15 Best Alien Invasion Movies Ever Made, Ranked

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Ever since H.G. Wells released "War of the Worlds" in 1898, popular culture has been fascinated by alien invasion stories. For over a century, we've seen the genre transform from speculative sci-fi literature into massive blockbusters helmed by some of our biggest working directors. It's all in service of quenching a certain curiosity about what it would look like for the human race to find out we're not alone, while simultaneously discovering that we are almost certainly out of our depth in trying to survive the unthinkable. It's an idea that feels even more pertinent as the government continually alludes to classified intel regarding the existence of UFOs, or as they're now more officially known, UAPs. 

Cinema has long been interested in aliens of all kinds, as evidenced by our list of the 50 best alien movies ever. This list is a little more specific: We're looking for the best alien invasion movies, which necessitates a few ground rules for the entries. For starters, the aliens must generally be hostile, looking to exterminate or take over humanity. To that end, the film must include a true invasion — characters must be trying to survive the arrival of a fleet of extraterrestrials that have brought the means and firepower necessary to seize the planet. 

When it comes to the human race confronting their own mortality in the face of insurmountable, otherworldly odds, these are the best alien invasion movies.

Sometimes there's nothing more satisfying than a movie that commits to its rock-solid gimmick, and that's what you get with "No One Will Save You." This almost entirely dialogue-free alien-invasion movie about an isolated local pariah, played with committed, expressive physicality by Kaitlyn Dever, is clever and thrilling in its reimagining of familiar alien-movie iconography, relying exclusively on visual communication.

People may remember "No One Will Save You" a little better if it hadn't been dumped onto Hulu, as opposed to a traditional theatrical release, where the satisfying set pieces and scenes of tension from avoiding the attention of the alien intruders would have played like gangbusters with an engaged audience. Regardless, writer and director Brian Duffield has garnered a cult audience of genre fans who have taken to the way he melds sci-fi thrills with reflective emotional depth in this movie, which cleverly marries its premise and themes of trauma — maybe that's why he's been tapped to adapt the similarly emotionally-intensive book "Whalefall" into a feature film.

This John Krasinski-directed horror thriller was a surprise smash at the box office upon release, so much so that it's spawned an entire franchise about people needing to be as quiet as possible while being hunted by sound-sensitive aliens. It's a clean, hooky premise that the first film, still the best in the series, maximizes to full effect, employing impressive sound design to craft suspense sequences that leave the audience on edge, waiting to see how characters will inevitably make way too much noise to stay hidden.

It's that focus on easy-to-please thrills that allows "A Quiet Place" to succeed — this is a mainstream crowd-pleaser made for non-horror fans, a splashy studio blockbuster that just happens to feature alien creatures and jump scares. But it's really good at doing that specific thing, and the focus on accessibility via clever setup-and-release jump scares gives this a good sense of fun in a landscape of ponderous horror movies that focus more on how horror can act as a metaphor for headier, heavier themes. "A Quiet Place" just throws a bunch of alien set pieces at you, and sometimes that's fun.

James Gunn's 2006 debut — after his Troma days but before "Guardians of the Galaxy" turned him into a household name — is a knowing, gleefully gross love letter to the B-movie creature features of the '80s. It wears its influences (David Cronenberg, "Night of the Creeps," "The Blob") without apology, following a small Southern town overrun by alien parasites that transform the infected into something between zombie and slug. Gunn is cheerfully committed to the nastiness in a way that disarms you, and he makes "Slither" earn its R-rating.

What keeps "Slither" from being mere nostalgic pastiche is genuine affection for its characters and a cast that's fully game. Michael Rooker is genuinely unsettling as the slowly mutating Grant Grant, while Nathan Fillion delivers deadpan charm as the town's hapless sheriff. It doesn't reinvent anything, and it doesn't need to. "Slither" is content being exactly what it advertises: a fast, funny, frequently disgusting good time for anyone with a high tolerance for practical effects work and a low tolerance for boredom.

