadow, every noise, and every movement adds to fans' rising fear as the Alien stalks the spaceship crew. Ridley Scott's camera work helps drive the fright by not showing which direction the alien attack is coming from. However, Alien wouldn't be as terrifying if it weren't for artist H.R. Giger's biomechanical alien xenomorph design, which is one of the scariest creatures ever seen in film.