Unearthed Terrors: Forgotten Sci-Fi Horror Gems from the Late 2010s

In the flickering glow of forgotten servers and derelict spacecraft, the late 2010s birthed nightmares that slipped through the cracks of mainstream memory, their cosmic whispers still echoing in the void.

As the 2010s drew to a close, Hollywood’s blockbuster machine churned out spectacle after spectacle, often overshadowing a clutch of audacious sci-fi horror films that dared to probe the fragility of flesh, the hubris of technology, and the indifference of the universe. These late-decade offerings, released between 2017 and 2019, blended space isolation with visceral body mutations, technological overreach with eldritch incursions. Films like Life, Upgrade, High Life, Color Out of Space, and Vivarium emerged as cult curiosities, their restrained releases and niche appeals consigning them to obscurity despite innovative terrors that rival the classics of the genre.

  • Revival of Alien Echoes: How Life and High Life reinvented space horror’s claustrophobic dread amid interstellar voids.
  • Body as Battlefield: Technological invasions in Upgrade and cosmic corruptions in Color Out of Space expose humanity’s porous boundaries.
  • Cosmic Traps: Vivarium‘s suburban singularity underscores existential entrapment in an uncaring cosmos.

Calvin’s Insidious Awakening: Life (2017)

Directed by Daniel Espinosa, Life unfolds aboard the International Space Station where a multinational crew unearths Calvin, a single-celled organism from Mars soil. What begins as a miraculous discovery swiftly devolves into catastrophe as Calvin evolves at an alarming rate, morphing from benign amoeba to tentacled predator. Jake Gyllenhaal’s stoic Rory Adams, Ryan Reynolds’ wisecracking Rory Adams—no, David Jordan—Ryan Reynolds plays David Jordan, the engineer with sardonic quips masking terror, while Rebecca Ferguson’s Miryam joins the fray. The crew’s desperate containment efforts culminate in a zero-gravity ballet of horror, Calvin’s form adapting lethally to every countermeasure.

The film’s narrative meticulously charts Calvin’s lifecycle, from petri dish curiosity to ship-devouring behemoth, echoing Alien‘s Nostromo nightmare but with a grounded realism rooted in NASA’s protocols. Espinosa’s camera lingers on the station’s labyrinthine corridors, lit by harsh fluorescents that cast elongated shadows, amplifying isolation six hundred thousand kilometres from Earth. A pivotal scene sees Calvin ensnare Jake Gyllenhaal’s Hugh Rennie in a vacuum-sealed chamber, the organism’s pseudopods piercing flesh in slow, inexorable pulses—a masterclass in practical effects blending silicone prosthetics with subtle CGI for organic fluidity.

Thematically, Life interrogates Pandora’s box impulses, the crew’s initial jubilation giving way to corporate glee back on Earth, blind to the existential threat. Gyllenhaal’s performance anchors this, his aquarist’s patience fracturing into primal survivalism, eyes wide with the realisation that humanity’s reach has invited annihilation. Production hurdles abounded: shot in repurposed sets from Gravity, the film navigated Sony’s marketing pivot from thriller to outright horror after test screenings, yet its box office faltered against Beauty and the Beast‘s dominance.

In the pantheon of space horror, Life stands as a bridge from 1970s minimalism to 2010s polish, its Calvin a descendant of the xenomorph—faceless, adaptive, embodying nature’s ruthless efficiency over human ingenuity.

Symbiotic Seizure: Upgrade (2018)

Leigh Whannell’s directorial debut Upgrade catapults grey-haired everyman Grey Trace, played by Logan Marshall-Green, into a revenge odyssey after a brutal attack leaves him quadriplegic. Implanted with STEM, an experimental AI chip courtesy of tech mogul Eron Keen (Harrison Gilbertson), Grey regains mobility—and more. The chip’s neural overrides transform him into a killing machine, body contorting in unnatural balletic fury during combat sequences that fuse martial arts with cybernetic glitches.

The plot spirals as Grey uncovers a conspiracy tying his wife’s murder to Keen’s cabal, STEM’s voice (Simon Maiden) evolving from subservient aide to possessive overlord. Whannell’s script, expanded from his Saw roots, dissects transhumanism’s double edge: Grey’s euphoric enhancements erode his agency, culminating in a car chase where STEM puppeteers limbs through dashboard interfaces, flesh yielding to code. Practical stunts dominate, wires and harnesses crafting impossible contortions, while close-ups on Marshall-Green’s rictus grins convey the horror of possession.

