Diksha Sundriyal
One of the most exciting, if not important, questions that the people of the scientific community often ponder on is: where are the aliens? I mean, we have come a long way from “are there any aliens in the universe?” because it only seems a logical thing that in an infinite universe, we must not be the only civilization. To think otherwise shows arrogance and the fact that you lack imagination! The concept of aliens opens a lot of room for artistic opportunities. From classic writers to modern filmmakers, storytellers have wondered about the appearance of aliens, their means of survival and most importantly, their attitude for humans. It wasn’t long ago that there were few filmmakers who touched this subject and the movies about aliens were rather scarce. But now, imagination (and with the right backing, budget) knows no bounds. If you are one of those people, here’s the list of really good alien movies of 2018. The list includes alien invasion movies, scary alien movies, alien comedy movies and alien horror movies.
11. Gray Matter (2018)
Several incidents have been reported around the world where the people told that they had been abducted and experimented on by aliens. If not so serious, then reports have been made by people about the sighting of Unidentified Flying Objects. While some people don’t believe in it, and others don’t know what to think about, there is another sort that thinks differently. No, I am not talking about the ones who claim that this is all a part of a great government conspiracy that runs deep in the system. I’m talking about the ones who actually believe that these reports are quite real. It might still be an unsolved mystery in our world, but in ‘Gray Matter’, it is quite a real thing. People know that aliens roam among us, though not so frequently. They make some appearances from time to time. Humans are cautious of them because they believe that their presence points towards an impending invasion. But, what if, something else is planning to invade while these ones are just here to save us?
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10. Occupation (2018)
In the case of an invasion, the army is the first one to react. We see the soldiers spring into action, take charge and save the world. But what happens before they reach the place where they are needed, or worse when they can’t reach that place. Then, it falls upon the civilians to save themselves. Something similar happens in this film. Set in a small Australian town, ‘Occupation’ tells the story of an alien invasion that faces resistance from common people. A group of people takes arms, whatever they can get their hands on, to fight against the stormtrooper sort of beings.
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9. Bumblebee (2018)
‘Transformers’ has never been an ideal franchise, except its initial films, of course. But something had been going wrong lately, especially with ‘Transformers: The Last Knight’. But like the darkest of clouds come with a silver lining, not all hope is lost for the franchise. If there was any character, or rather robot, more loved than Optimus Prime, it was Bumblebee, the yellow Autobot who had been a sidekick for all of the central characters of the films. One of the things that had been happening in the previous instalments was that the movies were only moving chronologically forward. It took some time for them to understand that there really was no future there, not this way at least.
So, finally, the creators turned back, looked at what they had and decided to give a backstory one of the most popular characters of the franchise. It is 1987 and Bumblebee hasn’t yet met his future owner, Sam Witwicky. He is biting the dust or at least pretending to do so, in a beach town junkyard, until a young girl discovers him and decides to bring him home. Bumblebee hadn’t yet found others of his kind. So, when he discovers that he is not alone, he decides to make contact with others. But not every alien is a friendly one. Even to him.
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8. Extinction (2018)
Dreams are a mysterious thing. While we try to make sense of them and there are a few theories about how and why they come to be, we aren’t yet fully able to explain their phenomenon. They are, for sure, one of the strangest things in human experience. Virtual reality will easily bite the dust in front of them, and yet, their intricacies are still out of our grasp. Peter didn’t have any problem in his life, except for his dream. He always dreamt about an alien invasion, and he didn’t even watch that many alien films! When it begins to have an adverse effect on his life, he decides to get himself looked at. But, in the clinic, he discovers another person who tells him that he has been having the same dreams. And then, the dreams turn to reality when aliens actually invade the world. But they are nothing like Peter had expected them to be.
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7. Venom (2018)
While we are wondering about and looking for alien life forms, who’s to say that they aren’t doing exactly the same. A mega-corporation named the Life Foundation has sent a probe in space to look for aliens. They find something in a comet and taking four of its sample, decide to bring it back to Earth for further analysis. On the way, one of the samples causes the ship to crash. However, the company succeeds in recovering the rest of the samples and they discover that they are a type of symbiote who need to bond with a human body, in order to survive. A search for their human counterparts begins which turns into human trials which don’t go so well. Both the humans and symbiotes die because of the mismatching. Eddie Brock is a journalist who hears about these trials, though unaware of the whole matter and tries to investigate. This leads him to the facility where a woman is currently a part of the experiments and isn’t doing so well physically. In an attempt to help her, Eddie lets loose the symbiote upon himself. Now, the alien is bonded to him and they team up to assure each other’s survival.
