io9
Welcome back to Horrorhead, a fortnightly column where we explore the intersection of horror and scifi. For every bland, friendly Star Trek alien with a crinkle-cut french fry nose or waffle forehead, there are dozens of insanely scary aliens that could rip your face off. Certain alien characteristics, whether physical or psychological, are enough to put you into "no I will not jump during this dark corridor scene - shit I am now jumping" mode. But what exactly makes an alien truly horrifying, as opposed to just, you know, alien? Aided by Hollywood movie history, we've put together a definitive set of rules for making aliens that are guaranteed to freak you out — or at least make you queasy.
1. Double mouth, or double-wide mouth. (See: Alien)
As the Alien series taught us, there's nothing scarier than a really long, giant toothy mouth — especially if there's a second long, toothy mouth inside it. But the long, toothy mouth rule shows up in a lot of alien movies. In Slither, for example, a guy is taken over by an alien and one of the first things it does is elongate his mouth so that it practically stretches to his ears on one side. (Lopsided elongated mouths are a bonus — lopsided is always scary.)
Corollary: Drool
A scary alien must drool. Again, we know this from the Alien series where the drool flows like water. But since Ridley Scott first gave us full frontal drool in the first Alien flick, drool has been the sign of scary for all aliens. It says "out of control." Now, of course, we cannot imagine any monster without drool. See, for instance, Beowulf, where the monster's drool is one of the first 3D effects. And there's 3D drool coming up in Journey to the Center of the Earth, too. Dinosaur drool!
2. Collective Consciousness (See: Borg from Star Trek)
One of the scariest and most alien things we can imagine is a species that has collective consciousness, or group think. All their minds are connected together like a bunch of little networked Linux boxes, rapidly churning through all that knowledge to figure out exactly how to kill you. Plus, collectively conscious creatures can more easily coordinate an attack, because they are all in mental communication with each other all the time. And they might absorb you — think how scary it was the first time you saw the Borg chanting: "You will be assimilated." 
3. Looks Exactly Like a Human (See: Invasion of the Body Snatchers)
Somehow it's scarier when an alien looks exactly like a human, or is camouflaged as one. Even though Men in Black wasn't exactly scary, there was something uncanny when the alien took off its human skin and revealed its true face. And of course one of the reasons Hollywood has remade Invasion of the Body Snatchers four times in the past 50 years (Invasion was the most recent one) is that it's so freakin creepy that the aliens look perfectly human — except for the fact that they have no emotion. We will not, however, speak of the human-camo farting aliens from Doctor Who.
4. Treats Humans the Way Humans Treat Animals (See: Predator)
The infamous Twilight Zone tale "To Serve Man" packs all its punch into one single idea: the aliens have a cookbook ALL ABOUT EATING HUMANS! They look at us the way we look at chickens! The same idea lurks at the heart of popular franchise Predator, where the whole conceit is that the alien has just come to Earth on a safari to hunt human game. Where's the respect? 
5. Polymorphous (See: The Thing)
If there's anything scarier than an alien that looks just like a human, it's an alien that can look like whatever it wants. Although the shiny, pretty aliens in Abyss wind up being our friends, they are super scary at first because they can morph into any shape they want. And of course what makes the thing in John Carpenter's version of The Thing so scary is that it can turn any body part into chunks of alien — human heads sprout legs, blood jumps up and runs around the room, people grow dog heads. Whoa. Same goes for the aliens in my personal favorite alien movie, Society, where a bunch of rich Beverly Hills types turn out to be polymorphous creatures who love to have giant orgies where they merge into a big room full of goo and eat humans.
6. Wants to Mate With Humans to Produce Scary Hybrid Offspring (See: Species)
The fear of an alien being who wants to mate with you probably goes back thousands of years, but in terms of current pop culture we can probably trace it back to H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu stories of the 1920s. Remember, one of the scariest things about Cthulhu's spawn is that they are mating with humans, producing strange, fishy-looking humans who eventually go back to the sea. Combining this rule with rule 3 (looks human) is the Species franchise, where a super-hot alien lady goes around humping unsuspecting men for their seed and then killing them in flagrante delicto.
7. Buglike (See: Independence Day, Starship Troopers)
Buglike aliens are a staple of the genre. Even the aliens of Alien are buglike, with their hard carapaces. Bugs are so scary-looking already, and we suspect they may also participate in rule 2, having collective consciousness. In fact, "buglike" has become shorthand (sometimes lazy shorthand) for "scary alien," which is why you see so many depictions of aliens with feelers or antennae on their heads. Bug aliens show up in some of the most generic scifi flicks like Independence Day and Starship Troopers. But there are buggy aliens in more highbrow places too, like the Ender's Game series, where Earth is battling (and ultimately genociding) a buglike race. 
Comments
correct me if i'm wrong but isn't alien the only movie that was actually scary referenced in this list of rules for making scary aliens?
i'm confused by the fear of aliens wanting to mate with you. i mean i understand the fear of death afterward, that makes sense, but the actual mating part?
