Subgenre Guide
The monsters, the beasts, the things in the dark
A ranked guide to the creature feature, the horror and science-fiction tradition built around a non-human threat as the central antagonist: the monster, the beast, the alien, the thing in the dark. The list below leads with the foundational giant-monster and Universal-era films, then follows the form through its modern landmarks.
Adventurous filmmaker Carl Denham sets out to produce a motion picture unlike anything the world has seen before. Alongside his leading lady Ann Darrow and his first mate Jack Driscoll, they arrive on an island and discover a legendary creature said to be neither beast nor man. Denham captures the monster to be displayed on Broadway as King Kong, the eighth wonder of the world.
When scientists exploring the Amazon River stumble on a “missing link” connecting humans and fish, they plan to capture it for later study. But the Creature has plans of his own, and has set his sights on the lead scientist's beautiful fiancée, Kay.
Thousands of birds flock into a seaside town and terrorize the residents in a series of deadly attacks.
When the seaside community of Amity finds itself under attack by a dangerous great white shark, the town's chief of police, a young marine biologist, and a grizzled shark hunter embark on a desperate quest to kill the beast before it strikes again.
During its return to the earth, commercial spaceship Nostromo intercepts a distress signal from a distant planet. When a three-member team of the crew discovers a chamber containing thousands of eggs on the planet, a creature inside one of the eggs attacks an explorer. The entire crew is unaware of the impending nightmare set to descend upon them when the alien parasite planted inside its unfortunate host is birthed.
A research team in Antarctica is hunted by a shape-shifting alien that assumes the appearance of its victims.
After a personal tragedy, Sarah joins her friends on a caving expedition in the Appalachian Mountains. But when a rockfall traps them deep underground, their adventure turns into a nightmare. As they search for a way out, the group discovers they are not alone—lurking in the darkness are savage, cave-dwelling creatures. With rising tension and dwindling trust, the women must fight to survive against both the predators and each other.
A teenage girl is captured by a giant mutated squid-like creature that appears from Seoul's Han River after toxic waste was dumped in it, prompting her family into a frantic search for her.
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Ripley, the sole survivor of the Nostromo's deadly encounter with the monstrous Alien, returns to Earth after drifting through space in hypersleep for 57 years. Although her story is initially met with skepticism, she agrees to accompany a team of Colonial Marines back to LV-426.
When Seth Brundle makes a huge scientific and technological breakthrough in teleportation, he decides to test it on himself. Unbeknownst to him, a common housefly manages to get inside the device and the two become one.
A family is forced to live in silence while hiding from creatures that hunt by sound.
Mia, a drug addict, is determined to kick the habit. To that end, she asks her brother, David, his girlfriend, Natalie and their friends Olivia and Eric to accompany her to their family's remote forest cabin to help her through withdrawal. Eric finds a mysterious Book of the Dead at the cabin and reads aloud from it, awakening an ancient demon. All hell breaks loose when the malevolent entity possesses Mia.
A team of elite commandos on a secret mission in a Central American jungle come to find themselves hunted by an extraterrestrial warrior.
Residents of a rundown French apartment building battle against an army of deadly, rapidly reproducing spiders.
The six-member crew of the International Space Station is tasked with studying a sample from Mars that may be the first proof of extra-terrestrial life, which proves more intelligent than ever expected.
Following the events at home, the Abbott family now face the terrors of the outside world. Forced to venture into the unknown, they realize that the creatures that hunt by sound are not the only threats that lurk beyond the sand path.
When their plans for a nature trip go awry, Polly and boyfriend Seth decide to check into a motel. On their way, they're carjacked and kidnapped by low-rent crooks Dennis and Lacey, who take the victims and their SUV to a nearby gas station. Along the way, they encounter an increasingly terrifying horde of parasites, and if any of them intend to survive, they'll have to outsmart the deadly organisms.
Two crew members wake up on an abandoned spacecraft with no idea who they are, how long they've been asleep, or what their mission is. The two soon discover they're actually not alone – and the reality of their situation is more horrifying than they could have imagined.
From the producers of Paranormal Activity, Insidious, and Sinister comes Dark Skies: a supernatural thriller that follows a young family living in the suburbs. As husband and wife Daniel and Lacey Barret witness an escalating series of disturbing events involving their family, their safe and peaceful home quickly unravels. When it becomes clear that the Barret family is being targeted by an unimaginably terrifying and deadly force, Daniel and Lacey take matters in their own hands to solve the mystery of what is after their family.
