Based on a 1927 short story by H.P. Lovecraft, this Nicolas Cage-starring film represents Richard Stanley’s return to the director’s chair after being fired from The Island of Dr Moreau, due to creative differences (which is a nice way of saying he was acting like a dick).

When a meteorite strikes, shattering the fragile peace of the Gardner family, it sets the plot in motion. We get a rapid introduction to the cancer-surviving Theresa, the cage-tastic Nathan, barefooted, bratty Wiccan Lavinia, stoner Benny and Jack, who, as a kid in a horror movie, has the survival odds of a chicken in a wolf den.

The meteorite that so rudely interrupted their characterisations is a large, magenta hunk of space rock, accompanied by strange things around it, until it mysteriously vanishes.

That’s when things get really weird. Ward Phillips, a hydrologist, discovers that the large, purplish-pink cosmic geode has altered the water table and alerts the Gardener family to the danger of drinking the water.

He does not make it in time to prevent cocks from rocketing skyward. In short order, Theresa and Jack get fussed into a Cronenberg-esque fleshy abomination, Lavinia goes cuckoo for Coco Pops and starts carving protective runes into her flesh, Nathen gets lost down a well, and someone sets the Nic Cage rage gauge to eleven.

The titular “colour” is an impossible shade of magenta — an extra-spectral hue that doesn’t exist in nature. It’s only visible through the brain’s blending of red and blue light, making it a perfect metaphor for the incomprehensible: something that literally shouldn’t be seen

The film is absolutely stuffed full of references to other works of H.P. Lovecraft, from Arkham University getting a name check to a paperback copy of the Necronomicon showing up amid Lavinia’s witchy personal effects.

Like all good Easter Eggs, they don’t hit you over the head or dump lore into your brain; they are just kind of there. The film was loved by critics and audiences alike, boasting a very respectable 86% on Rotten Tomatoes and having picked up three awards.

Filmed in 17 days and based on a couple of real-life events, including the Kecksburg incident and the Foss Lake disappearances, this low-budget film comes to us courtesy of Andrew Patterson. It was co-produced and written by Patterson—using the pseudonym James Montague—and Craig W. Sanger. The movie was a certified hit with critics who praised the direction, cinematography, historical authenticity, as well as the performances of the principal leads, Sierra McCormick and Jake Horowitz.

Presented as an episode of a period TV show, like The Outer Limits or The Twilight Zone, the movie takes place in one evening in November 1958, the film (which is told in real time) follows a pair of teenage audiophiles as they try to find out the origins of a strange radio signal in a small town in New Mexico during a big basketball game.

Everett is a DJ for the local radio station, and Fey is his good friend and somewhat of a proto-geek who has a part-time job as a telephone operator. The pair encounter a signal that they are almost certain is some kind of Soviet military broadcast, after all, what else could it be? The film is dripping with easter eggs and references for the hard-core period sci-fi geek, like the call sign of the radio station that Everett works at is WOTW, a clear reference to War of the Worlds, and more oblique, like a minor character is named Renny, a reference to the actor who played Klatuu in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951).

 It is a warts and all depiction of the 1950s in everything fellow non white soldiers were selected for a dangerous mission because they were viewed as being ‘expendable’. The pains the film took to nail the details lend an air of authenticity to itself and make the gut-punch ending all the more poignant because of how real it feels.

Originally pitched as a found-footage film, Dark Skies follows an average American suburban family — the Barretts (mum Lacy, dad Daniel, older son Jesse, and younger son Sammy) — as they’re plagued by a series of strange and increasingly terrifying events. What begins like a prank a deranged mathematician might pull — rearranging kitchenware into perfect geometric patterns — escalates quickly. Cue the arrival of a very angry dog, a shotgun purchase, and a late-night standoff between dad and a group of uninvited Greys.

After things get truly weird, Lacy reaches out to the UFO community for answers and ends up at the door of J.K. Simmons, who delivers the worst possible news: they’re screwed, no matter what they do — but they should at least go down swinging.

Writer-director Scott Stewart reportedly churned out the script in six caffeine-fuelled weeks (no doubt somewhere between X-Files reruns) and shot the film in roughly chronological order over four weeks.

Despite its modest budget, Dark Skies delivers some memorable moments and standout performances — particularly a minor but excellent turn from the always-watchable Simmons. Where the film really shines is in the small details: the quiet psychological unease, the unnerving sound design, and the subtle nods to real-world alien abduction accounts.

It doffs its cap to the genre’s heavyweights — from Close Encounters of the Third Kind to a chilling kamikaze-bird sequence that feels straight out of The Birds — and wears its influences proudly. What makes the aliens in Dark Skies so frightening is their absolute inscrutability. You can’t reason with them, can’t understand them, and, most terrifyingly of all, you can’t stop them.

Set in 1975 and based on the true(ish) story of the abduction and return of Travis Walton, a lumberjack from Snowflake, Arizona, the film dramatises his disappearance after his fellow loggers claimed — quite sincerely — that Travis was beamed up by a UFO.

In the film, he’s portrayed as a lovable loser, which only makes the whole thing feel more surreal. The plot largely centres on the ensuing police investigation and small-town panic: basically, a blue-collar alien police procedural. Just as things look bleakest for our rattled protagonists — fingers pointing, tempers fraying, and accusations flying — Mike Rogers receives a collect call from Travis. He’s been dumped, nude as the day he was born, in a remote gas station at the edge of nowhere. The film deliberately holds back the terror until the final act.

No one even says the word “alien” until the 30-minute mark of a 109-minute film. But in the climax, during Walton’s PTSD-like flashback, we finally see what happened aboard that ship — and it is nightmare fuel of the highest order. The real Travis Walton’s account was far vaguer and considerably less horrifying.

The filmmakers dialled everything up to eleven, and the result is one of the most memorably grim abduction sequences ever filmed. For a movie that’s otherwise light on special effects, the weightless SFX, the grimy organic sets, and the infamous eye-probe scene hit like a truck. One of the most unsettling things about Fire in the Sky is that the aliens don’t seem to be here for conquest. They’re not doing science, either — the ship looks like a mouldy attic crossed with a surgical dungeon, worlds away from the clean, clinical operating rooms of urban-legend UFO lore.

That leaves us with the most disturbing possibility of all: They might simply be doing this for shits and giggles. And to top it off, the film ends with a genuine mic-drop final line — the kind of note that lingers long after the credits roll. If these films prove anything, it’s that space is less “the final frontier” and more “a cosmic hazard zone full of things that want to poke, prod, melt, mutate, or otherwise fuck up your day.”