Robert Rodriguez's 1998 teen horror arrives fully assembled from spare parts: "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" by way of "The Breakfast Club," filtered through the post-"Scream" vogue for self-aware genre pictures, scripted by Kevin Williamson, fresh off that franchise's success. That's a lot of influences to juggle, and "The Faculty" handles them well enough to develop a strong cult following. It's sharper when leaning into its high school social dynamics than when it delivers genre mechanics, though it manages both with assured confidence, even if it has one of those endings that ruin horror movies.

The premise focuses on a group of misfit students in an Ohio high school where the faculty has begun acting strangely, because they have, naturally, been replaced by alien parasites. The ensemble — Elijah Wood, Josh Hartnett, Clea DuVall, Robert Patrick, Salma Hayek, Famke Janssen — leans into the archetypes with knowing cheerfulness, while Rodriguez keeps the pace brisk and the creature effects pleasingly slimy. It's a B-movie with a studio budget and just enough self-awareness to lean into the formula with an amusing, sly wink.

Chuck Russell's remake of the schlocky 1958 Steve McQueen B-movie is a gleefully nasty piece of '80s horror that confidently separates itself from its campy source material. In looking for ways to surprise audiences all over again, the script — co-written by a young Frank Darabont, years before he'd adapt Stephen King for prestige cinema — subverts audience expectations about who lives and dies, dispatching characters who'd normally be marked safe by genre convention with grinning ruthlessness.

What really makes it sing are the practical effects, which remain genuinely impressive even now, and it took an army of wranglers to pull off. The blob itself is rendered as a translucent, pulsating mass of hungry goo, and the kills are inventive and disgusting. Darabont and Russell's script gives the story a Cold War-tinged paranoia angle, sharpening what could have been a nostalgia exercise into something with more timely interests and sharper teeth, even with its tongue-in-cheek temperament. Kevin Dillon and Shawnee Smith make for likable leads, but really, you're here for the blob, and it delivers.

Tim Burton's chaotic alien-invasion comedy arrived in 1996 alongside "Independence Day" — a film that played its premise with maximum sincerity — and promptly did the exact opposite. Based on a series of Topps trading cards from the 1960s depicting Martians gleefully obliterating humanity in graphic detail, "Mars Attacks!" is a love letter to schlocky mid-century sci-fi, filtered through Burton's signature aesthetic of gleeful macabre excess.

The film assembles a ludicrously stacked ensemble — Jack Nicholson in dual roles, Glenn Close, Pierce Brosnan, Annette Bening, Michael J. Fox, Danny DeVito, Sarah Jessica Parker, Tom Jones, and many more — and then kills most of them off in spectacularly stupid ways, which is really the whole point. Burton's Martians are irredeemably, cartoonishly evil, gleefully vaporizing world leaders and national monuments while cackling in their incomprehensible alien tongue. His human characters are routinely too corrupt, self-involved, or plain stupid to do anything about the impending annihilation, unnervingly predicting our current real-world state of affairs. It's no surprise audiences preferred the idealism of "Independence Day," but "Mars Attacks!" holds up in different, darker ways.

English director Joe Cornish gained popularity in indie and cult cinema circles with this very British — specifically very South London — alien-invasion movie about a group of ruffian, lower-class youths who have to protect their council estate from black-furred, bioluminescent-toothed aliens. "Attack the Block" should appeal to fans of the action-comedy genre-pastiche kineticism of Edgar Wright's Cornetto Trilogy (Wright also serves as an executive producer), scratching the itch for fast-paced thriller set pieces and wry, eccentric comedy. Nick Frost is even in it.

Also in it is John Boyega, in his debut film role before being launched into the mainstream spotlight with "Star Wars: The Force Awakens." As the leader of the young gang trying to stave off the vicious creatures, he leads an appealing ensemble perfectly attuned to Cornish's fast and funny script. It's the kind of movie that makes you wonder why Joe Cornish's career hasn't seen much momentum in the years since, though it looks like an "Attack the Block" sequel is in active development, after over a decade of rumors.

