
It’s that or take your chances and confront the threat head on. Unless you want to take your chances with a lifepod in the middle of space, which ironically is how many of these sci-fi horror stories conclude.

The alien or other threat is on a spaceship deep in the cosmos? You’re stuck, my friend. A common complaint about haunted house stories is that if a house is haunted why not just leave it and move someplace else? This doesn’t take into account poltergeists and demons that follow a victim everywhere, or the financial burden with suddenly leaving a home, but the question does have merit. They cannot exactly just step outside the spaceship, it’s they’re life-giving oasis in the inhospitable environment of outer space. What made the concept of Alien and others even more chilling is that unlike the traditional haunted house story, the characters don’t have anywhere else to go. Meanwhile, the non corporeal forces the rescue crew face are perfect updates on demonic forces and spirits as the film infers the spaceship Event Horizon actually traveled to hell and back. The spaceship design of the title ship is Gothic, cold, and even a bit Lovecraftian. This type of setting highlighted the cult classic Event Horizon, a film that its director actually envisioned as a haunted house story in space.

Corridors are dark and foreboding, hiding unexpected perils. Adding to the horror element of Alien is the claustrophobic feel the spaceship emits. Here you have the Nostromo, a spaceship, taking the place of the haunted house while the xenomorph is a perfect stand-in for a demonic entity or a ghost that is difficult to track. Anyway, the crew of the space freighter Nostromo are hunted in their own spaceship by a murderous extra-terrestrial or xenomorph. On a side note, its premise wasn’t new when the film came out in 1979 as a similar film It! The Terror from Beyond Space hit theaters way back in 1958. Obvious examples include the mentioned films and games. With sci-fi horror films the premise is moved out of rickety old houses and into a sci-fi setting, usually a spaceship or space station or a planet itself. Many of them are very terrifying and what makes them even more unsettling are their alleged basis on real events like The Conjuring films. In such stories the protagonist is stuck in an old house and has to confront ghostly or demonic forces. But a core aspect of the classic haunted house story is the location itself. We don’t know what lies out in space, what we’ll encounter. Why is this so? It all goes back to the concept that both genres when blended deal with the fear of the unknown.
#Sci fi haunted space station tv#
It may sound like an odd combination, the haunted house in space, but when executed, this meshing of two genres usually produces some imaginative and scary sci-fi horror stories, films, TV shows, games, etc. The basic premise of these stories are the same and boils down to a haunted house in space. 5.Alien, Event Horizon, Ship of Fools, Pandorum, Hull Zero Three, Life, Nightflyers, Dead Space, the list goes on.

Much of the action was in fact Earth-based, but the Planet Express team did get into plenty of trouble in outer space (especially when Zapp Brannigan got involved), and every time, it was a delight. Never afraid to play around with sci-fi tropes, Matt Groening’s “Futurama” featured no shortage of fun space adventures layered with plenty of in-jokes and references - but it was also really well-done animation filled with space fun, with plenty of pathos to go around as well.
#Sci fi haunted space station series#
The thrills that come with the show’s unique take on space, with a heavy emphasis on how G-forces affect the human body when blasting from planet to planet, are less driven by spectacle and more by “oh god they survived that.” But the show doesn’t lack for moments of wonder, all thoroughly grounded by both the real world expectations as well as the increasing alien weirdness of the series to date. Corey becomes a thoroughly immersive ride. But if you’re willing to dig into the interstellar politics and get to know the vast ensemble, the Syfy drama based on the novels by James S.A. “The Expanse” is, at times, almost too dense a universe.
