22 Best Movies Like Alien That Will Thrill and Terrify You

Are you a fan of the classic sci-fi horror film Alien? Released in 1979, this groundbreaking movie directed by Ridley Scott captivated audiences with its claustrophobic setting, memorable characters, and terrifying extraterrestrial creature that stalked the crew of the spaceship Nostromo. Alien launched a major franchise and inspired countless filmmakers in the decades since.

If you loved Alien and are craving more spine-chilling sci-fi thrills, you’re in luck. Here are 22 of the best movies like Alien that deliver similar doses of suspense, horror, action, and otherworldly terror. From direct imitators to loosely inspired successors, these films are perfect for fans of the Alien series looking for their next space nightmare.

1. Aliens (1986)

Let’s get the obvious out of the way first. If you like Alien, you owe it to yourself to watch the epic sequel Aliens, directed by James Cameron. Sigourney Weaver returns as Ripley, who wakes up after 57 years of drifting in hypersleep only to face off against deadlier xenomorphs on a space colony.

Aliens expands the scope with pulse-pounding action and a squad of space marines, but retains the claustrophobic horror as the aliens hunt them through corridors. Weaver delivers an iconic performance, elevating Ripley to the pantheon of great sci-fi heroes. From “Get away from her, you bitch!” to the Power Loader smackdown, Aliens is a sequel that takes everything great about the first movie.

2. Life (2017)

Life is basically Alien on the International Space Station. Instead of a deep space mining vessel, this movie traps a crew of astronauts aboard the ISS with a rapidly evolving Martian life form. The creature, dubbed Calvin, grows from a microscopic organism into a multi-tentacled menace that starts picking off the crew one by one.

The movie benefits from a strong cast including Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson and Ryan Reynolds, who bring dramatic weight to a familiar story. While it doesn’t reach the heights of Alien, Life is a well-crafted, suspenseful sci-fi horror flick that knows exactly what it wants to be. Sometimes watching a competent Alien clone is enough to scratch that itch.

3. Event Horizon (1997)

Before he rebooted Alien with Prometheus, director Paul W.S. Anderson put his spin on space horror with Event Horizon. The movie follows a rescue crew investigating a missing spaceship that mysteriously reappeared after vanishing near Neptune. Once onboard, they discover the ship traveled to a hellish alternate dimension that infected the crew.

Event Horizon blends Alien‘s haunted house spaceship concept with supernatural horror, as the dimension unleashes nightmarish visions tailored to each character’s guilt and regrets. The movie bombed in theaters but developed a cult following for its inventive scares and disturbing imagery. While the plot doesn’t totally hold together, Event Horizon delivers some of the most unsettling sequences ever set in space.

4. Sunshine (2007)

Danny Boyle’s underrated gem Sunshine sends a crew on a mission to reignite the dying sun with a massive bomb. But as they approach the star, a distress signal from the first failed mission diverts them off course, leading to a chilling mystery.

Like Alien, Sunshine traps its blue-collar space truckers in a claustrophobic ship as both their environment and an unexpected threat works against them. The crew’s psychological breakdown facing oblivion and a menacing presence stalking them through the ship creates almost unbearable tension. With shades of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Solaris, Sunshine uses the unforgiving void of space to explore headier sci-fi themes, but still delivers visceral thrills.

5. Europa Report (2013)

Europa Report takes the found footage approach to tell the story of a doomed mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa in search of extraterrestrial life. When disaster cuts off communication with Earth, the crew must fend for themselves as they uncover the moon’s terrifying secrets.

Shot like a faux documentary with surveillance cameras, Europa Report creates an authentic you-are-there feel that grounds its increasing horrors. The international cast of character actors brings nuance to stock roles like the arrogant company man and wide-eyed rookie. Fans of Alien‘s working class space truckers will appreciate Europa Report‘s commitment to realism, even as the mission descends into chaos.

6. Pandorum (2009)

Pandorum cribs liberally from Alien, but adds enough twists to stand out. Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster star as crew members who wake up on a seemingly abandoned colony ship with no memory of their mission. As they explore the ship, they discover ravenous monsters hunting them through the decks.

The movie keeps you guessing with a fractured narrative that leaps around in time and space. Quaid and Foster anchor the disorientation with their haunted performances of men struggling to hold onto their sanity. Pandorum has some silly moments, but it’s a solid Alien imitator with intense monster attacks and trippy psychological horror.

7. The Thing (1982)

John Carpenter’s The Thing is a masterclass in paranoia-fueled horror. The movie follows a research team in Antarctica infiltrated by a shape-shifting alien that perfectly imitates other lifeforms. Cut off from help, helicopter pilot MacReady (Kurt Russell) and the others try to root out the creature as they descend into madness and turn on each other.

Like Alien, The Thing uses the isolation of its setting to amp up the fear of an unknowable entity hiding among them. The groundbreaking creature effects still hold up, delivering surreal images of bodies warped in sickening ways. Carpenter’s minimalist score also echoes the dread-soaked mood of Alien. Both movies excel at showing how quickly civilized people unravel when facing an existential threat.