Good list, but one little nitpick: The aliens in The Abyss aren't shapechangers. The 'tentacle' is an artificial construct that the alien is using, not the alien itself.
Tetra...that's because the only thing scarier to nerds than an alien is a vagina.
I think "To Serve Man" is a Twilight Zone, not an Outer Limits Episode.
Also, I maintain that eyelessness is the most frightening characteristic of the Aliens series xenomorphs, not mouthiness.
Oh, and yeah, sorry--the Deep Ones are not the same things as Cthulhu's spawn.
@braak: i think you could take 'eyelessness' a step further and posite that the most frightening characterisitc of the xenomorphs was how incredably perceptive they are without having any physically apparent sensory organs.
human beings are already aware of thier acute physical dissadvantage over other species that are already on earth. we remain confidant in our superiority because of our ability to take the more limited information of our surroundings our sense provide us with and form a more cohesive picture of what that information means based on our perception alone. the aliens were simply better at that than we are, which is what made them so frightening.
Zeroth rule: Don't actually show the alien or if you must only tiny glimpses never in full.
@tetracycloide: Interesting. I'd actually suggest that you could conflate a lot of the characteristics here into a sort of supercategory--I don't know what you'd call it--where some of the scariest things represent a kind of discord between the familiar and the unfamiliar.
So, eyelessness because the aliens clearly behave as though they are not blind. Even the Bodysnatchers aliens and the Borg, part of what might make them creepy (assuming that someone was actually once creeped out by the Borg) is that bizarre behavior--that unnatural uniformity of movement. The bug in the Edgar-suit (again, stretching credulity and suggesting that someone found Men In Black scary) exactly because it wasn't a very good Edgar-suit.
I once wrote a paper about the Uncanny Valley, and how it applies onstage; I think there's merit to applying some of the ideas of cognitive dissonance to traditionally horrifying monsters.
braak's right. "To Serve Man" was a classic Twilight Zone episode, not Outer Limits.
Outer Limits?
*sigh*
@gybryant: Really? OK, sorry -- I've only read the story in an "Amazing Stories" anthology and thus didn't know the exact TV reference. Fixing!!
Oh, and the episode was called "To Serve Man" - not how to serve man. Trivia? Sure. But this is sci-fi 101. Jeebus.
@braak: Actually, they are. If you read "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," where we get the whole history of sexytime between Cthulhu's spawn and humans, the main character even yells the "Cthulhu ftagn" stuff before he turns into a Deep One and slithers into the sea.
@gybryant: Dude, you didn't know the "Amazing Stories" reference so get off my ass.
@aak7268: Exactly. The order of this list should have been 1. Vagina then 2. Insects. Giant bugs never stop being scary.
And it leaves Alien out of the impregnate category when that's what humans were used for there. It combines insects, drool and a rape fear.
You left out Teeth. Lots and lots of teeth. And goo. Lots and lots of goo. Although teeth is someone included in the mouth part, I find that the number of teeth is more important than the size of the mouth. If the creature can't open its mouth but has several hundred teeth jabbing in all directions it would freak me the hell out in a dark alley.
Goo could also fall under the "Drool" category, but that means it comes from a MOUTH. Gooey secretions or environment will do. Anything that looks like it could be snot, spit, or worse will do.
@Annalee Newitz: It's ok, last night on American Idol, Randy said that Simple Minds' "Don't You Forget About Me" was an INXS song.
Oh god, I just publicly admitted that I watch American Idol.
@Annalee Newitz: Ugh! Someone has not been watching the requisite number of hours of SciFi Channel's holiday Twilight Zone marathons. And you call yourself a science fiction enthusiast! For shame!
Also, I don't find collective unconcious to be all that scary. Now mandatory assimalatiion is terrifying, but collective unconcious all by itself? Meh. The Psmiths aren't that scary.
@Annalee Newitz: Hmm. Unfortunately, I don't have the texts in front of me, so I can't prove it, but I seem to remember that throughout the Cthulhu mythos, the descriptions of the religious and social structure of the Deep Ones was at least implicitly different from the society of Cthulhu's spawn. My mind is hung up on the relationship between Dagon and Cthulhu, here.
Still, I could be mixing my sources up, so I'll concede this one.
@Ghede: Speak for yourself. I find Morrisey terrifying.
Wait, what?
You know what would make a great movie? Some really, really scary aliens who are just good guys that happen to drool, have double mouths and be shapechangers. That wouldn't be a punchline stinger at the end, it would be apparent throughout, even to the characters.
IT WOULD BE ABOUT RACISM GEDDIT??
"We will not, however, speak of the human-camo farting aliens from Doctor Who."
Though Anthony Stewart Head's Headmaster in season 2 was a good Who-vian example of this particular rule. Especially because no flatulence or blue LED lighting effects were involved at all.
@zeppelined: Ouch. I meant to say Collective Conciousness.
Point gotten, and laughed at.
@Annalee Newitz & @braak:
Since we're already being nit-picky: ;)
The frog-like "deep ones" from "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" were the servants/worshipers of Cthulhu, not his offspring. They did spawn with human beings, though, as did a number of "monstrous others" in H.P. Lovecraft's stories. (Lovecraft himself never even wrote about Cthulhu's spawn- that was an elaboration by other authors.)
