The 45 Best Sci-fi Horror Movies to Watch in Time for Halloween (2024)

Paramount Pictures

Published Sep 8, 2022

Lately, we’ve been feeling something strange in the air: moonbeams transmitting faraway messages, AI getting too smart, and the weather getting a little too weird. Lately, the whole world’s been a bit dystopian—and more frightening than even the strangest sci-fi horror movies could have foreseen.

In celebration of the filmmakers who sent warnings from the past about the frights of the future, we’re counting down our favorite sci-fi horror movies. But what exactly counts as sci-fi/horror? There’s been debate about this ever since the birth of both genres, with some scholars even arguing that all horror is sci-fi. We’re not getting too bogged down in the details (are zombie movies technically sci-fi?), so instead, we picked a wide selection of sci-fi horror movies ranging from post-apocalyptic nightmares to outer space terrors (in no specific order).

In this anime adaptation of the classic sci-fi horror manga of the same name by Junji Ito, sharks suddenly sprout hideous legs and rise from the sea, attacking humans and destroying cities. Ito’s grotesque art sometimes borders on the comedic but more often is absolutely nauseating. Things get even stranger when rotting corpses also start becoming mobile, hinting at a vast conspiracy beyond human comprehension.

Who's in It: Mirai Kataoka, Takuma Nigishi, Ami Taniguchi

Rating: N/A (Rotten Tomatoes)

Brian Cronenberg, son of the legendary filmmaker of sci-fi horror movies, David Cronenberg, continues in his father’s footsteps in this deeply surreal story about a secret agency that can hack human bodies in order to spy on others. Possessor is a strange espionage film that hints at the fragility of identity in a post-modern world.

Who's in It: Andrea Riseborough, Christopher Abbott, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tuppence Middleton

Rating: 94%

In another film by the Cronenberg scion, Antiviral imagines a cocaine-capitalist future in which the celebrity-obsessed begin buying up the illnesses of their favorite stars. Want Kim Kardashian’s flu or John Travolta’s common cold? You can get it—for a price. But when an employee at a high-powered disease dealer tries to steal some secret virology, things start to go terribly wrong.

Who's in It: Caleb Landry Jones, Sarah Gadon, Douglas Smith, Malcolm McDowell

Rating: 66%

A group of strangers awake in an empty room and are forced to solve a series of reality-defying tests and trials—or face their deaths. How did they get there, who put them there, and what is the meaning of this experiment? Cube is a puzzle box of a movie that also serves as a Kafkaesque meditation on the banality of existence. The first film spawned several inferior spinoffs that are only worth watching if you need to unravel this sci-fi mystery.

Who's in It: David Hewlett, Nicole de Boer, Nicky Guadagni, Maurice Dean Wint

Rating: 64%

Often considered one of the greatest sci-fi horror movies of all time, Ridley Scott’s Alien follows a Final Girl formula—but with an outer space twist. Sigourney Weaver is beyond iconic as Ellen Ripley, and the psychosexual, biomechanical designs of H.R. Giger’s xenomorph remain frightening many decades later. Pretty much every movie in the Alien franchise is excellent (even Alien Vs. Predator is a campy treat) but there’s no matching the original film’s terrifying emotional power.

Who's in It: Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt

Rating: 98%

Danny Boyle’s starkly anti-humanist take on the zombie movie sub-genre remains an artistic achievement amidst a genre that’s become rather stale. The cinematography of this rancid post-apocalypse is oddly realistic yet disturbingly beautiful—and the violence that unfolds is satisfyingly savage.

Who's in It: Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Brendan Gleeson

Rating: 87%

Sci-fi horror movies are often thought to have jumped the shark when a villainous killer suddenly finds himself in space—but Jason X is a weirdly silly pleasure, despite its premise. Preserved for his supernaturally regenerative power, terrestrial murderer Jason Vorhees is now being studied by scientists several centuries in the future—until, of course, his murder spree begins, once again!

Who's in It: Kane Hodder, David Cronenberg, Lisa Rider, Lexa Doig

Rating: 19%

Based on the novel of the same name by writer Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation is an artistically and intellectually complex movie about a sudden distortion in reality potentially caused by an alien presence. Natalie Portman and Jennifer Jason Leigh are oddly apathetic researchers who are drawn into “The Shimmer”—where they discover a plethora of strange phenomena that forces them to question their sanity. The movie has an idiosyncratic sense of revolting beauty, and its dreamy climax will certainly leave audiences with more questions than answers.