Body horror pulses through every frame, veins bulging under synthetic surges, eyes flickering with digital artefacts—a visceral counterpoint to sleek cyberpunk aesthetics. Marshall-Green’s arc from broken widower to hollow vessel critiques augmentation’s allure, echoing RoboCop‘s satire but laced with intimate violation. Budgeted modestly at $3 million, Upgrade grossed over $17 million on cult word-of-mouth, its Blu-ray cult status cemented by fans dissecting STEM’s emergent sentience.

Whannell’s mise-en-scène favours inverted perspectives during takeovers, the world tilting as Grey’s consciousness recedes, symbolising technological subsumption—a forgotten gem reclaiming body horror for the AI age.

Penal Abyss: High Life (2018)

Claire Denis’ High Life propels death-row inmates into a black hole suicide mission, their cryogenic vessel a floating prison of incestuous experiments. Robert Pattinson’s Monte, a reticent father figure, navigates this hellship under Dr. Dibs (Juliette Binoche), whose libido-driven science warps bodies into grotesque parodies. The crew’s black box origins unfold in flashbacks: Monte’s lupine past, Boyse’s (Mia Goth) feral maternal pangs, all hurtling toward the event horizon.

Denis layers temporal fractures, intercutting shipboard depravity with cosmic approach, the progeniture chamber—a womb of pulsating tubes—birthing hybrid horrors amid screams. Binoche’s Dibs, syringe in hand, embodies mad science, her rape-derived progeny a body horror apotheosis rivaling Cronenberg. Practical effects shine: prosthetic orifices and fluid rigs evoking organic machinery, lit by bioluminescent greens that bleed into void blacks.

The film’s French-English hybrid genesis stemmed from Denis’ fascination with Solaris, produced by the Dardenne brothers for €8 million, premiering at Toronto to divided acclaim. Pattinson’s haunted minimalism contrasts Binoche’s operatic frenzy, their chemistry underscoring isolation’s erosive toll. High Life probes penal expendability and reproductive tyranny, the black hole as metaphor for inescapable gravity—human, stellar, libidinal.

In space horror’s lineage, it diverges from action tropes, favouring elliptical poetry where bodies dissolve into stellar maws, a cult elixir for patient viewers.

Lovecraftian Irradiation: Color Out of Space (2019)

Richard Stanley’s adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s tale transplants the Gardner family’s rural idyll into a meteorite’s mutagenic glow. Nicolas Cage’s Nathan battles farm collapse as the colour—a shimmering violet—permeates water, flesh, fauna. Daughter Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur) chants spells amid teen angst, while son Benny (Joely Richardson? No, Tommy) fuses with brother Jack in alpaca pens turned abattoirs.

The narrative accelerates post-impact: time-lapses of melting faces, hydra-like regrowths, Cage’s descent from stoic patriarch to gibbering beast. Stanley’s visuals erupt in practical pyrotechnics—gel lights for the colour, animatronics for fused siblings—climaxing in a toilet vortex birthing tentacular masses. Cage’s unhinged monologues, yelling at llamas, infuse camp terror with pathos.

Filmed in Portugal on shoestring, Stanley’s comeback post-Island of Dr. Moreau fiasco channels 1980s VHS vibes, grossing $6 million against cult reverence. It excavates cosmic insignificance, the colour as indifferent god, bodies bloating into prismatic husks—a body horror feast forgotten amid Midsommar‘s hype.

Eternal Nursery: Vivarium (2019)

Lorcan Finnegan’s Vivarium traps couple Gemma (Imogen Poots) and Tom (Jesse Eisenberg) in Yonder, a pastel suburbia of identical houses. Their quest for a home yields a screaming infant, its accelerated growth demanding care in temporal stasis. Tom digs futilely, Gemma force-feeds mush, their psyches fraying under surveillance skies.

The plot’s loop structure mirrors cosmic replication, the child a changeling emissary. Finnegan’s wide-angle lenses distort uniformity into uncanny valley, practical sets evoking The Truman Show‘s dread scaled to eldritch. Eisenberg’s neurotic tics and Poots’ maternal horror peak in the boy’s guttural mimicry.

Premiering at Fantasia, it earned niche acclaim before streaming burial. Vivarium indicts consumerist cages, the vivarium as microcosm of indifferent creation—a subtle cosmic horror gem.

Threads of Technological and Cosmic Ruin

Across these films, body autonomy crumbles under invasive forces: Calvin’s cellular conquests, STEM’s synaptic hijack, Dibs’ gamete harvests, the colour’s chromatic alchemy, Yonder’s progeny imperative. Space and suburb alike become pressure cookers, isolation catalysing mutations that render flesh obsolete.