@braak: I would agree Braak. Eyelessness is just inherently creepy, be it in aliens or people.
As far as I am concerned though, the only sure fire way to make something "scary" is to have Geiger do it. Everything else is either a rip-off, an almagamation, or a synthasizing of one of his creepy ideas.
Not to say that others have not made great aliens, but nothing has been scary like a Geiger alien.
@Jack: Oh good point, good point.
@Ghede: Actually, I was making a Smiths/Psmiths joke. Though the thought of millions of Smiths fans creating a "Collective Unconsciousness" is pretty good too!
What about a blue scaled bipedal with 8 pointy appendages coming out of her head who uses them to poke out people's eyes and eat them?
I'm just chimin' in to say we need more horrorhead on IO9. Or a fantasyhead.
Or any kind of head, actually.
I'm so tired of the aliens who look like us / shapechanger cliche. I think most sci-fi movies or tv series use this as what they think is a clever way to avoid special effects expenses. I was so very disappointed when the cylons looked human. I miss the robotic ones. They're far scarier.
The whole concept of not being able to identify the enemy because they look like us is so overdone it's boring. Please, won't someone use the left side of their brain and come up with the next future cliche?
Who needs Aliens when you have Homosapiens? The most horrible beast I can think of is man. What's more horrible than a bunch of Nazis pushing people into an oven or Islamo terrorists cutting off someone's head? Humans are the standard by which all monsters are judged.
@Jeff-Minor: What's more horrible than a bunch of Nazis pushing people into an oven? A bunch of eyeless Nazis pushing people into an oven.
All due respect the horror that is mankind, no matter how bad a thing is, a creative mind can make it worse.
@Annalee Newitz: Okay, so, yes. The Deep Ones worship Cthulhu, as any sensible species might, but there seems to be consistent evidence that they are not the same as Cthulhu's spawn. In Call of Cthulhu, his spawn are referred to as cosmic octopi (while the Deep Ones are consistently referred to as frog-fish hybrids), trapped and undead along with Cthulhu in the city of R'lyeh (while, again, the Deep Ones remain active, and have built their own cities throughout the seas).
In addition, At the Mountains of Madness, which relates the story of the war between the Elder Things and the Star-Spawn of Cthulhu, describes the spawn as being made of some kind of cosmic, malleable matter. This is in direct contrast to the Deep Ones which are, for better or worse, clearly biologcals in the same fashion that the Elder Things are.
Not to nitpick, or anything. Well, I guess, yes to nitpick, but what the hell else am I supposed to do all day? Actually write something original?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!
@Annalee Newitz: You're right - I didn't know it was a short story first. Thanks for the info. It's probably a pretty good indicator that I shouldn't try to pass myself off as an authority with such fundamental gaps in my knowledge.
Jeff-Minor is right - it's probably more scary to think of aliens treating us the way we treat other humans rather than the way we treat animals.
And of course countless sci-fi stories have drawn parallels between hypertechnological aliens arriving and performing genocide with European colonialism in Africa and the Americas, etc.
Scary aliens should have grotesque vaguely sexual features, like the Predator's vagina face or tentacles for phalluses. Because sex is scary.
You guys forgot flying aliens, Like the Night seeing hammerheaded Pterodactyl like things in Pitch Black.
I am scared of no vagina.
Unless it has teeth...
@medeasin: If you say so. I've never seen a vagina that looked like the Predator's face.
If I did see one...well, that's a girl I wouldn't go out with twice.
@Annalee Newitz:
How can Annalee be an editor here if she hasn't even seen one of the most famous sci fi stories out there?
I mean, "To Serve Man" is a classic, and anyone who fancies thereselves a true fan of science fiction should have seen it.
You forgot one of the most important, scariest alien features of all - BIG GIANT BRAINS. If Americans are terrified of anything, it's brains. And I'm not just talking about the kind you eat. Forbidden Planet, countless Twilight Zone and Outer Limits episodes, every 50s B flick. You can't beat big brains for scary.
@ideaman2020 & braak: i think you're both full of it.
i'd like to prove this by transitivity if i may.
neither of you would turn down oral.
mouths have teeth.
therefor, neither of you would turn down sex even the girl had teeth in her vagina.
Congrats on attracting the nitpicky dickheads with this one.
I remember being creeped out by Childhood's End when I was a kid because of the whole collective unconcious/they look like us thing. The children would have been even creepier if they drooled too.
Regarding the wide/double mouth rule:
Whilst these may be good for visceral scares, what really scares me is motivation. I'm scared by Xenomorphs because they are so utterly alien - not in appearance, not in capacities, but in motivations. They're intelligent, we know that, but their actual motivations are alien.
Motives we either cannot understand or cannot even discern scare me more than any gore or physical weirdness.
Oh, as for the Borg, they scared the hell at me at first. When they got a voice, a figurehead/leader, etc., then they stopped scaring me. They were scary because they were essentially an elemental force, not anything you could rationalize with.