Who's in It: Natalie Portman, Oscar Isaac, Gina Rodriguez, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson

Rating: 88%

John Carpenter uses a classic, Lovecraftian set-up for this stomach-churning story about an icy research facility invaded by an unknown, malicious presence. Although the movie is almost 4 decades old, the special effects remain vomit-inducing, making a strong argument for why CGI is limited in its ability to convey true terror.

Who's in It: Kurt Russell, Keith David, Wilford Brimley, David Clennon

Rating: 83%

Give yourself over to absolute pleasure! Rocky Horror is a musical pastiche of horror movies and sci-fi tropes delivered with a hedonistic queer sensibility. When newlyweds Brad and Janet become stranded due to a storm, they encounter a strange castle filled with eccentric party-goers. The night devolves into sexual madness, as the pair are seduced by cross-dressing space aliens! Rocky Horror is a queer classic, with weekly midnight screenings serving as a safe space for newly-out LGBT kids since 1975.

Who's in It: Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, Richard O'Brien, David Bostwick, Meat Loaf

Rating: 78%

The bizarre charm of Jeff Goldbloom is undeniable, but watching the smooth-talking actor’s body disintegrate in the wake of a science experiment gone wrong remains a sickening endeavor. Once again, the elder Cronenberg’s knack for knowing how to nauseate is on full display—and The Fly’s special effects remain unparalleled to this day.

Who's in It: Jeff Goldblum, David Cronenberg, Geena Davis, Vincent Price

Rating: 93%

Cronenberg once again lands on our list with the deeply Freudian film Videodrome. When a small-town TV producer discovers a secret channel that depicts uncensored sexual torture, his reality begins to unwind into a nightmarish fever dream. Slowly, his body begins transforming to reflect the technological hell he’s wandered into. Filled with sad*stic angst and unsettling psychodrama, Videodrome is perhaps one of the most bizarre sci-fi horror movies ever made.

Who's in It: James Woods, Debbie Harry, Sonja Smits

Rating: 79%

Panos Cosmatos more recently became a cult auteur thanks to his zany film Mandy, which starred Nicholas Cage on a demonic rampage for revenge. His previous film, Beyond The Black Rainbow, is far more subdued and far more disturbing. In it, psychic experiments are being conducted on a mysterious woman. When she awakens to her telekinetic powers, she begins (accidentally?) destroying the researchers around her, while discovering the lab where she’s been held captive’s darkest secrets.

Who's in It: Michael Rogers, Scott Hylands, Eva Bourne

Rating: 61%

Joe Rogan’s obsession with bizarre entities he discovered while on DMT became a subversive meme, but this low-budget horror movie takes the threat of interdimensional drug-beings much more seriously. The opening scenes of this film are extremely creepy, although as the protagonist discovers more about the fragile nature of reality, the film descends into some truly campy shenanigans.

Who's in It: Ted Levine, Katia Winter, Michael McMillian

Rating: 74%

Although Jennifer Lopez and Vince Vaughn play the protagonists of this colorful and whimsical horror movie, the real star is the late costume designer Eiko Ishioka, whose powerful couture transforms this movie from a standard serial killer melodrama into high art. Lopez plays a psychotherapist using experimental technology to travel into the mind of a serial killer, hoping to save his final victim. But inside the murderer’s brain, she finds a tortured, sick world of fetishes and fantasies that leave her shaken to her core.

Who's in It: Jennifer Lopez, Vince Vaughn, Mariane Jean-Baptiste, Vincent D'Onofrio

Rating: 45%

A group of Japanese schoolchildren finds themselves mysteriously transported into another dimension with no idea of how to return home. Director Nobuhiko Obayashi, better known for the cult horror classic Hausu, uses gorgeous hand-painted backgrounds and endearingly low-budget special effects to create a technicolored parallel universe that is both touchingly beautiful and extremely off-putting.

Who's in It: Yasufumi Hayashi, Aiko Asano, Vajra Barzaghi

Rating: N/A

Alien parasites crash-land into rural America and begin infesting local farms, causing some truly vile mutations in the population. Presented with darkly humorous wit, the special effects in Slither are gross-out comedy at its most refined and vile. The movie was a box-office failure when it was released in 2006, but has since become a horror fan favorite.

