And the Scariest Space Movie of All Time is...
After weeks of silver screen screams, the Scariest Space Movie of All Time has emerged from the wreckage.
Thanks for tuning back into the BeX Files! On this Eve of Hallow’s Eve, the hour has finally arrived to crown the Scariest Space Movie of All Time.
To fill in new subscribers, this newsletter has celebrated spooky season with a tournament to determine what movie set primarily in outer space (either in ships or on alien worlds) has earned the most silver screen screams. You can catch up on the contest here.
Before announcing the winner to the illustrious members of the Yub Nub Club (join here!), I wanted to share some general reflections on the most frightening finalists: Alien (1979) and Event Horizon (1997). I rewatched both films this week (you know, for work) and I highly recommend them as a double-feature. Warning: Spoilers ahead for both decades-old films.
There are a lot of interesting resonances between these movies. Both feature an exhausted crew that just wants to go home but gets dragged into a mysterious side quest. Both films follow bold scouts into dangerous frontiers where they become infected by a nefarious presence, culminating in scenes of bloody body horror (John Hurt’s “Kane” and Jack Noseworthy’s “Justin”). Both have suspicious science officers with secret motives that are not revealed until the latter half (Ian Holm’s “Ash” and Sam Neill’s “Asa Weir”).
Both also, of course, end up with eyeless monstrosities marauding around the ships causing all manner of horrific chaos.
The similarities continue—both films show porny pin-ups of women on the walls of male crew members, and depict some light sexual harassment of female crew members. We can imagine a future of cryosleep, advanced spacecraft, and artificial intelligence—but equitable workspaces for women? NO DICE.
And of course, the films share the premise of having one ship (Alien’s Nostromo and Event Horizon’s Lewis and Clark) respond to a lost vessel that turns out to be a tomb (this trope shows up in semifinalist Sunshine as well). Both end with embattled survivors blowing up the infected megaships after escaping in lifeboat shuttles.
The lesson? Don’t do search-and-rescue in creepy spacecraft. Somebody tell NASA. I think they should have a heads-up on mission contingencies like metamorphizing toothy aliens and gateways to the hell dimension.
But despite these similarities, the winner of the Scariest Space Movie of All Time is…
