Every Alien Franchise Movie Ranked by Scariness (Including Romulus)

Alien: Romulus is now on streaming, making the complete set of Alien movies available for home viewing, just in time for the Halloween season! Romulus has proven to be a successful step forward for the Alien franchise, taking in over $350 million at the box office, earning acclaim from critics, and both old and new fans re-invested in the Alien series.

Now it’s time for Alien fans to update their rankings – and this time we’re going to look at where Alien: Romulus fits within the hierarchy of ‘scariest Alien films.’ Check out that list, below!

Videos by ComicBook.com

NOTE: The Alien vs. Predator movies are not counted in these rankings. Only the films in the Alien series.

Alien: Resurrection

Alien: Resurrection has become something of a kooky fan-favorite entry of the Alien series. Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet and writer Joss Whedon hardly feel like they’re taking any of the Alien franchise history or brand seriously, with this weird story of Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley being cloned into a Human/Xenomorph hybrid, at a space lab where (surprise!) things go horribly wrong and xenomorphs run rampant. Alien: Resurrection is more weird than scary, and almost every death scene evokes a laugh – right down to “The Newborn” hybrid creature getting sucked through a bullet-sized hole into the vacuum of space.

Alien: Resurrection gets just one trophy for its freaky underwater chase sequence. Xenomorphs are somehow even more terrifying in shark mode.

Alien 3

Alien 3 is often ranked at the bottom of the pile in terms of quality – wth good reason. Even a remarkable director like David Fincher couldn’t save this film from the years of development hells and revisions it had been through – nor was he yet fully capable of pulling off a big-budget franchise sequel. That all said, Alien 3 has mainly achieved cult status because it still manages to accomplish some frightening scares and kills – including one of the more memorable “boss battle” finales – while having a grittier dystopian tone than any of the other films.

Ironically enough, the most iconic image of terror in the entire Alien franchise (see above) belongs to Alien 3, proving that while it might have been low heat, Fincher was still cooking.

Prometheus

Prometheus is a strange case of a film that gets scarier as it ages. At first, Ridley Scott’s pivot into a whole new, larger mythology of how the xenomorphs came to be was jarring, and a lot of fans were satisfied with the official (but very indirect) prequel storyline. However, the Prometheus sequel Alien: Covenant further connected the story of the Engineers and their bio-weapon to the legacy of xenomorph infestation and havoc, and Alien: Romulus has made it a game-changing new piece of the franchisee storyline. Now, viewed in retrospect, Prometheus becomes a dramatically ironic tale of a doomed crew looking for god, and instead finding doom as their answer.

It’s still a little too preachy to be “scary,” but upon re-watch its chilling to know how screwed the Prometheus crew was the moment they landed. The prequel also has one of THE most gnarly sequences in the franchise, as Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) undergoes a nightmare C-section ‘birthing’ to escape xenomorph infection.

Alien: Romulus

Alien: Romulus Director Fede Álvarez is an unabashed student of the game when it comes to the Alien franchise, and his entry is pumped full head nods and odes to the entire franchise that preceded it. It should be no surprise then that Alien: Romulus lands where it does on the list: it is a pretty good showcase of everything the Alien franchise has done to scare viewers, with a few novel additions of its own. It must be acknowledged that Romulus also hooked an entire new generation (Z) of Alien fans, who never really got to see the classic version of the franchise on the big screen – and now can’t forget “The Offspring” that haunts their dreams…

Aliens

Aliens feels more and more like an odd detour that the franchise took. James Cameron was clearly more interested in crafting an action-thriller version of the mythos, after Ridley Scott has broken through with his isolation survival-horror space nightmare. Cameron puts on a masterclass of how to craft a suspenseful, edge-of-your-seat action-thriller ride from the moment Ripley and a crew of marines touchdown on LV-426.

The Hitchcockian approach to scare sequences (Ripley and Newt ambushed by a facehugger; the motion sensor radar sequences) and twists like the climatic reveal of the Xenomorph Queen and its final battle with Ripley, remain classic moments in terror. All in all, you can call it an action film – so long as you call Aliens one of the most thrilling and scary “action films” ever made.

Alien: Covenant

Taking a big (personal) swing here, but Alien: Covenant is low-key one of the most underrated entries in the franchise. It’s also one of the scariest. Covenant is Ridley Scott balancing perfectly between the header ideas and deeper mythos of Prometheus, and the more traditional formula of Xenomorphs and mad robots that Alien was built on. Covenant makes everything from cryogenic sleep to planetary exploration into big scare and/or horror moments; the “Neomorphs” and “Protomorph” creatures were savage variants on the Xenomorph design, and the kills are some of the most frightening and violent ones in the series.

However, what really elevates Covenant is Michael Fassbender’s freaky dual performance as androids David and Walter – and David fully graduating to the greatest (non-alien) villain in the franchise, during the chilling twist ending.

Alien

The classic that started it all is still the scariest of them all. Now granted, it may be hard for modern audiences to look at the modest-budget ($11M), 1970s-era visuals of Alien and its titular creature and think it registered on the same level of horror as today’s films. That said, credit must be given where credit is due: Ridley Scott’s Alien re-opened an entire lane of sci-fi, creature-feature b-movies, and created an entire artistic wave of nightmarish creature design inspired by the work of Swiss artist H.R. Giger. Alien also inspired another 45 years of Alien Universe films and stories – and you don’t do that without touching a deep, primal, fear that viewers can’t help but revisit.

Alien movies are streaming on Disney+ and Hulu.