The trope, fair or not, has often overshadowed the fact that science fiction and horror are absolutely perfect bedfellows, with outer space's total isolation, tiny quarters, and oppressive vastness perfectly suited for the horror genre.
( Critters, Hellraiser, Friday the 13th, Dracula… they've all taken a trip to the stars.The trope, fair or not, has often overshadowed the fact that science fiction and horror are absolutely perfect bedfellows, with outer space's total isolation, tiny quarters, and oppressive vastness perfectly suited for the horror genre. Horror movies set in space have delivered classics of both genres that have lasted generations and built entire franchises in and of themselves.Why then, in the middle of a horror film renaissance, has the genre seemingly abandoned outer space? What has become of the space horror movie, and why has Hollywood either stopped producing them entirely or, maybe more accurately, failed to make a good one out of the few they do put out?Space: The horror frontier (Instead, the combination either brings the alien threat planetside, à la "The Quiet Place", "Nope", or "No One Will Save You", or makes the horror come from man’s own hand like "Ex Machina" or "M3GAN". Either way, the result is that horror no longer lives in space, with the only truly major space-horror film release this decade being the admittedly excellent "Alien: Romulus", along with some smaller projects like "Europa Report" and "Life".I was sure there must be more — some hidden classics that I missed — but researching for this article, I was shocked at just how few space horror movies we've had in the past couple of decades. It’s like everyone agreed "Event Horizon" was peak and gave up making horror films in space. ( So it feels especially strange that in the middle of a horror renaissance, as the genre continues to dominate box offices, it is totally left behind. Horror has crawled out of the B-grade shadows and into Oscar contention with films like "Get Out", "Midsommar", and "It Follows", and the box office returns are staggering.Respected directors are diving into the genre and creating masterpieces, but none of them seem interested in outer space. We are nearly a decade into a horror renaissance that has seen almost every type of horror unpacked, remade, and turned into arthouse, and yet space horror has sat almost entirely dormant. So what gives?In space, no one can hear you arthouse ( Where is the arthouse unpacking of "Jason X"? Why didn’t Danny Boyle’s "Sunshine" kick off the horror renaissance a decade earlier? Why did the "Alien" franchise become whatever the hell "Prometheus" was before finally returning to its roots (and then promptly coming down to Earth!)? Where’s our English remake of Aniara from an up-and-coming indie director?There’s most likely a slew of reasons none of this has happened, but the most likely culprit is that horror has become far more grounded than it used to be. While we still get slashers and jump scares, the renaissance that A24 ushered in has not only brought horror out of the shadows, but also delivered a redefined genre that doesn’t jive as well with spaceships and alien creatures.That’s not to say it can’t, but this new generation of horror isn’t interested in going off-planet to tell its slow-burning stories of grief and trauma, full of thinly veiled metaphors for real-life issues. “Earth and the present day are scary enough as is” seems to be the argument. ( The reason for everything: money.The other new branch of horror that has come out of this rena
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