We all remember when Will Smith sucker-punched an alien, followed by the one-liner kicker: "Welcome to Earth." It's that kind of wanton silliness you can expect from disaster-spectacle director Roland Emmerich, whose career peaked with this abundantly ridiculous action blockbuster featuring some of the most popular stars of the '90s banding together to stop an alien invasion, the contrast to the nihilism of the earlier "Mars Attacks!" released the same year.

Really, it's the epitome of the opulent, popcorn-cinema blockbuster Hollywood was producing in the '90s, the kind that reveled in preposterousness while prioritizing basic artistic craft as a baseline for true audience entertainment. "Independence Day" has that in spades, with landmark visual effects and entertaining action sequences bolstered by the charisma of the cast, which includes Smith, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman, Mary McDonnell, Judd Hirsch, Robert Loggia, and more. It's pure cinematic escapism distilled down to the most essential core of that idea — a movie that's flagrantly unpretentious, filled with pre-9/11 patriotic idealism, and almost casual in its skillful filmmaking aptitude. To this day, it's arguably the biggest alien-invasion movie ever made.

Before he moved into a career exclusively focused on making streaming slop, Doug Liman once had a reliable trajectory as a pop-movie journeyman, fully realized in this adaptation of the manga "All You Need Is Kill." Maybe "Edge of Tomorrow" would have made a stronger initial impression at the box office if it had kept that bolder title — when it was released in 2014, the disappointing returns on this big-budget sci-fi time-loop alien-invasion movie were a minor entertainment-industry scandal.

But time has been kind to "Edge of Tomorrow." It has a compelling premise that it delivers on, with a keen sense of humor, rip-roaring action, and a great buddy dynamic between the leads, Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt. The script, co-written by Christopher McQuarrie, gives Cruise a chance to lightly lampoon his action-star persona, as he plays a combat-avoidant army officer who is suddenly dropped into the line of fire and wakes up to relive the same alien battle every time he dies. But the repetition is expertly played, deriving satisfaction from Cruise honing his skills through a trial by fire of infinite alien annihilation. "Edge of Tomorrow" always seemed like it deserved a little more love — just ask the legion of fans still hoping for a sequel.

"War of the Worlds," as a Steven Spielberg movie, is a bit of a shock to the system. The man who once marveled at the potential for our connection with alien lifeforms, as in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial," had become deeply affected by 9/11 and the ensuing War on Terror. It bled into his work, and this adaptation of H. G. Wells' original novel contains some of Spielberg's bleakest and most distressing imagery, revealing a man terrified of a world that had so glaringly turned to horrible violence. "War of the Worlds" is a complex and atypical blockbuster. 

The atrocities are navigated by blue-collar dock worker Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise), whose designated weekend with his kids turns into a survivalist trek across America, seeking any refuge from the danger that has suddenly invaded the country. The voyage sees the characters fighting off both aliens who treat humans as nothing more than material to be harvested and fellow citizens trying to save their own skins. It's a cogent manifestation of the rampant national paranoia of the 2000s, all the more alarming coming from someone who is historically one of cinema's foremost purveyors of idealistic wonder and spectacle.

The satire of "Starship Troopers" may have been a little too smart for its own good. Paul Verhoeven's wild '90s actioner about a group of young military cadets who dream of taking the fight to the skies to defend Earth from an alien species known as The Bugs was met with backlash upon release for its supposed sympathies with fascist ideas emanating from America's military-industrial complex. In actuality, Verhoeven was holding a mirror up to American culture.

Verhoeven's nihilistic prodding at a world encroaching ever further toward authoritarianism amid unchecked militaristic fetishism seems on-the-nose, but there are elements of "Starship Troopers" that complicate its core satire. Namely, on some level, it asks you to sympathize with its core cast and indulges in the perfectly frenzied action spectacle promised on the tin. That doesn't dull the edges of the satire — it affords it a tricky complexity that makes "Starship Troopers' more than a one-trick pony, but it also means it's taken years for it to earn its due as one of the great alien invasion movies.

