Monster movies are one of the most popular sub-genres of horror, and there are numerous monster movies that absolutely should not go overlooked by horror fans. Monster movies can come in many different varieties, with the general concept being a story in which a small or large group of people find themselves under threat from an aggressive, carnivorous beast. Monster movies can focus upon animals found in the real world, fictional beasts from either Earth or other planets, or even extinct animals brought back to life in the modern world, but the common trait is their ability to scares audiences with the threat of a creature out to devour them.
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Naturally, monster movies live or die on the effectiveness of the monsters themselves, and horror fans know there are no shortage of great monster movies to be found with tremendous ability to terrorize characters and audiences alike. Here are 10 fantastic monster movies that horror movie lovers should definitely check out.
Cloverfield (2008)
Right before the found footage craze really took off with 2009’s Paranormal Activity, the found footage sub-genre got a memorable, virally marketed cross-pollination with the kaiju genre in 2008’s Cloverfield. Helmed by future director of The Batman Matt Reeves, Cloverfield centers on a group of young adults trying to flee New York City after a gigantic monster inexplicably arrives. Captured entirely on video camera footage, Cloverfield is a surprisingly visceral PG-13 monster movie affair (which is also greatly enhanced by the Blu-ray’s “Special Investigation Mode”), one which even gives audiences the vicarious fright of being devoured by the creature through one character’s unfortunate encounter with it while still filming. Fans of both kaiju and found footage horror movies will find plenty to enjoy in both from Cloverfield.
Dog Soldiers (2004)
The making of 2004’s Dog Soldiers was just as much of a battle for then fresh-director Neil Marshall to realize on a small budget as it is for the movie’s soldier protagonists, with the end result being an instant werewolf movie classic. Dog Soldiers follows a platoon of British soldiers sent a covert mission in the Scottish Highlands, only to find themselves seeking refuge in a farm house from a very unexpected werewolf attack. Dog Soldiers promises and delivers vicious, unrestrained werewolf action galore, and was instrumental in launching Marshall’s career as one of the great modern horror directors. Over 20 years since its release, Dog Soldiers stands as one of the best werewolf horror movies ever made.
Werewolves (2024)
Somewhat fittingly after Dog Soldiers became a werewolf classic 20 years earlier, 2024’s Werewolves arrived as easily the strongest werewolf-based horror movie since. Werewolves takes place in a world in which the annual “supermoon” triggers human transformations into ravenous werewolves, with the entire world hunkering down for the night while military personal monitor the inevitable outbreak. Amid the latest yearly werewolf rampage, Wesley Marshall (Frank Grillo) and a team of fellow scientists develop a drug dubbed “Moonscreen” to counter werewolf transformations. Werewolves puts a terrific monster movie spin on The Purge, with plenty of werewolf scares and action, a reliably gripping action hero performance by Frank Grillo, and some of the best practical effects in a monster movie in ages. Werewolves is the kind of horror movie that sneaks up on its target audience, and despite the brevity of its theatrical run, it is a must-see for horror and werewolf fans.
Godzilla Minus One (2023)
The world has seen Godzilla as a hero, an anti-hero, and a villain countless times, and rarely has any Godzilla movie leaned into the latter portrayal as emphatically and with such a genuinely scary portrayal as 2023’s Godzilla Minus One. Set in 1947 with Japan still recovering from its devastating nuclear defeat in World War II, the nation finds itself under an even greater threat with the towering monster Godzilla arriving to wreak apocalyptic havoc on Japan. Godzilla Minus One is the rare Godzilla movie in which the human characters are the heart of the story, with theme of survivor’s guilt heavily prominent in pilot Kลichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) still haunted by his previous encounter with Godzilla that resulted in the deaths of his fellow soldiers. At the same time, Godzilla Minus One has some of the most unforgettable destructive set pieces with its titular kaiju, including a Jaws-worthy boat chase, a climactic battle between Godzilla and the Japanese armed forces on the high seas, and by far the most breathtaking and devastating depiction of Godzilla’s atomic breath ever put to film.
Tremors (1990)
The Tremors franchise has had an epic run of seven movies, one TV series, and ongoing discussions of future plans, but it all goes back to the 1990 original Tremors that first introduced the world to the carnivorous subterranean sandworms known as Graboids. When disgruntled handy men Val (Kevin Bacon) and Earl (Fred Ward) try to move out of their rut in the desert community of Perfection, Nevada and its sprawling population of 11, their trip is interrupted by the emergence of man-eating sandworms in the valley that grab their prey from under the ground to devour them, hence their given name of Graboids. Tremors is a horror-comedy with plenty of old fashioned monster movie thrills, great buddy chemistry between Bacon and the late Ward, and a career-defining breakout performance by Michael Gross as the eventual face of the Tremors franchise, Burt Gummer. Even over three decades after its release, Tremors has aged phenomenally and is still fantastic monster movie fun.
