5 Horror Movie Franchises Primed to Go to Space
Ben Talley
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Ah… space. Vast, unending, cold, and blacker than black. Just like our hearts. Which is why it is a perfect setting for horror films!
Whether you realize it or not, space has been a key factor in some of the genre’s greatest installments. Alien. The Thing. The Blob. Etc. And just think of all the icons that have already ventured into the great big unknown: Jason Voorhees in Jason X, Pinhead in Hellraiser IV: Bloodline, Dracula in Dracula 3000, Sharknado 3. Because when you’re in an environment humans weren’t meant to survive in, where you’re surrounded by death at every turn (and no, I’m not talking about Australia), why not throw in a psycho/monster/killer to make things that much worse! Even friggin’ Leprechaun has been there in the classic (wait for it)… Leprechaun 4: IN SPACE. Need I say more?
So here are my pitches for the next five horror franchises worthy of an intergalactic send-off.
5) Chucky in Martian Child’s Play
If you think vintage dolls sell for a pretty penny these days, just imagine what they might go for a hundred years from now. Picture this: In the 22nd century Mars has been successfully colonized and continues to grow as humanity’s most ambitious outermost colony on the galactic frontier. Unfortunately, however, because of the incredible cost of rocketing things to and from the planet, only necessary items are imported. Anything else – like pleasantries, recreational items, or toys – cost high dollar to acquire. This has created a supply and demand that is satisfied solely by a Martian colony black market, where such items are illegally smuggled to the planet and sold in secret in return for special favors. Now, enter Sam Wisen, a recently orphaned twenty-something looking for a new start in life. Left behind in his parents’ will are mostly items Sam chooses to discard or sell in order to fund his move to Mars. One of these items is a doll that has been in his family for generations, an antique Chucky doll. Extremely rare and extremely valuable. Sam decides to keep this doll and bring it with him on his move to sell on the black market since he will get a much better price on Mars than he ever will on Earth. What neither he nor the dealers that buy it from him are aware of is that the Chucky doll has been waiting a long, long time to be released from the trunk he’s been locked in all these years, and the Martian colony is the perfect new playground for him to stretch his little plastic legs in.
4) It Follows… YOU TO SPACE
It Follows was a surprisingly original horror film released in 2014 that told the story of a mysterious thing that was passed sexually from person-to-person, like a haunted STD. Whoever contracted the thing most recently was doomed to be followed relentlessly by an emotionless, unforgiving creature that looks like a different person each time you see it. No matter where you go, no matter how far, it will always be somewhere walking directly towards you. The only way to get rid of it is to have sex with someone else and pass it on to them, praying that it never catches up to that person, kills them, and finds its way back to you.
Now imagine a sequel where we meet Brandi, a poor woman who is currently carrying the haunting and is desperate for a solution to get the thing as far away from her as possible. She doesn’t just want to pass the thing on; she wants it to disappear forever. She’s tried everything from having sex with prostitutes to men from foreign countries, but eventually the thing always comes back to her. It seems like her only solution is to resign to her fate and let it catch up or take her life into her own hands, until she has a brilliant, somewhat insane solution. There’s a launch scheduled soon to take the next group of volunteer citizens to the first established Martian colony. Brandi finds out who they are and meets one of the lucky/unlucky fellas in a bar the night before lift-off to congratulate him on the upcoming mission, giving him a proper send-off while also passing on the thing for the astronaut to take with him. Years later the man is carrying on his life on Mars when he suddenly realizes he is being followed by an unusual stranger. Trapped in a small colony with nowhere else to go and no escape aside from the irregularly scheduled launches off-world, he must learn how to survive long enough to find a way to return to Earth and put as much distance between him and the follower. Just imagine a scene of a lone suited-up astronaut running for his life in low gravity, slowly being followed by a naked, dark-eyed figure walking towards him in the barren red land. Creepy!
And SPOILERS! In the end he won’t make it, and we cut to a final scene set years later of Brandi having finally moved on with her life and settled into the safety and comfort of knowing the thing is forever out of her hair… until it shows up straight through her front door!
3) Space Gremlins
There are so many scenarios where this could go wrong. Mogwai come with three simple rules. Rule 1) Don’t get them wet. If you get them wet, they multiply. Could you imagine how many of these little bastards you would get if one managed to find its way beneath Europa’s surface? Europa is a WATER MOON. There would be an infestation so great it would combat the xenomorphs. On the positive end of the spectrum, you probably wouldn’t have to worry about that on most other waterless planets. Rule 2) No bright light. Lights hurts them, and sunlight can kill them. On the dark side of the moon they would be unstoppable. Most other planets in our solar system are so much farther away from the sun than Earth that there’s no telling how little the sunlight could hurt them. They’d be much more formidable out there in the darkness, especially in the dark corridors and ventilation shafts of space stations and ships. Finally, the worst of all, Rule 3) Don’t feed them after midnight, no matter how much they beg. Well, we’re all fucked. You’re on the moon. Or Mars. Or on a space station orbiting Saturn. When the hell is midnight?! Any time you feed a Mogwai in space, you are risking turning it into a gremlin because time runs so differently out there. Are you sure you want to take that risk? Is having a Mogwai really worth it?
2) Jeepers Creepers 2300 AD
This one is obvious. In the first movie we learned that the Creeper has been around AT LEAST since times when people still had wooden teeth, already making it hundreds of years old. In the second film it was proven to be virtually indestructible, and we learned its operating prophecy: “Every 23rd spring for 23 days it gets to eat.” These are all key factors for reasoning that the Creeper will still be around hundreds of years more. In a future where Earth’s resources are depleted and all of humanity has moved off-planet to various other outposts, the Creeper has decided to relocate as well. It must go where the food goes, after all. Having snuck onto the last shuttle leaving Earth, the Creeper hibernates in the bowels of the ship, awakening only for 23 days a year to feed from the unsuspecting crew and leaving no trace of their disappearance. It does this over and over again until the trip is complete and the Creeper awakens once more, but this time on a new world. Due to the enclosed nature of the colony, however, the Creeper can no longer operate solely on the outskirts of civilization like it had in the past. Now it must feed in close quarters, quickly and efficiently. Once the citizens of the station realize what is going on, they think they are dealing with some kind of extraterrestrial being and begin a hunt for the beast that is terrorizing them. The rest of the movie is an Aliens-style all-out-war between an entire colony of people and what has been hunting them since the beginning of time!
1) Freddy Krueger in A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STATION
Being a demon destined to haunt sleeping teens for all eternity, who’s to say Freddy won’t still be around decades from now? Society may change with the times, but teenagers never will. I could come up with some ridiculous plot for this one, but I’ll just leave you with this tagline: In space, no one can hear you dream!
Come on, it practically writes itself!