Who's in It: Elizabeth Banks, Michael Rooker, Jenna Fischer, Nathan Fillion

Rating: 87%

A staple of the biggest 90s sci-fi horror movies, The Faculty features a star-studded cast of teen heartthrobs—and a very funny cameo from Jon Stewart. A perfect distillation of late-90s tropes and aesthetics, The Faculty is as much a perfect time-capsule of teenage nostalgia as it is an alien-invasion horror movie. It’s predictable, it’s corny, it’s sometimes lightly erotic—but it’s always entertaining.

Who's in It: Elijah Wood, Josh Hartnett, Clea DuVall, Jordana Brewster

Rating: 55%

Camp is in its most pure form when it is entirely accidental, and Plan 9 is a perfect example: even though director Ed Wood failed exuberantly in creating a coherent sci-fi movie, the stunning beauty and tragic loveliness of his totally bonkers space adventure have garnered this film a reputation as both the worst and the best movie ever made. Malia Nurmi (better known as Vampira) is a vision of gothic beauty in her few moments of screen time as an undead alien seductress. The movie’s hideously cheap sets and poorly made costumes are an inherent part of the film’s enduring charm.

Who's in It: Bela Lugosi, Maila Nurmi, Gregory Walcott

Rating: 66%

What can be said about Gremlins 2 that isn’t perfectly captured by this iconic Key and Peele sketch? Bearing almost no resemblance to the first Gremlins film, this over-the-top sequel is a cartoony send-up of 1980s consumer culture. Set in a dystopian mega-mall in which the eponymous furry creatures have run wild, Gremlins 2 is an eccentric horror comedy that—yes, it’s really in the movie—features both a 4th wall breaking cameo from Hulk Hogan and an uncomfortably sexy female gremlin.

Who's in It: Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Charles S. Haas, Christopher Lee

Rating: 71%

Existential metaphors be damned, Elsa Lanchester’s quirky beauty as the classic monster’s ill-fated bride is perhaps the most iconic role in horror history. With gorgeously agoraphobic, gothic set design and haunting acting from a cast of Old Hollywood legends, Bride is a thoughtful meditation on gender relations, dreams, and humankind’s unending hubris.

Who's in It: Boris Karloff, Elsa Lanchester, Colin Clive, Valerie Hobson

Rating: 98%

A film adaptation of a bleakly nihilistic epic poem, Aniara tells the story of a space station floating endlessly through the void. The horror here is mostly cosmic, as the frailty and meaninglessness of human existence are juxtaposed against the vastness of space itself. We won’t spoil the ending, but the film’s conclusion is beyond dark—conveying a true sense of hopelessness amidst an uncaring universe.

Who's in It: Emelie Garbers, Arvin Kananian, Bianca Cruzeiro

Rating: 71%

Joss Whedon’s deconstructive horror movie starts with a stereotypical premise—young adults in a cursed cabin—but turns into a more cerebral movie as it enters its second act. It's ultimately revealed that the monsters chasing the nubile youths were actually unleashed by a shadowy government organization, and the fate of the planet depends on their unfortunate deaths. Both sardonically funny and smartly self-referential, Cabin is really about why people find the sadism of sci-fi horror movies so satisfying.

Who's in It: Chris Hemsworth, Kristen Connolly, Fran Kranz, Anna Hutchison, Jesse Williams, Sigourney Weaver, Richard Jenkins

Rating: 92%

Fans of non-narrative cinema have likely already discovered the perverse pleasures of Tetsuo. This 1989 experimental, Japanese film depicts the body of a man morphing into a cyberpunk monster—as he fuses with the technology around him, he engages in techno-sexual atrocities.

Who's in It: Tomorô Taguchi, Kei, Fujiwara, Nobu Kanaoka

Rating: 81%

Jordan Peele’s directorial debut established him as a prescient voice in horror cinema, subverting typical horror tropes in order to make an incisive and sometimes acerbic statement about racial resentment in America. The movie spawned countless copycats, but Peele’s talent for creating meaningful metaphors is unmatched. In Get Out, protagonist Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) visits the seemingly liberal family of his white girlfriend, where he uncovers the wealthy suburbanites' dark secrets.

Who's in It: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, LaKeith Stanfield, Catherine Keener, Caleb Landry Jones, Bradley Whitford

Rating: 98%

Starring a young John Boyega, Attack The Block is a rare sci-fi adventure with predominantly Black leads. Teenage urbanites defend their hood from an invasion of amorphous aliens—perhaps a metaphor for the adversity these kids often face in reality.