One of the great American satires and genre-melds, "They Live" posits that the alien invasion has long been in place and that we're simply in the aftermath of something we should have been fighting long ago. John Carpenter fuses sci-fi horror with the brawn of '80s action movies led by action stars and delivers a political warning that's as absurd in its genre indulgence as it is angry in its meditation on the sins of the elite class. Carpenter makes a vigorous case against the excesses of the '80s, though he directly drew on sci-fi serials from the '60s.

Professional wrestler "Rowdy" Roddy Piper stars as drifter John Nada, who winds up with a special pair of sunglasses: every time he puts them on, they expose the reality of the world around him, occupied by alien lifeforms disguised as humans and subliminal messages encouraging everyday people to continue propping up capitalism. "They Live" is a great piece of cutting pulp commentary, with Carpenter's typical eye for composition, suspense, and occasional heightened craziness, like the famous 6-minute alleyway brawl between Roddy Piper and Keith David.

Here's a hot take: On top of being a great alien invasion movie, "The World's End" is Edgar Wright's best film. The reason is simple: Though he's still building his genre pastiche on familiar touchstones, as he did in his other Cornetto Trilogy films — this time riffing on the conspiratorial takeover of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" — it's the first movie that uses that foundation to build something with viscerality and emotional substance that approaches the level of the classics Wright is so indebted to.

In short, it's his clearest-sighted and most mature work, engaging with poignant ideas about nostalgia, aging, and regret. They harmonize wonderfully with the premise of a group of old high school drinking buddies being coerced back to their hometown by their former ringleader, Gary King (Simon Pegg), now a depressed alcoholic stuck in the past, only to find the town has been overrun by alien robots replacing the town's citizens. But Wright isn't one to skimp on that wry, extremely British sense of humor and kinetic action sequences, so "The World's End" is the best of everything: It's hilarious, exciting, and full of genuine, earned pathos.

We can quibble about the logic in M. Night Shyamalan's breakout alien-invasion movie "Signs" all we want, but the fact remains: It is a premium piece of excellently constructed, deeply emotional character melodrama transplanted into the mold of a genre picture. Released at the peak of his mainstream and critical reception, "Signs" continued to confirm what appeared to be a new leader in blockbuster genius, following "The Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable," and it's because of the way Shyamalan connected emotionally with his audiences.

"Signs" is Shyamalan at perhaps his most emotionally potent, focusing on the spiritual and emotional crisis of a middle-American family living on a farm as they learn of the impending arrival of hostile alien beings. In particular, he draws sincere character detail from Mel Gibson's widowed father, Graham Hess, who spirals into a crisis of faith while trying to protect his family amid inexplicable events. It's a genius premise for a more intimate take on an alien-invasion picture, and it prioritizes emotional transparency over pure genre kicks.

Jack Finney's 1954 novel "The Body Snatchers" already had a famed 1956 adaptation directed by Don Siegel, but Philip Kaufman's 1978 rendition modernizes the terror to suit the long-festering anxieties of the 1970s. In the 1950s, the story's blatant political underpinnings could be read as a Rorschach Test, pointing to fears of Communism or McCarthyism, depending on your leanings. In 1978, those anxieties grew even more sweeping — a fear that something was fundamentally wrong with our relationship and our trust in one another, making for a remake often considered better than the original.

To this day, the terror of a surrounding populace seemingly taken over by mass conditioning and brainwashing, cut off from their former compassion, rings disturbingly true. But even as a pure alien-invasion sci-fi vehicle, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" is the best there is, methodical in the way it develops the creeping tension of its scenario and full of paramount horror-genre performances from its ensemble cast, which includes Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Leonard Nimoy, and Jeff Goldblum. It is the consummate alien-invasion movie.