Underrated Sci-Fi Horror Movies Where Scientists Go Too Far
Yes, everyone loves Jurassic Park and Planet of the Apes - but what about the underrated "science experiment gone wrong" movies? The lesser-known films where humanity's reach exceeds its grasp? The parables about the dangers of science unchecked?
These are B-movie classics like 1958's The Fly and 1985's Re-Animator. These are undervalued modern flicks like 2009's Splice, 2019's Little Joe, and 2020's Possessor. And, yes, these are the sci-fi/horror films based on the work of literary icons like H. G. Wells (The Island of Doctor Moreau) and Stephen King (Firestarter). Thank goodness real-life science is nothing like the movies.
- 1587 VOTESPhoto: Gaumont
If you're planning on making a human-animal hybrid being, maybe don't. It just seems like a bad idea right from the get-go. For whatever reason, Adrien Brody's Clive Nicoli and Sarah Polley's Elsa Kast - the protagonists of 2009's Splice - think this is a brilliant idea.
Even though their employers basically prohibit the pair of scientists from creating said hybrid, they do so anyway. And Elsa, in her infinite wisdom, even uses her own DNA during the experiment, essentially making the hybrid her own offspring. The hybrid (eventually named Dren) turns out to be a murderous creature that changes genders and ends up impregnating its genetic mother before being taken out by a rock to the head. Needless to say, Splice is anything but a happy movie.
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Mimic may not be the best-reviewed sci-fi picture ever released, but it's better than its reputation would have you believe (and it's directed by Guillermo del Toro). Besides, with a cast that includes Mira Sorvino, Josh Brolin, F. Murray Abraham, and Norman Reedus, you could do far worse on a Sunday afternoon than pop this on your preferred streaming service.
With cockroaches spreading a deadly disease to various Manhattan children, Sorvino's Dr. Susan Tyler is brought in to create a mantis-termite hybrid that releases an enzyme that causes the roaches to burn calories faster than they can eat. This eradicates the roaches and stops the spread of the virus. However, only a few years later, this hybrid has gone through an untold number of generations so rapidly that it has mutated the ability to mimic humanity.
It's up to Susan and her allies to end the hybrid for good. From there, the film is pretty boilerplate, but it certainly is good fun.
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- 3314 VOTESPhoto: Universal Pictures
In light of the Zac Efron-starring remake of Firestarter, let's talk about the 1984 original based on Stephen King's 1980 novel of the same name. During the beginning of the movie, two college kids participate in an experiment in which they are dosed with a hallucinogen. For whatever reason, this gives each of them different telepathic abilities.
These two college kids grow up, get married, and have a daughter named Charlie. Wouldn't you know it, Charlie ends up having pyrokinetic abilities, and the government wants to weaponize her. Cue the chaos.
Firestarter is more of a fun B movie than a "great" sci-fi/horror film, but Barrymore gives a convincing performance as an emotionally stunted girl struggling to come to terms with her outrageous power.
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- 4328 VOTESPhoto: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Why would any self-respecting scientist trust a mysterious alien transmission? Doesn't that just seem like they're asking for trouble? Alas, when aliens respond to a human transmission with instructions on how to splice specific alien DNA with human DNA, Ben Kingsley's Xavier Fitch just does it, no questions asked.
Is it any surprise the resulting experiment ends up being a murderous hybrid hellbent on producing offspring to do away with the entire human race? Of course it isn't surprising because Species is an R-rated horror film, not a family-friendly Disney movie. Anyway, Species is a fun sci-fi/horror film with a stellar cast that includes Kingsley, Michael Madsen, Alfred Molina, Forest Whitaker, and Natasha Henstridge as the hybrid monster.
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Re-Animator may lack the dedicated cult following of films like The Rocky Horror Picture Show or The Room, but that doesn't mean this X-rated horror-comedy doesn't have its own cult legacy. Really, to describe Re-Animator is to do it no justice. It needs to be seen to be believed.
It follows the exploits of a young medical student who's figured out how to bring dead tissue back to life. What results is a madcap comedy with more gore than your average slasher flick. In the grand tradition of schlocky B-movie fun, Re-Animator is the kind of movie your mother would be appalled by... which is exactly why it's a movie you need to watch.
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- 6368 VOTESPhoto: 20th Century Fox
Seeing as 1986's The Fly is the biggest box-office hit of David Cronenberg's long career and was a critical success at the time, we have to turn our eyes back to the 1958 original of the same name. Yes, it's a B movie from the 1950s. Yes, it's severely outdated by any modern standard. Yes, David Hedison looks hilarious with a shoddy fly prosthetic on his head. But there's just something about The Fly that defies all of that.
Somehow, it has stood the test of time and is seen as a classic of the genre, with modern critics heaping praise on it left and right. It helps that the legendary Vincent Price is there doing his thing, but it's difficult to put your finger on why The Fly works - it just does.
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- 7292 VOTESPhoto: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
In the mood for a well-crafted (if predictable) creature feature from the 1980s? Well, 1989's Leviathan fits the bill perfectly. Peter Weller leads an undersea mining crew that stumbles upon an old USSR shipwreck. After a couple of crew members begin to mutate and die, the miners figure out that the Soviets were experimenting on the crew of the old shipwreck with unstable mutagens.
