It’s officially spooky season and what better way to scare yourself silly than to watch some of the best sci-fi horror movies? This blend of genres has the undeniable ability to frighten you with once-inconceivable scenarios. Sci-fi elements include fear of the unknown, the expanse of the universe and what dwells in the abyss, aliens, time travel, eerie transformations, and much more. Mix this with horror and all those elements become much darker and disturbing. It’s the perfect concoction that any witch’s cauldron would be wickedly glad to produce.
As well as the best sci-fi horror movies to watch this Halloween, we’ve got guides to the best sci-fi movies and TV shows to stream on Disney Plus, Netflix, Amazon Prime and Paramount Plus, so you can scratch your sci-fi fix all year round.
These 10 best sci-fi horror movies are the perfect watch over Halloween and, really, all year round. From dystopian nightmares to grotesque bedlam to pure spooky season icons, this list will provide something for any terror-seeking movie fan. So, settle in for the titles to add to your perfect spooky movie night watchlist. They’ll seriously give you… pumpkin to talk about.
‘A Quiet Place’
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- Release date: April 6, 2018
- Cast: Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Millicent Simmonds, and more
- Director: John Krasinski
- RT score: 96% critics, 83% audience
Can you imagine a world ravaged by aliens that hunt you down purely based on sound? A Quiet Place poses that exact scenario to its characters, who must live in complete silence to survive. Some of the most suspenseful parts of a horror movie is that moment of silence building up to a shock, yet this movie suspends itself in that feeling, with sound acting as the only warning of impending danger.
One of the scariest themes in sci-fi is the threat of another lifeform arriving on Earth with only terror in mind. And, the Death Angels of A Quiet Place do not come in peace. If you’re looking for a solid jumpscare, this movie provides that in abundance.
‘Slither’
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- Release date: March 31, 2006
- Cast: Nathan Fillion, Elizabeth Banks, Gregg Henry, and more
- Director: James Gunn
- RT score: 87% critics, 63% audience
James Gunn, of ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ fame, began his directorial career on this sci-fi horror and it’s truly astounding how skin-crawling perfect this is for Halloween. Even the movie poster makes us want to scream, run, pass out, or all of the above, in that order preferably.
An alien plague of parasites descends upon a small town transforming its residents into some truly terrifying monsters. If the movie’s phrase ‘slug it out’ isn’t sign enough of the creeping, crawling nightmares that are about to haunt you, there’s spewing green goo and gory transformations that’ll certainly do a good job at sealing the deal. Somehow, it’s a comedy too, because honestly if you don’t laugh, you’ll probably cry.
‘Annihilation’
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- Release date: February 23, 2018
- Cast: Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, and more
- Director: Alex Garland
- RT score: 88% critics, 67% audience
Loosely based on the novel of the same name by Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation heads into the Shimmer, a mysterious anomaly zone caused by a meteor, that resides in its own mysterious and terrifying point of space and time. A group of scientists, including Lena (Natalie Portman), head into the territory filled with mutant animals and plants to try and uncover what sinister phenomenon is lurking there. What they find there though, challenges them all.
Written and directed by ‘Ex Machina”s Alex Garland, Who is incredibly gifted at crafting movies riddled with sci-fi and horror that test both the mental and physical boundaries of humanity. Plus, his reach extends even further as he’s responsible for our next entry, too.
’28 Days Later’
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- Release date: November 1, 2002
- Cast: Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Christopher Eccleston, and more
- Director: Danny Boyle
- RT score: 87% critics, 85% audience
Iconic British director Danny Boyle, known for ‘Trainspotting’, ‘Sunshine’, and ‘127 Hours’, created the post-apocalyptic horror flick, 28 Days Later alongside Alex Garland in the midst of these iconic titles.
Jim (Cillian Murphy) awakens from a coma only to find out the UK has fallen to the mercy of an incurable “rage virus” that’s spreading fast. What’s worse than a zombie-infected person hunting you down? A zombie-infected person who is incredibly violent. As Jim stumbles around a vacant London, he comes across other survivors fighting to escape the virus, but it’s not only the infected that pose a threat. Inspired by the ‘Night of the Living Dead’ movies, it’s iconically fit for the spooky season and the epic soundtrack builds tension and fear among the best of us.
‘Nope’
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- Release date: July 22, 2022
- Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Brandon Perea, and more
- Director: Jordan Peele
- RT score: 83% critics, 69% audience
If you’re looking for an expert in horror, look no further than director Jordan Peele. An unusual career transition from comedy sketches, he brings sci-fi and horror, with hints of his comedic origins to films that thrill. Starting with ‘Get Out’, then ‘Us’ and only three years later, Nope. For Nope, he even blended in a Western theme.
OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald (Keke Palmer) are disturbed by an unidentified flying object. While the siblings are busy striving to figure out what’s really going on, others exploit its mystery and face the consequences. With so much on offer, it’s the way Peele instills fear in his viewers, letting it take deep roots, and then growing exponentially, that is truly terrifying. He has a penchant for the psychological, which has a special way of leaving you feeling truly disturbed. It’s the suggestion of horror here, not the overly gory or violent that’ll make you sit on the edge of your seat.
‘The Thing’
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- Release date: June 25, 1982
- Cast: Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley, Keith David, and more
- Director: John Carpenter
- RT score: 85% critics, 92% audience
Atop our best sci-fi movies of all time, The Thing will most definitely creep you out this spooky season. There’s something incredibly special about the sci-fi movies of the 80s and their raw special effects and cinematography, and this cult classic is a true depiction of horror at the time.
As a team of researchers carry out studies in Antarctica, they come across the ‘Thing’, a shape-shifting alien that can take human form, whenever it sees fit. The suspicion of who is really who begins to wreak havoc across the team, and that’s before the threat of the actual Thing becomes a real problem. It’s horror, for sure, but it’s also a superb piece of sci-fi history.
‘The Fly’
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- Release date: August 15, 1986
- Cast: Jeff Goldblum, Geena David, John Getz, and more
- Director: David Cronenberg
- RT score: 93% critics, 83% audience
While Jeff Goldblum’s version of The Fly is not the original – see our best 50s sci-fi movies for more on that one – there’s something iconic about Goldblum’s portrayal that feels incredibly Halloween-y.
As an eccentric scientist, Seth (Jeff Goldblum) endeavors to invent teleportation. But, when one of his experiments goes horribly wrong, he begins to suffer the consequences with a gory transformation. We’re not even sure what stage of human-fly hybrid scares us the most as it plays out over the movie… can we say, all of them? The horror of Goldblum’s transformation certainly outweighs the more realistic one seen in the original – 1958 thought more of a man with a big fly head, 1986 thought let’s scare them all.
‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’
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- Release date: December 22, 1978
- Cast: Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Leonard Nimoy, and more
- Director: Philip Kaufman
- RT score: 93% critics, 82% audience
For Invasion of the Body Snatchers, like The Fly, we’re also focusing on the remake, which features in our best 70s sci-fi movies list. This sci-fi horror sees Matthew, a health inspector, discover people being eerily replaced by aliens. Not just in looks though, but with personality and memories too. But, one thing is missing – emotion. It’s the quiet invasion that builds tension throughout this movie.
As the mysterious pods breed more and more problems for the city of San Francisco, it gets seriously out of control as the invisible enemy takes over. It’s a little more epic than the original, given it swaps locations from small town to big city. We know we’re hyping it up, but it really lives up to it.
‘Alien’
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- Release date: July 18, 1986
- Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Carrie Henn, and more
- Director: Ridley Scott
- RT score: 94% critics, 94% audience
Ridley Scott’s Alien is one of the most iconic pieces of sci-fi horror movie history and the beginning of a franchise that continues to thrive. As much as we really wish alien xenomorphs would stop terrorizing us, they just can’t get enough (and neither can we, if we’re honest). But, it’s the characters of the Nostromo spaceship that have the displeasure of worrying about them first as, in Alien, they take over with incredible violence.
While it’s ‘Aliens’, the second movie in the franchise, that tops our Alien movies ranked: worst to best guide, if you’re taking all the movies into consideration for this Halloween list, Alien was where it began. It’s true horror with twists, turns, and just one of the worst deadly aliens you’ll possibly ever come across. Plus, you can go on to watch the Alien movies in order afterwards.
‘Bride of Frankenstein’
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- Release date: April 20, 1935
- Cast: Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Valerie Hobson, and more
- Director: James Whale
- RT score: 98% critics, 87% audience
For true Halloween delight though, Bride of Frankenstein is top tier. While not considered to be the most horrifying in a straightforward sense, it is the most spooky. Frankenstein is a Halloween icon after all, from Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel to now. So, in this sequel to the original ‘Frankenstein’, the story expands on what is most popularly known. In this movie, the monster is here, but Baron Henry Frankenstein is lured back to create a bride.
“More fearful than the monster himself!” is the tagline, and given that Frankenstein’s monster is supposed to be the epitome of the horror genre, it’s worth enjoying and appreciating this integral piece of spooky season.
