Braxton Taylor
It’s difficult to make a decent military horror movie. If we want the audience to be scared, the good guys need to be scared, too — but the scariest things about life in the U.S. military are black mold in the barracks and jet fuel in the drinking water. Frightening? Yes, absolutely, but not in a Hollywood “scream queen” kind of way.
Still, a good military horror movie isn’t impossible. The stakes just need to be a bit higher, the monsters a bit bigger and the heroes a bit harder. And the terror most often isn’t from the supernatural: The biggest bogeyman for the military in horror movies is usually the government, just like in real life.
Here are 10 of the best military horror movies for Halloween season, most with really creative ways to turn the government into the bad guy.
1. “Aliens” (1986)
“Alien” is probably the greatest sci-fi horror movie ever made, so it only stands to reason that a sequel that employs space Marines to fight the aliens is going to make for the best military horror movie ever. Indeed, “Aliens” has everything the original has: a scary monster (the Xenomorphs), a great hero (Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley) and a lot of people to shockingly kill off one by one. It’s even scarier because the audience knows exactly that, aside from the threat of getting ripped in half, what makes “Aliens” so frightening is being hunted and overrun by a swarming enemy — an enemy you know is going to impregnate you orally and stick you to a wall for the baby to exit via your chest. It doesn’t get much better (or worse, depending on who you ask) than that.
2. “Predator” (1987)
Does anyone remember why Dutch Schaefer (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and his team of 1980s badasses were wandering around this jungle in the first place? Maybe, but the story isn’t really essential to the plot. All we truly remember is the most epic cinematic handshake ever made and then watching the team get killed and mutilated by an unseen hunter.
But the Predator isn’t just hunting the commandos: It steals their bodies and then skins them, making trophies of its kills. The best and most Halloween-ready part of all is, of course, the big reveal when Dutch fights the Predator one on one, and we see just what the alien hunter really looks like.
3. “Jacob’s Ladder” (1990)
Army veteran Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins, “The Shawshank Redemption”) returns from Vietnam and becomes a postman in New York City, but he is suddenly wracked by disturbing visions and haunted by apparitions following him throughout the city. After his VA doctor and a member of his old unit are murdered, he discovers that he and everyone he served with in Vietnam might have been victims of a medical experiment.
“Jacob’s Ladder” has pretty much everything a modern military horror movie should have to scare the bejeezus out of service members: war, bayonetings, ghosts, forced science experiments, tentacles and even the VA.
4. “28 Weeks Later” (2007)
“28 Weeks Later” is actually a sequel to the zombie-horror apocalyptic classic “28 Days Later,” where an outbreak of a deadly virus causes the downfall of society on the British Isles. In this installment, the last victim of the Rage virus outbreak dies and the United States attempts a military-led repopulation of the island nation. It goes about as well as you expect it would, and it’s not long before the U.S. Army and Air Force start using Britain for target practice.
The real horror in “28 Weeks Later” is (obviously) the Rage virus turning an entire country into millions of zombies. But there’s also the scary horror of Doyle, a Delta Force operator (Jeremy Renner, “The Avengers”) who is so bad at following orders, he helps an infected civilian escape.
5. “Dog Soldiers” (2002)
What begins as a heartwarming story of British regular troops who couldn’t get into the Special Air Service takes a turn when they find the mutilated remains of SAS operators. Only the SAS captain survives to give the soldiers a clue as to what happened, but they soon realize they are also being hunted by whatever tore apart those bodies.
In their escape, the unit holes up in a cabin with a zoologist named Megan. They quickly learn their unseen enemy are werewolves, and they need to survive the night. The plot, of course, thickens as the night wears on, and they find the true enemy isn’t just the werewolves. The SAS was part of a government plot to capture the preternatural creatures and turn them into a weapon (somehow).
6. “Ravenous” (1999)
There just aren’t a lot of military movies set during the Mexican War, but that’s where “Ravenous” starts. The horrors of war prove to be too much for Lt. John Boyd (Guy Pearce, “Memento”), who pretends to be dead to survive a battle. The Army is so embarrassed, they ship him off to a remote outpost in the Sierra Mountains, where his mission is to help settlers on their way out west.
One of the “settlers” (Robert Carlyle, “28 Weeks Later”) turns out to be a good old-fashioned cannibal. He’s also an Army officer who wants to use his command of the fort to murder real settlers passing through and use them for food. It’s a good reminder to be careful what destiny you’re manifesting.
7. “Overlord” (2018)
“Overlord” isn’t just a military-horror flick: It also takes place in an alternate universe where the U.S. Army is integrated. Paratroopers jumping into France on D-Day get shot down and discover secret Nazi medical experiments being performed on civilians. It turns out the Nazis have been working on superhuman mutants to fight for the Germans.
World War II is such a great backdrop for any plot, because although superhuman mutant Nazis made from distilled humans isn’t a thing the Third Reich ever tried, it sure sounds like something they might try.
8. “Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead” (2014)
Clearly a sequel, this is the comedic follow-up to a 2009 Norwegian film about zombie Nazis murdering college students in the mountains of Norway. That film was based on Norse folklore, where a vindictive spirit kills to defend its stolen treasure. Martin (Vegar Hoel), the sole survivor of that movie, is charged with his friends’ murders.
Through an accident, one of the Nazi zombies’ arms is sewn onto Martin’s body and starts killing people — but he also realizes it can also raise the dead. So Martin raises a unit of Red Army Russians to stop the Nazis once and for all. Awesome.
9. “Deathwatch” (2002)
As if almost everything about World War I wasn’t already terrifying enough, the makers of “Deathwatch” set a psychological horror film there. After going over the top to make an assault on German lines, a handful of British troops get lost in the fog of war and wander for hours. When they finally come upon a trench, three Germans flee for their lives — but not from their British enemy.
Compasses stop working, and the trench fills with blood as the Tommies begin to secure their new position. They slowly begin to lose their sanity and, one by one, find themselves at odds with the other members of their unit — not a great thing while everyone is armed. A growl from under the earth lets them know that maybe the Germans aren’t their biggest concern in this trench.
10. “The Ninth Configuration” (1980)
“The Ninth Configuration” is set in a U.S. Army insane asylum in the middle of the Vietnam War. When new Marine Col. Vincent Kane (Stacy Keach, “American History X”) takes command, he is drawn to Capt. Billy Cutshaw (Scott Wilson, “In Cold Blood”), an astronaut who cracked before taking off for the moon.
Things aren’t what they seem in the asylum, however. “The Ninth Configuration” begins like a comedic romp but gets really dark and twisted really fast. It’s a psychological thriller that might make some of its viewers question their own sanity — just what one might expect from the guy who brought you “The Exorcist.”
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