By Joshua Tyler
| Published
Some of the greatest sci-fi movies of all time revolve around humans in a desperate struggle for survival. Sometimes we’re fighting time-traveling robots or out-of-control plagues. Occasionally, we end up in a post-apocalyptic wasteland fighting ourselves.
What really brings humans together, though, is a battle against an outside force. All the better if those invaders are from the stars. This is the definitive ranking of the best alien invasion movies of all time.
13. Lifeforce
The 1985 movie Lifeforce begins with a naked girl in a box, and it ends with a love scene so explosive it destroys a cathedral and sends a race of alien vampires running for their lives. In between those bookends, Lifeforce is one of the wildest, most unique, most incredible science fiction movies almost no one has seen.
A mission to explore Halley’s Comet results in an alien vampire who looks exactly like one of the most beautiful women in the world wandering around our planet without clothes, luring men in, and sucking the life out of them. At one point, she briefly takes the form of Star Trek star Patrick Stewart, and despite now being a bald academic, she’s so alluring that people still want to make out with her, at their peril.
Movies like Species and Under the Skin owe everything to Lifeforce, the original super hot alien babe sucks the life out of the world movie. Those copies are just copies. They can’t hold a candle to Lifeforce.
12. The Avengers
The 2012 culmination of Marvel’s phase 1, The Avengers, is one of the best superhero movies ever made, but it’s also entirely about an alien invasion. Loki shows up, opens a hole in the sky, and invites an alien army to pour directly into midtown Manhattan like it’s a curbside delivery.
The Chitauri scream between skyscrapers, raining down death as civilians run and buildings collapse. The only way to stop them is if Earth’s mightiest heroes come together as a team and fight them off.
The Avengers is the movie that made Marvel into the modern-day juggernaut it is, and it’s built entirely on the backs of Iron Man dogfighting alien attackers, Captain America commanding street-level resistance, and Hulk unleashing the full force of his anger on giant, alien beasts.
11. Little Shop of Horrors
In Little Shop of Horrors, Rick Moranis stars as Seymour Krelborn, a meek florist whose life changes when he discovers a strange plant he names Audrey II. The plant brings fame and fortune to the failing flower shop until Seymour learns it only grows when fed human blood.
Voiced by Levi Stubbs, Audrey II is an alien planet that has come to earth, but not an invader with a master plan to conquer us. Instead, it’s a manipulative alien parasite with ambition.
As the plant grows, so does its appetite and its influence, pushing Seymour to kill in exchange for success, love, and validation, including a chance with Ellen Greene’s Audrey. The real threat isn’t an alien invasion, it’s alien temptation. Audrey II’s only goal is to grow bigger, spread farther, and use human weakness to do it.
10. Signs
M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs is an alien invasion from the perspective of a normal family, and the big global consequences are only in the background. That allows it to be about more than just aliens. It’s about belief, loss, and the terrifying silence of a God who might not be there.
Mel Gibson’s Graham Hess, once a minister, has abandoned his faith after the tragic death of his wife. The alien invasion is the crucible; it drives his family into corners, tests their survival, and eventually forces him to confront whether life is chaos or design. It doesn’t end with humanity defeating aliens, it ends with one man putting his collar back on, embracing faith not because he got proof, but because he chose to trust again.
9. Predator
In Predator, Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as Dutch, the leader of an elite mercenary team sent into the Central American jungle on what’s supposed to be a routine rescue mission. Alongside him are Carl Weathers as Dillon, Jesse Ventura, Bill Duke, Sonny Landham, and Shane Black. Each is introduced like an action-movie archetype before the movie starts tearing those archetypes apart.
One by one, the team is hunted by an unseen alien warrior using cloaking technology, advanced weapons, and brutal tactics. This isn’t a takeover attempt, like most alien invasions.
The Predator is a lone trophy hunter on Earth purely for sport, seeking worthy opponents to kill and collect. As the squad is wiped out, the film strips away guns, gear, and bravado until it becomes a primal duel between Dutch and a creature that respects only strength, cunning, and survival.
8. Superman 2
Shot back-to-back with Superman: The Movie, the sequel, Superman 2, manages to exceed the groundbreaking original. It does that by pitting Superman against a trio of super-powered alien invaders from his own planet of Krypton, resulting in an eye-popping super-powered slugfest with special effects so amazing for the time that some still hold up today.
The heart of Superman 2 is the moral dilemma: godlike power versus human happiness. It treats Superman as a man making painful, adult choices. Superman has already given up his powers, leaving humanity defenseless. Realizing the cost of his choice, he reclaims his abilities, confronts the invaders, and ultimately restores both order and his secret identity.
It’s a great alien-invasion movie and one of the best superhero movies ever made.
7. They Live
They Live centers on Roddy Piper’s Nada, a transient who arrives in Los Angeles looking for work after a string of bad luck. Nada investigates a nearby church, gets caught up in a wild late-night police raid, and walks away with a mysterious pair of sunglasses that allow him to see the world for what it really is, a hotbed of political propaganda built on complacency and conformity so the aliens can quietly take over and throttle Earth’s resources for their own personal gain.
Nada’s glasses reveal not only the aliens but the true messages hidden in the magazines, billboards, and television shows we all watch. They Live is a biting commentary on the way we’re all manipulated by mass media, and in that sense, it may be one of the most important and eye-opening movies ever made.
