Summary
- Alien movies achieve realism by depicting human terror and government intrigue in the face of extraterrestrial contact.
- Films like Contact and Arrival explore the realistic consequences of global alien arrival and communication challenges.
- Dark Skies and Fire in the Sky draw inspiration from real alien abduction accounts, aiming to generate deep fear and realism.
Movies centered around extraterrestrial life have always been a popular subject, but it’s a select few of them that manage to truly depict what genuine human contact with aliens might realistically look like. Compared to other types of paranormal phenomena commonly depicted in movies, alien stories have the greatest chance of becoming real, with real-world governments even admitting to studying unidentified aerial phenomena. The best alien movies typically take advantage of this by thinking about what contact with extraterrestrial life would realistically mean.
To make a movie about aliens feel realistic, there are several things that must be mastered. The extraterrestrials themselves should feel alien in the true sense of the word, being unlike anything found in our own world. But more importantly, a given film’s human cast should react appropriately to their presence, usually doing so in terror, making alien stories great for blends of horror and science fiction. In addition to all this, a sci-fi film should strive for an even tone if they hope to make their story of alien contact believable.
10 Contact
1977
Robert Zemeckis’ 1977 sci-fi classic takes advantage of the real life SETI programs to ground his story in realism. Standing for the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence, SETI programs refer to real efforts to locate evidence of alien civilizations among the stars, typically doing so with advanced telescopes and listening devices capable of picking up all kinds of possible avenues of communication. Contact takes place in one such program, following a doctor who makes the discovery of a lifetime.
Beyond taking inspiration from real-life searches for alien life, Contact is very meticulous in its attention to scientific detail. The film has been acclaimed by scientists for being one of the most realistic looks at extraterrestrial life ever conceived, describing an alien civilization so fundamentally advanced that their capabilities seem almost magical to humans. The film’s ultimate ambiguous levels of hard evidence is also very true to life, with real alien experiences being notoriously difficult to prove.
9 Arrival
2016
Whereas Contact ends with humanity aching for hard evidence confirming the existence of aliens, Arrival takes a more thoughtful look at what an obvious global arrival of interstellar travelers could look like. Directed by Denis Villenueve, now famous for the Dune movies, the film follows a linguist who is recruited by the government to establish a rapport with alien creatures that arrive in massive ships all over the Earth. During her time studying the aliens’ language, she makes an incredible discovery of their awesome abilities.
The military response to a neutral alien presence in Arrival feels incredibly genuine, with nervous generals being quick to see threats while trying to ascertain the aliens’ goals on Earth. The creatures themselves, called “heptapods” for their seven-limbed bodies, are properly bizarre, communicating with the strange formation of inky black sigils. In addition to simply being a marvelous film that examines the human spirit, Arrival feels like a thoughtful interpretation of realistic human response to aliens.
8 Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
1977
The legendary filmography of Stephen Spielberg includes quite a few alien movies, with E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial being by far the most famous. As great as E.T.’s family-friendly story is, it’s far from a realistic portrayal of alien life, especially when compared to its directorial sibling Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Close Encounters of the Third Kind revolves around a simple blue-collar worker whose life trajectory is forever changed by a close encounter with a UFO.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind conveys both the potential beauty and madness alien visitors could bring, turning Roy into an obsessive fanatic following his encounter, just like many real-life claimants of alien abduction do. The government’s attempts at communication and cover-ups in the film feel very true-to-life, whereas the presence of real-world mysteries like the missing ships of the Bermuda Triangle help connect the story further to real-life. Despite being a dreamier film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind is astonishingly realistic.
7 Nope
2022
Not every tale of aliens results in such warm, fuzzy feelings as Arrival, Contact, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind does, with Jordan Peele’s recent film Nope being a premiere example of realistic alien horror. The film revolves around a family business of horse ranchers that discover their property being used as a hunting ground for a mysterious flying saucer. The object turns out to be far more dangerous than suspected, but the starring siblings, played by Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer, make a vow to capture it on video.
Despite its unassuming name, Jean Jacket is one of the most terrifying alien entities in cinema history, and its full unfurled form is almost divine in its horrific Lovecraftian imagery that pushes the limits of human sensation. Stephen Yuen’s Jupe also plays a venture capitalist seeking to profit off the beat that feels all too true to life, owing to his survival of a chimp attack based on a real-life incident. From the human greed that drives the action to the incomprehensible terror of its alien, Nope is a triumph of extraterrestrial horror.
6 War Of The Worlds
2005
Stephen Spielberg’s aliens aren’t always as friendly as E.T., as proven by his overly-disparaged 2005 film War of the Worlds. Based on the famous H.G. Wells science fiction novel of the same name, the film describes humanity’s contact with an openly hostile invading alien force, capable of wiping out human civilization with their advanced technology. Tom Cruise stars as a simple dockworker and father trying to survive the hectic events from a boots-on-the-ground perspective.