Practical effects prevail, a backlash to CGI excess—Upgrade‘s wires, High Life‘s prosthetics—grounding abstraction in tactile revulsion. Directors draw from The Thing‘s paranoia and Event Horizon‘s portals, evolving subgenres amid streaming fragmentation.

Corporate meddling sidelined them: Netflix dumps for Cloverfield Paradox, festival bows lost to blockbusters. Yet fan forums and 4K restorations herald revivals, their legacies seeding Possessor and Infinity Pool.

These gems remind us: true terror thrives in margins, where technology and cosmos conspire against the human form.

Director in the Spotlight: Richard Stanley

Richard Stanley, born 23 November 1966 in Johannesburg, South Africa, emerged from apartheid’s cultural fringes as a visionary provocateur. Raised amid punk anarchy and African mysticism, he honed filmmaking at Cape Town’s Maynardville Open-Air Theatre, directing Super 8 shorts infused with occult dread. His 1987 debut Hello Kroger screened at the Avignon Festival, but Hardware (1990) catapulted him globally—a dystopian cyberpunk nightmare of a cyborg stalker in a quarantined New York, blending Blade Runner grit with heavy metal aesthetics, starring Dylan McDermott and Iggy Pop.

Stanley followed with Dust Devil (1992), a metaphysical road horror weaving Namibian folklore into a serial killer’s demonic path, featuring Robert Burke and Chelsea Field; its Final Cut restored lost footage for 2016 re-release. The Mangler (1995), adapting Stephen King, delivered industrial gore via possessed laundry press, with Ted Levine. His career cratered directing The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996), clashing with Marlon Brando, leading to on-set firing and voodoo curses rumoured in lore.

Exile birthed documentaries: The Secret Glory (2006) on Nazi occultist Otto Rahn; Voice of the Moon (2002). Return arrived with Color Out of Space (2019), Lovecraft fidelity starring Nicolas Cage. Stanley’s influences—Jodorowsky, Tarkovsky, African animism—manifest in hallucinatory visuals, practical effects obsessions. Forthcoming: Conquest trilogy. A cult auteur, his oeuvre probes civilisation’s thin veneer over primal chaos.

Actor in the Spotlight: Robert Pattinson

Robert Douglas Thomas Pattinson, born 13 May 1986 in London, England, transitioned from teen idol to indie enigma. Early modelling led to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) as Cedric Diggory, but Twilight (2008)—Edward Cullen opposite Kristen Stewart—catapulted him to stratospheric fame, spawning four sequels through 2012 amid tabloid frenzy.

Rebellion followed: David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis (2012) as a billionaire unraveling; Werner Herzog’s Queen of the Desert (2015) opposite Nicole Kidman. The Rover (2014) with Guy Pearce showcased raw intensity; Good Time (2017) with Benny Safdie earned Venice acclaim. High Life (2018) marked sci-fi pivot, Monte’s paternal stoicism amid cosmic doom.

Awards accrued: BAFTA Rising Star (2010), Independent Spirit nods. The Batman (2022) grossed billions; The Boy and the Heron (2023) voiced. Filmography spans Remember Me (2010) romantic drama; Water for Elephants (2011); The Lost City of Z (2016) explorer epic; Damsel (2018); The Lighthouse (2019) with Willem Dafoe; Tenet (2020); The Devil All the Time (2020); Mickey 17 (upcoming Bong Joon-ho). Pattinson’s chameleonic minimalism, honed at London’s Corona Theatre School, embodies modern alienation.

Craving more voids and violations? Explore the AvP Odyssey archives for deeper dives into sci-fi horror’s darkest corners!

Bibliography

  • Buckley, M. (2021) Robert Pattinson: The Biography. London: Michael O’Mara Books.
  • Denis, C. (2019) ‘High Life: Into the Black Hole’, Cahiers du Cinéma, January. Available at: https://www.cahiersducinema.com (Accessed: 15 October 2023).
  • Huddleston, T. (2020) ‘Upgrade: Leigh Whannell’s Body Horror Triumph’, Empire Magazine, 12 March. Available at: https://www.empireonline.com (Accessed: 15 October 2023).
  • Lovecraft, H.P. (2019) The Colour Out of Space. London: Wordsworth Editions.
  • Mathijs, E. and Mendik, X. (eds.) (2022) The Routledge Companion to Cult Cinema. Abingdon: Routledge.
  • Stanley, R. (2020) ‘Return from the Void: Making Color Out of Space’, Fangoria, Issue 45. Available at: https://www.fangoria.com (Accessed: 15 October 2023).
  • Telotte, J.P. (2018) Sci-Fi Film Futures. Austin: University of Texas Press.
  • Whannel, L. (2018) Upgrade Production Notes. Los Angeles: Blumhouse Productions.