8. Pitch Black (2000)

Vin Diesel launched a franchise with Pitch Black, which introduced his antihero Richard B. Riddick. When a spaceship crashes on a remote desert moon, Riddick and the other survivors discover that the planet is infested with deadly nocturnal creatures. With an eclipse blotting out the planet’s three suns, the humans must rely on Riddick, a convicted murderer with surgically-enhanced night vision, to lead them to safety.

Pitch Black takes the “stalked by aliens” premise and adds a unique spin with its day/night gimmick. The movie milks its simple setup for maximum suspense, as the dwindling band try to outlast the hungry monsters until daybreak. Diesel makes a striking debut as the morally ambiguous Riddick, who would go on to headline two more movies.

9. Predator (1987)

Predator helped establish an enduring sci-fi franchise by pitting Arnold Schwarzenegger against one of cinema’s most iconic movie monsters. Schwarzenegger leads an elite military rescue team in a Central American jungle, only to find themselves hunted by a technologically advanced alien warrior.

While Predator lacks Alien‘s claustrophobic spaceship setting, it creates a similar sense of impending doom as the commandos are stalked by an unknown enemy. Director John McTiernan expertly uses the lush jungle to hide the Predator, making it a deadly force of nature. Like Ripley in Alien, Schwarzenegger’s Dutch must use his wits and resourcefulness to defeat the seemingly invincible alien. That final mano a mano slugfest is pure ’80s action bliss.

10. Cloverfield (2008)

Cloverfield reimagines Alien as a found footage disaster movie, with a Godzilla-sized monster instead of a xenomorph. The film follows a group of twentysomethings trying to survive in New York City during a full-scale monster attack.

Presented as camcorder footage from the ground, Cloverfield keeps the monster hidden at first, letting the characters’ confusion and panic sell the horror of glimpsing something beyond comprehension. The movie shares Alien‘s dread of being trapped in enclosed spaces with a deadly threat, as they navigate a collapsing building and subway tunnels. While the shaky-cam style can be nauseating, Cloverfield is a unique take on the modern monster movie.

11. Underwater (2020)

Underwater is a fun, unpretentious deep sea creature feature heavily indebted to Alien. Kristen Stewart stars as part of a drilling crew working at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. When an earthquake devastates their rig, the survivors must walk across the ocean floor to reach escape pods, with unseen creatures lurking in the abyss.

Underwater wastes no time, throwing us right into the chaos in the opening minutes and rarely letting up. Stewart makes for a compelling, blue-collar heroine in the Ripley mold, facing unimaginable horrors in a bulky diving suit. The movie has a blast unleashing its aquatic monsters, with a massive final boss that feels ripped from H.P. Lovecraft’s nightmares. Underwater doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it’s a rock-solid deep sea thriller.

12. Sputnik (2020)

This Russian gem starts with a cosmonaut returning to Earth with a deadly organism inside him, but spins that setup into a smart, character-driven alien drama. Tasked with studying the creature in a secret Soviet lab, a disgraced doctor forges a psychic bond with the infected cosmonaut to understand the symbiotic lifeform.

Sputnik takes a more subdued approach than Alien, but still delivers a fascinating extraterrestrial mystery with bursts of body horror. The movie is more interested in the moral quandaries the doctor and “host” face than straight-up scares. Like Alien, Sputnik shows how the real villain is not the alien but the cold-hearted bureaucrats trying to exploit it.

13. Galaxy of Terror (1981)

Exploitation legend Roger Corman was quick to cash-in on Alien‘s success with the shamelessly derivative Galaxy of Terror. When a rescue team responds to a distress signal on a barren planet, they discover their worst fears manifested by a sinister alien force.

Galaxy of Terror cribs the overall structure of Alien with an expendable crew getting killed off one-by-one in a confined space. But it adds a supernatural angle, with each character’s specific traumas becoming their undoing. The movie leans into its schlocky low budget, with ridiculous kills and a notoriously tasteless “assault” scene. It’s very much a cheap Alien clone, but an entertaining one for fans of ’80s B-movies.

14. Forbidden World (1982)

Another Alien knockoff from Roger Corman’s stable, Forbidden World sends a space marshal to a research station where a genetically-engineered creature is running amok. He teams up with the scientists to hunt down the mutating monster.

Like Galaxy of Terror, Forbidden World is unapologetic schlock with cheap effects, gratuitous nudity and hammy acting. But it also has some creative ideas, like the creature absorbing traits from its victims to evolve into the ultimate predator. There’s a sleazy charm to its single-minded drive to copy Alien on a shoestring budget. For fans of exploitation cinema, Forbidden World is a must-see Alien ripoff.

15. The Cloverfield Paradox (2018)

The third entry in the Cloverfield series is the most divisive, but has some value for Alien fans. Set on a space station testing a particle accelerator to solve an energy crisis, the film shows the crew dealing with strange events caused by a rip in the fabric of space-time.

The Cloverfield Paradox is a mess of a movie, awkwardly stitching together its space horror story with the Cloverfield universe. But it has shades of Alien in the crew being besieged by inexplicable threats on a crippled space station. The movie is far from a classic like Alien, but has enough weird interdimensional scares to satisfy hardcore sci-fi horror junkies.