As the film reaches its climax, it reveals just how far the conspiracy against the masses goes, and at this point, there’s no turning back. It’s up to Nada to figure out how to wake everybody up, even if it costs him his life.
6. Edge of Tomorrow
What if the only way to save humanity from an alien invasion was to kill yourself repeatedly until you found the right answers? That’s the setup for 2014’s Edge of Tomorrow, starring one of potentially thousands of Tom Cruises as he wakes up repeating the same day until he nails the perfect combination of allies and strategic maneuvers to win the war.
Considered one of the best action films of the 2010s, Edge of Tomorrow moves at a breakneck pace because it can afford to. The first-act exposition keeps resetting, expanding slightly each time until our hero learns to survive the nightmare that’s been forced on him. Each loop inches him closer to completing his mission, but at the cost of dying over and over again.
5. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
One of the best remakes hit screens in 1978: Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Even if you’ve never seen the 1956 original or its other remakes, the basics of the plot are easy to swallow: aliens invade Earth by replacing humans with emotionless duplicates. The catch is that the humans must be asleep for the process to work, a simple twist that turns every yawn into dramatic tension.
Donald Sutherland leads the cast of famous sci-fi stars, including Veronica Cartwright, Jeff Goldblum, and Spock himself, Leonard Nimoy. Our heroes try to uncover the mystery of the pod people, but that soon takes a backseat to trying to survive another night.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers is treated as a very serious story where the stakes are life and death for the entire human race. That’s refreshing compared to modern films winking at the audience every twenty minutes with a tension-deflating joke. The result is one of the most impressive remakes of all time and remains a must-watch for any sci-fi or horror fan today
4. Independence Day
Independence Day is your classic alien invasion story, but with the best CGI that 1996 has to offer. This was years after Jurassic Park, so it’s pretty damn good.
A powerful alien force has appeared over the skies of Earth with the mission to completely annihilate the planet over the Fourth of July weekend. They start by blowing up some of our best buildings in spectacular fashion. A ragtag group of people from Earth works together to stop the destruction of the planet in a last-ditch effort.
Bill Pullman gives one of the best speeches ever as our president, Will Smith gives a performance so fun it turned him into a megastar, and the rest of the cast then totally matches it every second they’re on screen. No alien invasion movie is bigger, crazier, or more fun than this one.
3. War of the Worlds
The world has seen numerous adaptations of HG Wells’ classic alien-invasion novel, both before and after the 1953 release of producer George Pal’s version, yet none have done it better. Especially not that Steven Spielberg version. Sorry, Dakota Fanning.
The movie takes the book that invented alien invasion stories and contemporizes it, setting the War of the Worlds in the 1950s. It also changes the alien ships from Tripod walkers into sleek, floating ships with heat-spitting cobra heads.
The movie’s plan was originally to stick with tripods, but they eventually went with something that was more feasible for the era’s limited practical effects. The change gives this version of the story a uniquely iconic look all its own, and the movie remains as effectively tense and suspenseful now as it ever was.
War of the Worlds holds up in a way few other movies this old do. The cinematography is still beautiful, the aliens are still scary, and the story is still haunting. It’s also a perfect window into 1950s America, complete with the innocence of weekly square dances and the hard-edged determination of soldiers who’d just survived a world war and now found themselves in another one.
2. The Thing
1982’s The Thing is the gold standard of graphic sci-fi horror, an alien-invasion film where every grotesque transformation feels like a practical-effects masterclass in nightmare fuel.
Unlike some of the bigger, more bombastic entries on this list, The Thing takes place in a more intimate setting. With people trapped in a remote outpost, and a creature from another world loose on the inside, mimicking and killing them.
John Carpenter doesn’t settle for simple jump scares; he unleashes a parasite that rips through flesh, bursts out of chests, and reshapes bodies into twisted parodies of life. Dogs split open into writhing masses of tentacles, heads sprout legs and scuttle across the floor, and human bodies melt and fuse in ways that are as mesmerizing as they are revolting.
What makes it unforgettable is the sheer creativity of the terror, shot with brutal clarity. The Antarctic isolation only magnifies the terror, making every reveal hit harder. The Thing is a relentless catalog of the most inventive, character drama, and alien imagery sci-fi has ever dared to put on screen.
1. Arrival
In Arrival, mysterious ships invade Earth’s airspace, land, and then just sort of sit there. It’s an invasion, but one without any violence, and humans are left trying to figure out what’s going on. What’s going on will change everything about the way humanity views the universe, and also maybe the way the movie’s viewers do, too.
Amy Adams plays Louise Banks, an expert linguist who has tragically lost her daughter to an illness. She’s teamed with Ian Donnelly, played by Jeremy Renner, and the two are tasked with figuring out why the ships are there and finding some way to communicate with the beings inside.
Amy Adams is brilliant in the role, and we learn about these aliens and their language right along with her. We go through the pain of losing her daughter and find, along with her, the solace in understanding someone else for the first time. The alien’s invasion becomes a deep exploration of how our communication shapes our thinking.
It’s one of the best movies of the past ten years, a totally unique take on what might happen if visitors from space show up on our doorstep. Though it contains no battle sequences or threats of annihilation, it’s the best alien invasion movie of all time.