Who's in It: John Boyega, Alex Esmail, Simon Howard, Leeon Jones, Franz Drameh, Jodie Whittaker, Nick Frost

Rating: 90%

Paul W.S. Anderson is best known for his absurdly goofy film adaptations of video games. Event Horizon certainly has a similar nutty charm, but some actual scares too: in it, a rogue science experiment opens a rift in space-time, letting in monsters and horrors from another reality. What unfolds is a grotesque phantasmagoria.

Who's in It: Sam Neill, Laurence Fishburne, Joely Richardson, Kathleen Quinlan

Rating: 29%

Liquid Sky’s neon, punk aesthetic became the basis for the entire electroclash subculture in the early aughts—the movie perfectly captured an ephemeral queer subculture shortly before that world was totally decimated by the AIDS crisis. In Slava Tsukerman’s masterpiece, invisible aliens invade New York City’s grungiest nightclubs, feeding off the energy created by org*sms and heroin highs. Liquid Sky’s lushly romantic costume design is juxtaposed against a backdrop of queer cynicism.

Who's in It: Anne Carlisle, Paula Sheppard, Susan Doukas

Rating: 96%

Michael Crichton’s novel of the same name was adapted by director Barry Levinson in this 1998 psychological terror. Scientists investigating a sunken spaceship accidentally discover a mysterious entity with god-like powers: but have they awakened a malicious deity, or are they all trapped inside a terrible dream? Existential horror collides with deep-sea paranoia in this star-studded, Lovecraftian thriller.

Who's in It: Sharon Stone, Samuel L. Jackson, Liev Schriber, Dustin Hoffman

Rating: 11%

Tim Burton’s love letter to 1950’s space adventures is a demented and hyper-stylized ode to classic sci-fi cinema. Burton’s idiosyncratic object styling is obvious throughout (lots of spirals, stripes, and swirls to be found all over)—and comical over-acting from the movie’s insane cast makes this a mirthful misadventure. Although obviously adolescent in its aspirations and humor, the eccentric special effects and ludicrous plotting have cemented this movie as a cult classic.

Who's in It: Jack Nicholson, Pierce Brosnan, Annette Bening, Glenn Close, Danny DeVito, Jack Black, Natalie Portman

Rating: 55%

A smart, contemporary twist on the zombie sub-genre, Girl With All The Gifts depicts the collapse of society in the wake of a fungal outbreak that causes people to become cannibalistic killing machines. When a young girl develops a new strain of the infection, her life must be preserved at all costs—but does she think humanity is worth saving? The casting of Sennia Nanua as the film’s protagonist was hailed as a victory for representation in the genre.

Who's in It: Sennia Nanua, Glenn Close, Gemma Arterton

Rating: 85%

Whatever happened to erotic thrillers? These days, sci-fi doesn’t have very much sex appeal, but back in 1995, the salacious sci-fi movie Species depicted a very specific male fantasy. In it, scientists attempt to hunt down an alien-human hybrid before she finds a mate: but too many men are likely to succumb to her lascivious charms. It’s not exactly high-brow stuff here, but there’s an undeniable charm to this kind of low-brow trash.

Who's in It: Natasha Henstridge, Alfred Molina, Ben Kingsley

Rating: 43%

A prototypical film for the entire subgenre of sci-fi horror movies, Invasion is a paranoid thriller about humans slowly being replaced by malicious, emotionless doppelgangers. Shot in the style of a film noir, the movie’s mysterious premise plays out with a kind of understated schizophrenic terror.

Who's in It: Dana Wynter, Kevin McCarthy, Carolyn Jones, King Donovan

Rating: 98%

Scarlett Johansson stars as a seductive alien siren in this experimental movie that relies on abstract sequences to tell a sci-fi story. Filmed using hidden cameras and untrained actors, there’s a layer of uncanny, unreality to the movie that elevates the seemingly lurid premise into something much more avant-garde.

Who's in It: Scarlett Johansson, Lynsey Taylor McKay, Adam Pearson

Rating: 84%

In this sci-fi horror thriller, Kristen Stewart portrays Norah Price, an engineer working at the bottom of the ocean on a massive drilling facility as an engineer. When an earthquake occurs and destroys the rig, she and her team have to find a way out, though unknown creatures stalk them in the surrounding water as they try to escape.

Who's in It: Kristen Stewart, Vincent Cassel, Jessica Henwick, Mamoudou Athie

Rating: 47%

When this film first dropped with little notice on Netflix in 2018, it became an instant hit, a perfect blend of psychological thriller, horror, and sci-fi. Sandra Bullock stars as Malorie Hayes, a woman who now has to navigate a world while wearing a blindfold, all in an effort to block herself from looking at mysterious entities that cause the onlooker to die. While it's a relatively recent film, it's already solidified itself amongst other classic sci-fi horror movies.