While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonizers come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe.
A savvy and free-spirited surfer is abducted by a shark-obsessed serial killer. Held captive on his boat, she must figure out how to escape before he carries out a ritualistic feeding to the sharks below.
In late 1970s Ohio, a group of friends filming a homemade zombie movie witness a devastating train derailment. Soon after, their quiet town is gripped by unexplained disappearances, strange phenomena, and a growing sense of fear, as they uncover that something terrifying has been set loose.
A small town is taken over by an alien plague, turning residents into zombies and all forms of mutant monsters.
What if a child from another world crash-landed on Earth, but instead of becoming a hero to mankind, he proved to be something far more sinister?
A loving father finds a clown suit for his son's birthday party, only to realize the suit is part of an evil curse that turns its wearer into a killer.
A team of explorers discover a clue to the origins of mankind on Earth, leading them on a journey to the darkest corners of the universe. There, they must fight a terrifying battle to save the future of the human race.
After a violent storm, a dense cloud of mist envelops a small Maine town, trapping David Drayton and his five-year-old son in a local grocery store with other local residents. They soon discover that the mist conceals deadly horrors that threaten their lives, and worse, their sanity.
A group of college friends reunite for a trip to the forest, but encounter a menacing presence in the woods that's stalking them.
Two divers are left out at sea without a boat. There’s nothing but water for miles, unless they look at what’s underneath them...
When a group of misfits is hired by an unknown third party to burglarize a desolate house and acquire one rare VHS tape, they discover more found footage than they had bargained for.
Ray Ferrier is a divorced dockworker and less-than-perfect father. Soon after his ex-wife and her new husband drop off his teenage son and young daughter for a rare weekend visit, a strange and powerful lightning storm touches down.
Two hundred years after Lt. Ripley died, a group of scientists clone her, hoping to breed the ultimate weapon. But the new Ripley is full of surprises … as are the new aliens. Ripley must team with a band of smugglers to keep the creatures from reaching Earth.
Americans Amy, Stacy, Jeff and Eric look for fun during a sunny holiday in Mexico, but they get much more than that after visiting an archaeological dig in the jungle.
When their ship crash-lands on a remote planet, the marooned passengers soon learn that escaped convict Riddick isn't the only thing they have to fear. Deadly creatures lurk in the shadows, waiting to attack in the dark, and the planet is rapidly plunging into the utter blackness of a total eclipse. With the body count rising, the doomed survivors are forced to turn to Riddick with his eerie eyes to guide them through the darkness to safety. With time running out, there's only one rule: Stay in the light.
Five young New Yorkers throw their friend a going-away party the night that a monster the size of a skyscraper descends upon the city. Told from the point of view of their video camera, the film is a document of their attempt to survive the most surreal, horrifying event of their lives.
In the year 2019, a plague has transformed almost every human into a vampire. Faced with a dwindling blood supply, the fractured dominant race plots their survival; meanwhile, a researcher works with a covert band of vampires on a way to save humankind.
Residents in a lonely gulch of inland California bear witness to an uncanny, chilling discovery.
The crew of the colony ship Covenant, bound for a remote planet on the far side of the galaxy, discovers what they think is an uncharted paradise but is actually a dark, dangerous world.
Still reeling from the tragic death of their mother, a teenage girl and her younger sister find themselves plagued by a sadistic presence in their house and struggle to get their grieving father to pay attention before it’s too late.
A police chief in the war-torn streets of Los Angeles discovers that an extraterrestrial creature is hunting down residents - and that he is the next target.
Based on Wes Craven's 1977 suspenseful cult classic, The Hills Have Eyes is the story of a family road trip that goes terrifyingly awry when the travelers become stranded in a government atomic zone. Miles from nowhere, the Carter family soon realizes the seemingly uninhabited wasteland is actually the breeding ground of a blood-thirsty mutant family...and they are the prey.
In a small town in Maine, seven children known as The Losers Club come face to face with life problems, bullies and a monster that takes the shape of a clown called Pennywise.
When paleontologist Kate Lloyd travels to an isolated outpost in Antarctica for the expedition of a lifetime, she joins an international team that unearths a remarkable discovery. Their elation quickly turns to fear as they realize that their experiment has freed a mysterious being from its frozen prison. Paranoia spreads like an epidemic as a creature that can mimic anything it touches will pit human against human as it tries to survive and flourish in this spine-tingling thriller.
