29 years later, Sam Neill’s greatest sci-fi movie is still the best cosmic thriller ever put to screen

Cosmic horror has never been more popular. Over the past decade, filmmakers have explored the genre in fascinating ways, whether through the inescapable loops of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s The Endless, the terrifying beauty of self-destruction in Alex Garland’s Annihilation, or the claustrophobic nightmare of Steven Kostanski and Jeremy Gillespie’s The Void. The existential dread of a suburban dinner party fuels the relentlessly underappreciated Coherence, while more recently, Backroomshas reminded an entire generation that endless, empty spaces can be just as unsettling as any monster lurking in the dark.