Aliens (1986)
While Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi-horror classic Alien introduced the Xenomorph as one of the greatest of all movie monsters, James Cameron’s 1986 sequel Aliens was the movie that fully unleashed their potential. Set 57 years after Alien, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is awakened from hypersleep and recruited to return to the human colony on the planet LV-426 to investigate the colony’s sudden radio silence, which Ripley knows all-too-well is the work of surviving Xenomorphs. Weaver’s iconic performance as Ripley is at its peak in Aliens, while Cameron dials the quantity and terror of the Xenomorphs up to eleven while making a seamless transition from the horror tone of Alien to an action-horror-sci-fi hybrid in Aliens. With its big revelation of the Xenomorph Queen and consistent thrills and chills, Aliens is quite arguably the movie that has defined the essence of the entire Alien franchise.
Predator (1987)
Arnold Schwarzenegger embodied the epitome of an invincible action hero in the ’80s, and it took a hunter from the stars to finally give him a real challenge in 1987’s Predator. Arnold Schwarzenegger portrays Dutch, a special ops soldier leading his unit on a mission in Central America, with the group suddenly finding themselves being hunted by a terrifying alien visitor able to mask itself from view with an invisibility cloak. Predator pulls the same trick as Aliens in blending action and horror, and even with the movie’s reputation as the ultimate monument to ’80s machismo, Predator is a spine-tingling and dreadfully suspenseful cat-and-mouse game of soldiers being picked off one by one by a formidable alien adversary, brought to life by the late Kevin Peter Hall with the help of Stan Winston’s iconic design of the Predator. With the Predator franchise entering a genuine renaissance under director Dan Trachtenberg’s multiple Predator projects, the original Predator stands tall as a classic monster movie.
IT: Chapter One & IT: Chapter Two (2017 & 2019)
The second adaptation of Stephen King’s acclaimed horror novel IT (following the popular 1990 mini-series), Andy Muschietti’s adaptation of IT is technically two movies, but together they tell a singular story of a group of devoted friends known as “The Losers Club”. IT: Chapter One focuses upon the Losers as children in 1989, battling the terrifying supernatural entity Pennywise the Clown (Bill Skarsgรฅrd) as he preys upon the children of Derry, Maine. IT: Chapter Two jumps to the Losers re-uniting as adults in 2016 to defeat the returning Pennywise for good. Skarsgรฅrd’s maniacally chilling performance as Pennywise alone makes both IT movies stupendously scary horror films, while Muschietti’s direction and the performances of both iterations of the Losers as friends with eternal camaraderie make the IT films together both one collective horror movie tale (which Muschietti has spoken about releasing as a singular ultimate cut), and one of the best Stephen King adaptations ever produced.
Jurassic Park (1993)
Audiences had seen dinosaurs on the big and small screens before, but they never felt as real as they did in Steven Spielberg’s 1993 mega-hit Jurassic Park. Based upon Michael Crichton’s eponymous novel, Jurassic Park centers on an island theme park filled with dinosaurs brought back to life through cloning technology, only for the first trial run of the park’s tour to go horribly wrong with the dinosaurs unleashed upon the island. There are plenty of reasons why Jurassic Park became both the biggest box office hit ever at the time and why it spawned a still ongoing franchise, but principal among them is that the dinosaurs themselves represent a milestone in visual effects. Utterly convincing in their creation through both animatronics and early but well ahead of its time CGI, the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park make it a monster movie classic, a distinction secured single-handedly by the T-Rex’s terrifying escape from its pen that remains the dino’s best on-screen moment ever.
Jaws (1975)
The fear of the unknown is one found in abundance in the depths of the ocean, and Steven Spielberg’s break-out directorial outing Jaws plays upon that fear to outstanding effect. Based upon Peter Benchley’s eponymous novel, Jaws centers on the New England community of Amity Island finding its local waters plagued by a man-eating shark, with police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) uniting with marine biologist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and fisherman Quint (Robert Shaw) to stop the carnivorous fish. Jaws was nothing short of a horror story to make for Spielberg and everyone involved, but with the mechanical shark’s constant malfunctioning forcing Spielberg to keep it mostly out of sight until the end, Jaws arguably set the template for every future monster movie to follow in building up the threat of its beast for maximum scares. A key part of its legacy is the role played by Jaws in establishing the modern summer movie season, and with the movie officially celebrating its 50th birthday, there has never been a better time to revisit arguably the most quintessential monster movie of all time that is Jaws.
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Image Credit: Marvel Comics
