15 of the most interesting female monsters in fiction

5. The alien

For the majority of this list, the monsters in questions are unwilling. They don’t want to go about eating other people or wreaking havoc. They simply want to live their lives, whether those lives center around practicing their witchcraft or a free exchange between the undersea and land worlds. Even the Blair Witch probably wanted to be left alone. Wouldn’t you be annoyed if a bunch of teenagers kept stomping around in your part of the woods and shouting?

Then again, there are a few monsters that are helplessly monstrous. They might be totally foreign to our world and not care one whit about our strange “morals.” Even the best efforts of humans to impose their worldview on the monster in question isn’t enough to stop the eventual destruction.

It may not entirely fair to label Sil, from Species, as a “monster.” She’s a half-human, half-alien hybrid created, bafflingly enough, by the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) project. Guess they hit some sort of government funding windfall that let them secure huge lab space and a staff of geneticists.

Sil is created by those curious scientists and raised in that lab. At first, she seems manageable enough. However, she starts to become more violent. The frightened scientists decide to euthanize her. Sil escapes and, with her reproductive drive in full force, goes about finding a mate in Los Angeles. Scientists follow in pursuit, fearing that her offspring might take over the planet and eliminate the human race.

Sil’s alien form was designed by H.R. Giger, who also designed the xenomorphs in the Alien franchise. If you’re at all familiar with Giger’s work, then you know that he often created beings that were viscerally off-putting and overtly sexual at the same time. Sil is no exception.