Who's in It: Sandra Bullock, Trevante Rhodes, John Malkovich, BD Wong

Rating: 64%

A remake of the 1953 original movie, War of the Worlds follows the same classic premise: a horde of aliens finally decide to invade the U.S. We track Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) and his children, Robbie (Justin Chatwin) and Rachel (Dakota Fanning), as they attempt to survive the invasion. A perfect balance of sci-fi and horror, the film manages to paint a terrifying portrait of the aliens and their technological advancements while contrasting it with the lack of preparedness and resources of the humans of Earth.

Who's in It: Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, Justin Chatwin, Tim Robbins

Rating: 75%

In the first installment in what would become a major film franchise, Predator stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as Dutch, the leader of a military rescue squad. He and his group being hunted down by the Predator, an alien-like creature. Though they had been on a mission to save a group of people being held against their will in a rainforest, their new mission of evading the Predator proves to be even more difficult.

Who's in It: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Kevin Peter Hall, Bill Duke, Shane Black

Rating: 80%

More than being one of the classic sci-fi horror movies, Crimes of the Future is heavily a body-horror film, really doubling down on that theme. The movie explores biotechnology and how far the scope of it can be integrated into a human being, which we see in the performance-artist couple of Saul Tenser (Mortenson) and Caprice (Léa Seydoux), who remove human organs with an audience present.

Who's in It: Kristen Stewart, Léa Seydoux, Viggo Mortenson, Nadia Litz, Scott Speedman, Tanaya Beatty

Rating: 79%

Recently released on July 22, 2022, Nope is another Jordan Peele film that teeters from sci-fi and horror to a classic psychological thriller. Two siblings co-own a ranch together with an interesting history, but when weird things start to go down in their mostly-remote town, they attempt to investigate what's happening; you know, like horses being blown around in mid-air, UFOs stopping by the area, and people being lifted into the sky.

Who's in It: Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun, Barbie Ferreira, Brandon Perea

Rating: 83%

The newest addition to the Predator franchise, Prey, is a Hulu original that's set in 1719, long before the events that took place in the prior four Predator films. Amber Midthunder portrays Naru of the Comanche tribe, a warrior who hunts throughout the Northern Great Plains and later comes face to face with the Predator. The creature preys on the people of her town as well as their resources, which forces Naru to step up and defend her people and home.

Who's in It: Amber Midthunder, Dakota Beavers, Michelle Thrush, Stormee Kipp, Dane DiLiegro, Bennett Taylor, Julian Black Antelope

Rating: 93%

Sigourney Weaver is back as Ellen Ripley in this first sequel to the original 1979 film, Alien, where she finds herself back in space and on her way to finally put an end to the alien creature that she first encountered years ago. While many sequels don't live up to the standards of the films that came prior, Aliens makes the case that sequels can almost be better than the original.

Who's in It: Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen, Carrie Henn, Paul Reiser

Rating: 98%

Written and directed by Jordan Peele, Us stars Lupita Nyong'o as Adelaide Wilson, who—while on vacation with her family—is met with a cloned version of both herself and the other members of her family who proceeds to terrorize them at the house they're staying at. Are the clones a figment of the family's imagination, or are they actually genetic clones created by a higher organization?

Who's in It: Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker

Rating: 93%

A Netflix original Spanish horror film, The Platform gives us an interesting set-up: a vertical jail is constructed with a moving platform that climbs down through the cells holding a massive amount of food. However, the food is only filled up at the top cell, meaning that the people further below on the cell ladder might not get enough food, leading to starvation and death. Because of this, each inmate pair has to figure out how much food they're going to ration, toeing the line between selfishness and selflessness.

Who's in It: Iván Massagué, Antonia San Juan, Emilio Buale co*ka, Zorion Eguileor, Alexandra Masangkay

Rating: 79%

A Quiet Place stars the real-life couple of Emily Blunt and John Krasinski as Evelyn and Lee Abbott, two parents who attempt to survive in a world with extremely terrifying monsters who hunt by sound. Because of that, the family is forced to be extremely quiet at all times in order to stay alive. As the film received high praise, it spawned a sequel, A Quiet Place Part II, which aired in 2021.

Who's in It: Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe, Cade Woodward

Rating: 96%