In terms of all-out alien wars, it doesn’t get much more realistic than War of the Worlds, whose horrifying Martian invaders paint scenes of destruction comparable to real human warfare. The film is rooted in the wartime paranoia that ran rampant in American society following the September 11 terror attacks, further grounding the film in a dark reality. While the film makes a few concessions that feel very Hollywood, for the majority of its runtime, War of the Worlds could be studied as a simulation of actual alien attackers.
5 Fire In The Sky
1993
As realistic as some alien movies can get, it’s rare for a film to directly cite a real-world alleged alien abduction as inspiration. Fire in the Sky does just that, however, loosely basing itself off a book written by a supposed survivor of alien abduction called The Walton Experience. The film follows logger Travis Walton as he goes missing on the job, only to turn up later traumatized by the ordeal of his terrifying alien encounter.
What makes Fire in the Sky both so scary and realistic is the fact that it’s based on the real-life Walton’s alleged true experiences, making the gruesome experiments he suffers at the hands of his captors in the film all the more chilling. The film doesn’t go out of its way to inject some moral or false narrative into Walton’s tale, acting as a straightforward recollection of events, making it feel even more grounded and tangible. From the gut-wrenching realism of the abduction scenes to the heartbreaking reactions of Walton’s friends and family, Fire in the Sky is disturbingly real.
4 District 9
2009
District 9 twists the typical formula of alien contact with an interesting supposition that humanity would pose a bigger threat to aliens than the other way around. The film chronicles a higher-up in a weapons manufacturing company who seeks to exploit alien technology after a massive ship full of buglike beings, called “prawns”, lands in South Africa. Soon, the hapless Wikus finds himself embroiled in a bitter war against his own species as he slowly mutates into one of the extraterrestrial creatures.
Being a semi-found footage film, and chronicled with grounded shakycam when it does switch to non-diegetic perspectives, District 9 does a great job at pulling viewers into its gritty world. The discrimination the prawns face is a clear allegory for the real crimes of apartheid in South Africa, further drawing parallels between District 9 and the real world, both driven by human greed and fear. As one of the most plausible-feeling alien movies, it’s a shame District 9‘s obviously-teased sequel never manifested even 15 years later.
3 Dark Skies
2013
Similarly to Fire in the Sky, Dark Skies relies on real accounts of alien abduction to generate deep-pitted fear in its viewers. Whereas the former strove to be a faithful account of a singular story, the latter instead pulls inspiration from multiple accounts in order to craft the most deliberately horrifying tale it can. The film revolves around a family who quickly become haunted by an alien presence, culminating in a terrifying encounter with extraterrestrial life.
Dark Skies plays out more like a haunted house story than an alien story, but manages to feel disturbingly true to life in its depictions of alien activity. Real concepts like amnesia, sleep paralysis, and hysteria are all weaponized against the film’s hapless humans, who struggle to get out from under the shadow of their extraterrestrial tormentors. Considering the film’s Grey aliens are based on actual descriptions of alien visitors, Dark Skies might be one of the most accurate alien movies around.
2 2001: A Space Odyssey
1968
One of the most famous films of all time, let alone among Stanley Kubrick’s legendary movie catalog, 2001: A Space Odyssey still holds up today as one of the most breathtaking, and possibly accurate, depictions of human life. The film describes a long journey through space in order to find an alien artifact, the mysterious monolith, a massive black structure of vast cosmological importance. It’s up to the astronaut Dave to brave the dangers of his mission and ascend humanity to a new plane of being.
The interstellar travel depicted in 2001: A Space Odyssey, which came out a year before humanity walked on the moon for the first time, is so realistic that conspiracy theorists accused Kubrick of having a hand in fabricating the moon landing. Not only that, but the film’s predictions of A.I. have thus far been eerily prescient. As far as the aliens are concerned, it makes sense that an interstellar species advanced enough to cross the vast distances of space would be as god-like in power as the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey implies.
1 Cloverfield
2008
The monster in Cloverfield (2008).
Admittedly far less heady than 2001: A Space Odyssey, Cloverfield deserves more credit as an alien film that revitalized the found-footage horror genre. It’s easy to forget that the titular monster is indeed alien in origin, crash-landing on the planet in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it background details towards the end of the film. Cloverfield depicts a group of friends trying to find safety in the wake of a giant alien kaiju’s attack on New York City, dodging hysteria and destruction.
Matt Reeves’ mastery of found-footage editing and realistic cinéma vérité style makes Cloverfield almost seem like a documentary at times. While giant monsters are an inherently unrealistic premise, it’s hard to imagine a film that takes the concept more seriously as Cloverfield does, likely accurately conveying what such a disaster would look like in real life. Technically an alien movie, Cloverfield shouldn’t be discounted for its ability to bring a creature from another world to life without sacrificing realism.