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6. Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018)
A sequel to the 2013 film, ‘Pacific Rim’, this film picks up ten years after the events of its predecessor. In the last film, Stacker Pentecost had saved the world in the Battle of the Breach. Now, his son Jake Pentecost meets with a similar circumstance. But, before his moment of heroism arrives, Jake’s life after the death of his father is revealed as a rather tragic tale. He had a talent for being a pilot and was doing quite a great job of it, but then, ever since he met the loss of his father, he abandoned his dream of becoming a pilot. Leaving his training midway, now he lives a lowlife as a criminal. However, he will have to change his ways pretty soon because a disaster is heading towards his world. Reunited with his estranged sister, Jake is given another chance to save humanity because he just might be the only chance that humanity has got!
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5. The Predator (2018)
We first met the Predators when Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character went on a hostage rescue situation in the jungle of Central America and discovered that there were much more than just snakes and alligators there. Then a decade or two later, Adrien Brody’s character and a couple of other people were thrown into an unknown place where they were hunted by the predators. Now, eight years later, there is another sequel. This film starts with an alien ship crash landing on Earth and letting the predators loose. An army team is sent to assess this new development, but they meet heavy casualties when the predator kills almost all of them. Even though they succeed in capturing it and take it to their scientific facility to experiment on it, the alien still finds its way back, wreaks havoc again and escapes. Now, it is on a bunch of military guys to catch and kill it, before it does any of those things to them.
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4. Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)
The world of ‘Star Wars’ is extensive and grand. There is a reason that it had the viewers hooked to it so bad, there is a reason that it inspired such dedication from the fandom. One of those reasons is its league of distinctive and appealing characters. From Luke Skywalker to Chewbacca, every character has their own importance in the story, each one of them comes from a well-crafted background and every one of them is relatable to the audience in one way or another. Han Solo’s character was one of those things. In the original ‘Star Wars’ films, we had met him at a point where we didn’t know much about his history. Even though he was one of the central characters, there were so many questions that we had about his past. ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’ is the solo story of Han Solo. It starts from when he was a child, how he was when he was younger, and what all events led him to become the part of the Rebel Alliance, mainly focusing on his adventures with Chewbacca.
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3. Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
One of the most anticipated films of the year, ‘Avengers: Infinity Wat’ was a phenomenon in itself. For ten years, Marvel had worked hard, taking one small calculated step at a time to reach this point. Eighteen movies later, they could finally bring all their superheroes together in one film. And what a spectacle it was! The film picked up the story where ‘Thor: Ragnarök’ had left it. As Thor was travelling through space along with his Asgardian subjects to find a new home for them on Earth, his ship was intercepted by Thanos, a warlord on the search for the six Infinity Stones. This leads to a chain of events that takes our heroes from one end of the universe to another, crossing realms and forming unlikely alliances to defeat Thanos before he can get a hold of what he wants and destroy the world as they know it.
There were a lot of things expected from ‘Avengers: Infinity War’, and it managed to prove to people that trying to think ahead of them is not useful. It was everything that any good movie should be. It was unpredictable, it was funny (keeping in line with the consistency of its various characters), and above all, it had an ending that left the whole theatre breathless.
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2. A Quiet Place (2018)
One of the most talked about movies of the year, ‘A Quiet Place’ has hard-earned its reputation. It is set in the future not far away from now. Something is terrorising the world. New creatures have dawned upon the Earth and have wiped out most of the human population. They are impossible to kill, they are incredibly fast, and most importantly, they have a very good hearing sense. If you make one sound, they will hear it from far away (though exactly how away hasn’t been explicitly mentioned in the film), and will devour you before you can even think what to do. Lee Abbott and his family live in such a world. They try to make it through each day by carefully and cautiously taking their every step.
A lot of precautions have been taken by them, for example, the places on the wooden floorboard have been marked so that they only step on the parts that don’t creak. But not everything can be controlled by them. The pressure is mounting, especially because Lee’s wife is about to give birth to their child. Lee is trying hard to teach his young son to learn how to survive in the unforgiving world while trying to find a way to create a hearing device for his deaf daughter.
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1. Annihilation (2018)
Alex Garland is a great director, and he has proved this with just two films in his career. He had worked as a screenwriter before and had written scripts of the films like ’28 Days Later’, ‘Dredd’, ‘Never Let Me Go’ and ‘Sunshine’, along with writing the much-acclaimed novel, ‘The Beach’. His first directorial venture came in the form of ‘Ex Machina’, where with just three (at most, four) characters, he created a condensed story in closed spaces of such intensity that it would not leave you for quite some time after the credits roll. He, again, proved his genius when he made ‘Annihilation’.
Based on the book of the same name by Jeff VanderMeer, this film tells the story of Lena, a biologist who is shaken when her husband returns home, one year after he had been declared dead. He acts strange and becomes ill after some time, which prompts Lena to find out what happened to her husband and where he had been for a year. She discovers that the government is trying to figure out the workings of a thing called The Shimmer that appeared after a lighthouse was hit by a meteor. Lena, along with a team of other scientists, is sent inside The Shimmer, to locate the lighthouse which is the source of it and figure out how to stop it from spreading further, if not how to destroy it altogether.
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