If you’re a regular reader of Tor.com, then there’s a pretty good chance you like movies about aliens. If you’ve already seen the classics of the genre countless times—movies like Alien (1979), The Thing (1982), and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)—and you’re looking for something a little more esoteric, then here, for your consideration, are five alien movies that are hidden gems…
Monsters (2010)
Monsters was the feature-length directorial debut of Gareth Edwards and although his subsequent three movies—Godzilla (2014), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), and The Creator (2023)—have made a lot of noise, his freshman effort remains underrated. Monsters is set in a post-first contact world, taking place six years after a NASA probe crash landed in northern Mexico. Huge cephalopod-like aliens were unleashed from the samples that were aboard, and although destruction is all around, people have gotten used to the creatures in a “new normal” kind of way.
Photojournalist Andrew has been tasked with escorting his boss’s daughter, Samantha, through the infected zone and back to the U.S. before the border shuts for a six-month quarantine period. A massive wall has been built between the countries in an attempt to keep the aliens in Mexico (the political undertone here is so strong that it’s basically an overtone).
Monsters was filmed guerrilla-style, and so rather than offering big-budget alien-killing action, it feels like a documentary travelogue with a survival element. Andrew and Sam are played by (at the time) real-life couple Scoot McNairy and Whitney Able, which means they have genuine onscreen chemistry, and most of the other characters in the film are played by locals who the crew met along the way, which makes it feel even more authentic. The film’s realism is also aided by the fact that we’re initially given only brief glimpses of the massive tentacled creatures. We see just enough of them to be intrigued, but not so much that they lose their impact.
The Vast of Night (2019)
Another low-budget feature-length directorial debut making this list is Andrew Patterson’s The Vast of Night. It’s set in the 1950s in the fictional town of Cayuga, New Mexico, and follows switchboard operator Fay (Sierra McCormick) and radio DJ Everett (Jake Horowitz) as they begin to suspect that there’s something extra-terrestrial in the skies above the town. The film feels like it plays out in real time, following Fay and Everett as they spend their evening investigating a strange signal and speaking to people who claim to have encountered aliens.
The Vast of Night is an eerie slow burn that left me feeling spellbound. Part of what drew me in
were the various smooth tracking shots—one of which clocks in at over four minutes long and breathtakingly travels across the town, from the switchboard to the gym to the radio station. How they pulled this shot off is also just as impressive! But the moments of stillness are equally as captivating. Working in tandem with this striking camerawork are the magnetic performances given by our two lead actors, with McCormick in particular giving an out-of-this-world (I’m sorry, I had to!) performance.
Splinter (2008)
I love films where people are trapped in one location by an otherworldly creature or creatures, like The Thing (1982) and The Mist (2007), and Toby Wilkins’s Splinter perfectly slots into this category. A couple are driving down a road in the middle of nowhere when they’re carjacked and held hostage by an escaped convict and his girlfriend. They pull into a little isolated gas station, but along with road snacks, the four travellers find that the one employee has been infected by a black splintery substance, and now it’s coming after them. At a taut 82 minutes, Splinter is simple yet effective.
The origin of the creature/fungus/who-knows-what in Splinter is never actually revealed, but it certainly feels alien. It’s like a parasite that controls its host, but it doesn’t seem to be aware of how the human body works, which leads to some disturbing twisting of limbs. Despite being a low-budget film, the largely practical effects look incredible. My one gripe is the over-liberal use of shaky cam, which I assume was to cover up flaws in the effects (but doesn’t seem necessary!).
That issue aside, Splinter is an otherwise solid movie. The group feels like it’s comprised of real people and, thankfully, they don’t often make stupid decisions just for the sake of moving the plot along. All of the actors do a creditable job, but a special shout out has to go to Shea Whigham (best-known as Eli in Boardwalk Empire), whose performance as the criminal is nothing short of fantastic.
The Blob (1988)
The Blob may have the most instant name recognition on this list, but Chuck Russell’s 1988 remake is definitely underrated, having received mixed reviews when it first came out and having been semi-forgotten since. Russell’s film essentially takes the concept of the 1958 original and pushes it as far as it can go in terms of gore. It wouldn’t have been difficult for the pink gelatinous blob creature to come across as silly, but instead this thing is aggressive and, most importantly, it’s ravenous. Technically it’s not as alien in origin as in the original, having been created on Earth and then mutated thanks to a little joy ride through space, but there’s still some extra-terrestrial flair in there and it’s definitely more threatening than in the original.
What makes this movie stand out—and stand the test of time—is its gloriously gory practical effects. There are so many wildly creative deaths throughout the film that are as gleefully fun as they are grotesquely repulsive—take, for instance, the scene where the Blob pulls someone into a garbage disposal, dissolving them on the way down. The Blob is over-the-top and here for a good time, something which (in my opinion!) it definitely achieves.
Sputnik (2020)
The third and final directorial debut on this list (this wasn’t intentional!) is the Russian-language film Sputnik from Egor Abramenko. Set during the Cold War, the film begins with two Soviet cosmonauts crash-landing back on Earth. One of them dies, while the other, Konstantin (Pyotr Fyodorov), doesn’t seem quite right and is taken to a military facility to be studied helped. Dr. Tatyana Klimova (Oksana Akinshina), a controversial psychiatrist, is brought in to examine him and discovers that a not-so-friendly parasitic creature has hitched a ride inside of Konstantin, which is every bit as nasty as it sounds.
The film mostly feels like a creeping sci-fi thriller, but it does occasionally veer into moments of blood-drenched horror. As frightening as the interstellar creature is, another horror comes in the form of Colonel Semiradov (Fyodor Bondarchuk), who is in charge of the facility and most definitely does not have Konstantin’s best interests at heart. Sputnik is slow-paced and sinister, and it builds towards a tense and thrilling conclusion.
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Are there any other lesser-known movies featuring aliens that deserve more attention? Please sound off in the comments below!
Lorna Wallace has a PhD in English Literature and is a lover of all things science fiction and horror. She lives in Scotland with her rescue greyhound, Misty.