An LA vampire hunter has a week to come up with the cash to pay for his kid's tuition and braces. Trying to make a living these days just might kill him.
In 1993, the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence Project receives a transmission detailing an alien DNA structure, along with instructions on how to splice it with human DNA. The result is Sil, a sensual but deadly creature who can change from a beautiful woman to an armour-plated killing machine in the blink of an eye.
Mill Valley, Pennsylvania, Halloween night, 1968. After playing a joke on a school bully, Stella and her friends decide to sneak into a supposedly haunted house that once belonged to the powerful Bellows family, unleashing dark forces that they will be unable to control.
27 years after overcoming the malevolent supernatural entity Pennywise, the former members of the Losers' Club, who have grown up and moved away from Derry, are brought back together by a devastating phone call.
After an earthquake destroys their underwater station, six researchers must navigate two miles along the dangerous, unknown depths of the ocean floor to make it to safety in a race against time.
When a Category 5 hurricane decimates a coastal town, the storm surge brings devastation, chaos, and something far more frightening onto shore: hungry sharks.
While surfing on a secluded beach, Nancy finds herself in the feeding grounds of a great white shark. Though stranded only 200 yards from shore, survival proves to be the ultimate test of wills, requiring all of her ingenuity, resourcefulness, and fortitude.
When a virus leaks from a top-secret facility, turning all resident researchers into ravenous zombies and their lab animals into mutated hounds from hell, the government sends in an elite military task force to contain the outbreak.
A biologist signs up for a dangerous, secret expedition into a mysterious zone where the laws of nature don't apply.
On a desolate country highway, two homeward-bound teens are nearly run off the road by a maniac in a beat-up truck, and later spot him shoving what appears to be a body down a sewer pipe.
After escaping with Newt and Hicks from the alien planet, Ripley crash lands on Fiorina 161, a prison planet and host to a correctional facility. Unfortunately, although Newt and Hicks do not survive the crash, a more unwelcome visitor does. The prison does not allow weapons of any kind, and with aid being a long time away, the prisoners must simply survive in any way they can.
Four childhood friends reunite for a hunting trip in the Maine woods, bound by a psychic force born from a childhood friend's dreamcatcher. They find themselves caught in a grotesque alien invasion that twists memory, sanity and reality into something far more sinister.
Two sisters on Mexican vacation are trapped in a shark observation cage at the bottom of the ocean, with oxygen running low and great whites circling nearby, they have less than an hour of air left to figure out how to get to the surface.
Researchers on the undersea lab Aquatica have genetically altered the brains of captive sharks to develop a cure for Alzheimer's disease. But there's an unexpected side effect: the sharks got smarter, faster, and more dangerous. After a big storm damages their remote research facility, they must fight for their lives.
With his marriage fraying, Blake persuades his wife Charlotte to take a break from the city and visit his remote childhood home in rural Oregon. As they arrive at the farmhouse in the dead of night, they're attacked by an unseen animal and barricade themselves inside the home as the creature prowls the perimeter. But as the night stretches on, Blake begins to behave strangely, transforming into something unrecognizable.
When the crew of an American tugboat boards an abandoned Russian research vessel, the alien life form aboard regards them as a virus which must be destroyed.
Each year the population of sleepy Lake Victoria, Arizona explodes from 5,000 to 50,000 residents for the annual Spring Break celebration. But then, an earthquake opens an underwater chasm, releasing an enormous swarm of ancient Piranha that have been dormant for thousands of years, now with a taste for human flesh. This year, there's something more to worry about than the usual hangovers and complaints from locals, a new type of terror is about to be cut loose on Lake Victoria.
Underwater deep-sea miners encounter a Soviet wreck and bring back a dangerous cargo to their base on the ocean floor with horrifying results. The crew of the mining base must fight to survive against a genetic mutation that hunts them down one by one.
One year after her sister Melanie mysteriously disappeared, Clover and her friends head into the remote valley where she vanished in search of answers. Exploring an abandoned visitor center, they find themselves stalked by a masked killer and horrifically murdered one by one...only to wake up and find themselves back at the beginning of the same evening.
As New York City is invaded by alien creatures who hunt by sound, a woman named Sam fights to survive with her cat.
