Editorials
‘Independence Day’ – The 1996 Summer Blockbuster and Its Truly Terrifying Aliens
Not many horror films truly scare me these days. But alien horror? Even the ones substandard to most send me into a fear frenzy. That’s why I’m taking a deep dive into the sub-genre.
Welcome to Aliens Scare Me. A look into alien horror films on a case by case basis.
This month we go back to a movie many of us enjoyed this past July 4th weekend and many years before that; Roland Emmerich’s 1996 Summer blockbuster Independence Day.
Now…..I don’t have to be a telepathic alien to sense that some are currently head butting “Independence Day is NOT a horror movie!” angrily into your keyboard. I know that. But hey! When a specific topic scares the bejesus out of you enough anything can be horrific. Yes, this film is the type of crowd pleasing blockbuster you could watch with your kids or your grandparents. And yes, it’s a flick that feels as if it were built in a laboratory to elicit every possible human emotion a summer tentpole could. But those emotions also include fear and helplessness.
And Independence Day has more of that to offer than you might remember.
Why It’s Scary
The eerie truth that it would actually take an extinction level event for this country to agree on anything, for starters. But who wants to talk about that? Let’s start with their arrival.
You walk out of your girlfriend’s house and grab the newspaper. You look up and hovering above the suburban neighborhood (and everything else) is the sudden intrusion of the end of your life. The fixture that it seems will be here longer than you. Larger and more formidable than anything we’ve been able to create in all our time here as human beings. It absolutely disrespects the surroundings of our entire world with just its presence alone, rudely elbowing large portions of our sky out of its way. Almost out of nowhere these things show up, darkening entire cities with their shadows. They hover in a coordinated appearance across the entire world. Each government completely unprepared and collectively shitting their suit pants, totally useless during the initial and largest coordinated attack from the aliens. Even the rare good guys in the higher places don’t have the information they need to make informed decisions.
Hidden politely beneath Emmerich’s protective sheen of humor and mostly unbothered Michael Bay/Jerry Bruckheimer type characters is the reality of the possibility that human-kind could be so utterly…….helpless.
Later in the film and after the usual disaster movie trope of “millions of people just died but at least the seven people we’re following are mostly okay” we reach the closest thing to standard horror practice Independence Day will offer… the alien autopsy scene. After cinema’s arguably most handsome president ever, Bill Pullman, is finally briefed on the existence of Area 51 (and has the chance to take out some aggression on socially awkward science nerds), we’re treated to some gnarly alien gore-horror.
In a surprisingly gross scene, the scientists perform an autopsy on an alien that Will Smith beat the hell out of and captured. After cutting through its Predator-like exterior, the alien opens up like the overcooked turkey from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. The scientists then dig around its gooey insides for what seems like an extended amount of time before they find something absolutely horrifying inside of it. ANOTHER ALIEN. Like a goddamn Russian egg doll from Hell.
The creature goes berserker on everyone Curse of Michael Myers strobe light scene style and uses the scientist’s dead body as a human meat puppet to communicate because the freaky little bastard doesn’t even have a mouth. It says “Peace? No Peace!” and when asked what they wanted us to do? The answer was simply “Die”.
The thought that aliens could one day show up all cocky with technology better than ours is one thing. Think about how things could possibly go if they are completely indifferent to our lives? Worse yet, think about if they’ve been looking at Twitter lately and decided they completely hate us. It’s a strong possibility if we’re being honest with each other. There’s aliens. There’s indifferent aliens. There’s way too inquisitive aliens and their probes. But there’s nothing scarier than the thought of HATEFUL aliens like the ones in Independence Day.
Where It Lands
Independence Day is the first film of my lifetime that I saw the entire theater stand up and cheer for after it was over with and I don’t think to this day I’ve ever seen a theater that pumped up. This blew my mind as an eleven year old kid. It was really cool to see a movie bring everyone together like this. It was very much what Top Gun Maverick was for theater goers last year.
I may not think of it as a horror movie by any means but when I think about the true fear of aliens coming down for a takeover? The visuals of Independence Day are some of the first ones that pop in my mind. The entire White House obliterated like one of Joey Chestnut’s Hot Dogs. The shadows of cold alien equipment hovering above us, their operators not even having the respect for mankind to hop out and speak to us for a minute before literally blowing up our spot. The crazy folks dancing their faces off and holding up poster boards on top of skyscrapers asking the aliens to abduct them or perform various sex acts. Every news cast is more concerned with the political ramifications of the President’s actions than our possible and complete extinction as a human race.
Again, Roland Emmerich gave us all the blockbuster fixins and Fourth of July fireworks with a bunch of quirky characters and Will Smith one liners. But underneath the eye-catching fireworks in the sky and the warm blanket of Americana permeating throughout Independence Day is a dark reminder of just how messy it could get if we’re ever so unlucky as a human race to be visited by a superior one with a hatred for us.
The scariest part of it all might be that first act of Independence Day….where the aliens send us into complete disarray and nearly destroy us. That is far more believable than the plan we concoct in the last act of the movie to stop them and save ourselves. Think about it.
That’s why aliens scare me.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
You must be logged in to post a comment.