Why were they experimenting on the crew of a ship with unstable mutagens? Does it really matter? You're here for some good, old-fashioned body horror, and Leviathan has that in spades. And if Peter Weller, Daniel Stern, Ernie Hudson, and Hector Elizondo are all there having a fun time, shouldn't that be good enough for you?
- 8326 VOTESPhoto: Sony Pictures Releasing
Leave it to Paul Verhoeven to bring a big-budget sci-fi/horror movie to the big screen. The man behind RoboCop, Basic Instinct, and Showgirls only knows how to go big, and spending nearly $100 million on what amounts to a modern-day update to The Invisible Man is undoubtedly a major swing for the fences.
Kevin Bacon stars as Dr. Sebastian Caine, a molecular biologist who has created a serum that renders its user invisible. Amazingly, the idiot-genius decides to test the serum on himself and, surprise, he can't reverse the process. Chaos ensues as Sebastian pretty much loses his mind, assaults a woman, offs a dog, and murders a few of his co-workers.
It isn't the best movie around, but it is your typical Verhoeven sleaze-fest, if that kind of thing is up your alley. Also, don't test your fancy creations on yourself, scientists! If Hollywood has taught us anything over the years, that's it.
- 9416 VOTESPhoto: Warner Bros.
So, Deep Blue Sea is a bad movie; however, Deep Blue Sea is a great bad movie. It's one of those films you can't help but enjoy. It's about a team of scientists who use sharks for Alzheimer's disease research, only to have the genetically engineered sharks (why?) go on a murderous rampage (again, why?).
It's got a famous Samuel L. Jackson speech that ends with him getting swallowed whole by a shark. LL Cool J plays a cook named Preacher who has a parrot for some reason. It's dumb. It's hokey. It's amazing. Seriously, if you don't have some kind of fun watching the trainwreck that is Deep Blue Sea, you're taking yourself far too seriously.
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Casts are rarely as stacked as that of 2016's Morgan. Seriously, it's pretty astonishing how much talent they managed to cram into this low-budget sci-fi/horror film: Kate Mara, Anya Taylor-Joy, Toby Jones, Rose Leslie, Boyd Holbrook, Michelle Yeoh, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Paul Giamatti, Brian Cox - it reads like a Marvel Studios film or a Wes Anderson picture. Mara stars as Lee Weathers, a specialist who has been called in to analyze Taylor-Joy's artificial being, Morgan, after a violent incident.
We'll spare you the twist ending if you end up being in the mood to watch this one someday, but it is fun to watch Mara and Taylor-Joy bounce off of each other in this one. Morgan isn't breaking any new ground, but there is something to be said for good genre filmmaking.
- 11210 VOTES
The Lazarus Effect
Photo: Relativity MediaThe Lazarus Effect (2015) came out of nowhere to gross a healthy near-$40 million at the box office on the back of a budget that was just above $3 million upon its release. The premise? A group of researchers accidentally stumble upon a serum that brings people back from the grave, and bedlam ensues.
The themes of scientific morality, life and death, and what happens after we die have been done in bigger, better movies, but The Lazarus Effect just wants to have a good time - and who are we to stop it? Besides, it brings Mark Duplass, Olivia Wilde, Evan Peters, Donald Glover, and Ray Wise to the party. It also has an ending that's just begging for a sequel that will clearly never happen at this point - but we can always dream, right?
- 12225 VOTES
The Island of Dr. Moreau
The Island of Doctor Moreau may not be as popular as other H.G. Wells novels like The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds, but it stands the test of time as a major work of science fiction.
The story about a mad scientist who creates an island filled with human-animal hybrid beings has been adapted for film and television numerous times - most famously in the notorious 1996 flop of the same name starring Val Kilmer, David Thewlis, and Marlon Brando - but the best adaptation has to be the 1977 version, which features Burt Lancaster and Michael York.
Sure, the special effects are extremely dated by modern standards, but all the questions about scientific morality remain intact. Also, Lancaster, York, and Davenport fare much better than Kilmer, Thewlis, and Brando do.
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- 13118 VOTESPhoto: Elevation Pictures
Following in his father's footsteps, Brandon Cronenberg knocked it out of the park with the psychological horror of 2020's Possessor. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, you might've missed the hubbub surrounding this independent flick. Having grossed under a million dollars at the worldwide box office, it seems clear that more people need to watch this stylish masterpiece of disturbing sci-fi/horror.
Possessor follows the exploits of an assassin who uses brain implants to take control of other people's bodies and commit murders. It seems straightforward, but this movie is anything but as the main character, played by Andrea Riseborough, begins to lose track of her own sanity as time goes on. If you've got the stomach, Possessor is well worth the time.
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Little Joe
Photo: BFI DistributionThis little-seen indie film is more sci-fi drama than sci-fi horror, but the outcome stays with you regardless. The plot may be less vicious than the classic thrillers one traditionally associates with the genre, but it's no less insidious.
The movie follows the exploits of a plant breeder, Alice, who has created a new flower called "Little Joe." As the people around her begin to experience changes in temperament and attitude, Alice and her co-worker Bella begin to suspect that the pollen Little Joe produces is subtly altering those who take it in.
By the end of the film, Bella has suffered a mysterious accident, Alice has been exposed to the pollen, and Little Joe is going to be sold worldwide. It's not the most bombastic film, but it is an inventive little picture that feels much more realistic than your average sci-fi/horror movie.