Dr. Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant but egotistical scientist, brings a creature to life in a monstrous experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both the creator and his tragic creation.
When a group of friends recklessly violate the sacred rule of Tarot readings, they unknowingly unleash an unspeakable evil trapped within the cursed cards. One by one, they come face to face with fate and end up in a race against death.
A couple on a romantic getaway find themselves stranded at sea when a tropical storm sweeps away their villa. In order to survive, they are forced to fight the elements, while sharks circle below.
Val McKee and Earl Bassett are in a fight for their lives when they discover that their desolate town has been infested with gigantic, man-eating creatures that live below the ground.
A band of soldiers is dispatched to war games deep in the woods. When they stumble across a rival team slaughtered in camp, they realize they're not alone.
After his brother's death, Larry Talbot returns home to his father and the family estate. Events soon take a turn for the worse when Larry is bitten by a werewolf.
After receiving an exotic small animal as a Christmas gift, a young man inadvertently breaks three important rules concerning his new pet, which unleashes a horde of malevolently mischievous creatures on a small town.
When his dysfunctional family clashes over the holidays, young Max is disillusioned and turns his back on Christmas. Little does he know, this lack of festive spirit has unleashed the wrath of Krampus: a demonic force of ancient evil intent on punishing non-believers.
When a soldier of fortune accidentally disturbs the tomb of a vengeful Egyptian princess, he unleashes a millennia-old curse upon the modern world. The resurrected Mummy pursues him relentlessly as shadowy organizations scramble to contain the supernatural threat. This big-budget reboot trades atmospheric dread for action-adventure spectacle, serving as a launch vehicle for Universal's ill-fated Dark Universe franchise.
When a deep-sea research mission inadvertently breaches an unexplored thermal layer beneath the Pacific Ocean, it releases something that was never supposed to resurface: a Megalodon, a sixty-foot prehistoric shark long thought extinct. With the creature now hunting in open waters, a reluctant rescue diver and a team of scientists must stop it before it reaches a crowded shoreline. Equal parts summer blockbuster and creature feature, The Meg leans hard into spectacle over scares.
Robert Neville is a scientist who was unable to stop the spread of the terrible virus that was incurable and man-made. Immune, Neville is now the last human survivor in what is left of New York City and perhaps the world. For three years, Neville has faithfully sent out daily radio messages, desperate to find any other survivors who might be out there. But he is not alone.
When a group of teenagers inadvertently kill his only son, Ed Harley seeks the powers of a backwoods witch to bring the child back to life.
After a bizarre and near fatal encounter with a serial killer, a newswoman is sent to a rehabilitation center whose inhabitants may not be what they seem.
Skeptical young detective Ichabod Crane gets transferred to the hamlet of Sleepy Hollow, New York, where he is tasked with investigating the decapitations of three people – murders the townsfolk attribute to a legendary specter, The Headless Horseman.
Five years after an ominous unseen presence drives most of society to suicide, a survivor and her two children make a desperate bid to reach safety.
Young Pietari lives with his reindeer-herding father in arctic Finland. On the eve of Christmas, a nearby excavation makes a frightening discovery and an evil Santa Claus is unleashed…
A South London teen gang must team up with the other residents of their housing estate to protect the neighbourhood from a terrifying alien invasion.
Henry Frankenstein pieces together body parts in the hope of bringing a human-like creature to life. The mad scientist’s dreams are shattered by his monstrous creation awakening with rage to a world that hates and fears him.
Dr. Frankenstein and his monster both turn out to be alive after being attacked by an angry mob. The now-chastened scientist attempts to escape his past, but a former mentor forces him to assist with the creation of a new creature.
When a group of tourists stumble into the remote Australian river territory of an enormous crocodile, the deadly creature traps them on a tiny mud island with the tide quickly rising and darkness descending. As the hungry predator closes in, they must fight for survival against all odds.
When a huge hurricane hits her hometown in Florida, Haley ignores evacuation orders to look for her father. After finding him badly wounded, both are trapped by the flood. With virtually no time to escape the storm, they discover that rising water levels are the least of their problems.
College student Lucy and her friends spend their vacation at her family's home in Hawaii, which includes her pet chimpanzee, Ben. However, when Ben contracts rabies after being bitten by a rabid animal, the group must fight for their lives in order to avoid the now-violent chimp.
A young boy tells three stories of horror to distract a witch who plans to eat him.