16. Prometheus (2012)

Ridley Scott returned to the Alien universe with this divisive prequel exploring the origins of the xenomorphs. Prometheus follows a team of scientists on a distant moon who discover evidence of humanity’s forerunners, the Engineers, and the terrifying bioweapons they created.

Prometheus has a lot of big ideas, using the Alien mythos to tackle weighty themes of creation, faith, and meeting one’s maker. The movie’s ambition doesn’t always pay off, with some clunky plotting and character choices. But it also expands the scope of the franchise with stunning visuals and imaginative lore. Prometheus may not live up to the original Alien, but it’s a bold attempt to chart a new course for the series.

17. Alien: Covenant (2017)

Scott further fleshed out the Alien prequels with this Prometheus sequel that brings the series closer to the 1979 original. Set 10 years later, Covenant follows a colony ship diverted to a seemingly idyllic world created by the android David, who survived the Prometheus expedition. The crew soon discovers that David has been experimenting with the Engineers’ deadly pathogen to create even more lethal creatures.

Alien: Covenant is a flawed but fascinating film that bridges the gap between Prometheus and Alien. It combines the philosophical musings of the former with the gory horror of the latter, as the hapless colonists are torn apart by David’s twisted creations. Michael Fassbender delivers a chilling dual performance as the android Walter and his megalomaniacal “brother” David. Covenant may not stick the landing, but it’s a must-see for fans eager to see the xenomorphs’ origins.

18. Life Force (1985)

Tobe Hooper directed this bizarre mashup of Alien, vampire movies, and zombie flicks. The film follows a space shuttle crew who discover three humanoid aliens in suspended animation aboard a derelict ship. Brought back to Earth, the aliens awaken and reveal themselves as energy vampires, sucking the “life force” from humans and leaving their dried husks to kill even more.

Life Force is a weird, wild ride that feels like three or four movies crammed together. It has Alien-esque scenes on the shuttle, but quickly becomes an apocalyptic vampire plague movie with hordes of zombies overrunning London. The film is anchored by Steve Railsback and Peter Firth as a dashing SAS colonel and bookish scientist racing to stop the invasion. Life Force is far sillier than Alien, but provides plenty of goofy entertainment.

19. Creature (1985)

Not to be confused with the Fred Dekker monster comedy, this Alien copycat traps a crew aboard a crippled spaceship with a bloodthirsty alien. The diverse cast includes Klaus Kinski as the ship’s crazed captain and future convicted murderer Ferdy Mayne.

Creature hits all the expected beats, as the dwindling crew are stalked by a reptilian monster through darkened corridors. What sets it apart is the setting – a retro rocket ship packed with awesome analog sets and computers. The creature design is also memorable, with the alien taking over its human hosts. Creature is a competent, if uninspired, Alien clone with a committed cast and fun practical effects.

20. Inseminoid (1981)

Also known as Horror Planet, this British shocker is a sleazy take on Alien‘s interspecies rape subtext. On a desolate planet, a pregnant woman goes on a homicidal rampage, convinced the twin aliens she’s carrying are commanding her to kill.

Inseminoid is pure exploitation, with copious gore and nudity as the murders get more outrageous. But it does tap into the same body horror and paranoia that makes Alien so unsettling. Judy Geeson gives a suitably unhinged performance as the tortured mother-to-be at war with her own body. Inseminoid is definitely not for everyone, but Alien fans with a taste for the perverse may get a kick out of it.

21. Contamination (1980)

This Italian Alien ripoff has become a cult classic for its incompetent charms. The film follows a former astronaut and government agent investigating a series of gory deaths linked to alien eggs brought back from Mars.

Contamination barely tries to hide its pilfering from Alien, with a suspiciously similar egg and facehugger design. But it puts its own spin on the material, with the eggs making people explode in a shower of guts when disturbed. The movie feels like the highlights of Alien crammed into 90 minutes, with little regard for plot or logic. While Contamination is objectively terrible, it’s also a lot of fun for bad movie buffs.

22. Xtro (1982)

Xtro is only tangentially related to Alien, but earns a spot for its deranged creativity. The film follows a father who returns after being abducted by aliens, only to impregnate a woman who gives birth to a full-grown man. That man kidnaps the father’s son to complete the alien’s bizarre life cycle.

Xtro is more of a surreal arthouse take on Alien‘s themes of violation and transformation. It has some truly wild imagery, like the infamous scene of the woman “birthing” the adult man in a geyser of blood. The movie is a patchwork of genres, from family drama to slasher horror to dark comedy. It’s not as coherent as Alien, but Xtro is a one-of-a-kind viewing experience for adventurous horror fans.

From big-budget blockbusters to low-rent knockoffs, these 22 movies all capture some of what makes Alien such an enduring classic. Whether you want more claustrophobic space horror, slimy creature features, or mind-bending sci-fi, there’s something here for every fan of Ridley Scott’s masterpiece. So let these movies transport you back to that dark, deadly corner of the universe where no one can hear you scream.