31 horror films you need to watch this October

Alien

The Plot

Far in the future and deep in space, the crew of the cargo ship Nostromo are awakened from cryostasis by the ship’s computer when it picks up a mysterious distress call coming from an uncharted moon (note: receiving a mysterious distress call is the SF-horror equivalent of moving in to an ancient and suspiciously cheap house looking for a ‘fresh start’. It never ends well).

When the crew arrives to investigate, they find an ancient derelict alien ship filled with strange egg-like objects. One of the eggs opens, the unknown life form attaching itself to the crew members face. With no way to remove the alien from their now-comatose crew member, the rest of the crew brings them both on board; and of course, the horror begins.

The Breakdown

With a tagline like in space, no one can hear you scream, what could possibly go wrong? Alien has all the best that both science fiction and horror have to offer; awesome sci-fi settings, the claustrophobic vacuum of space, an unknown evil stalking the protagonists, and a lot of people dying horribly.

On top of that, Ripley is an example of one of the best female characters in science fiction at the time. She never feels like a token character, sloppily written for the sake of shoehorning in some female representation; she’s tough as nails, cool under pressure, and is overall an iconic feminist character even by today’s standards. The fact that her gender is so unimportant to her character and storyline is much less surprising when you learn that the role was originally written for a male lead.

The Scare Factor

The xenomorphs in Alien tick off a dozen different horror boxes over the span of their various life stages. You get the body horror of facehuggers and chestbursters to the monster-movie action sequences of its final form. Paired with the cramped, dark interior of the Nostromo surrounded by the expansive nothingness of space, Alien has everything you could want from a horror classic.