Alien

Did we need another Alien film after Ridley Scott's rousing and deeply underrated 'David' trilogy (Prometheus, Alien: Covenant) was scrapped one installment short of its conclusion? Probably not, but Fede Alvarez is a battle-tested genre director who brought impressive visual flair to the latest soft reboot, Alien: Romulus. Despite ham-fisted and largely unsuccessful attempts to connect this back to the original Alien film from 1979, Romulus stands on its own thanks to gorgeous practical effects, a killer lead performance from Cailee Spaeney and a particularly gnarly final creature. It's always fun to have face-huggers and xenomorphs crawling around a cavernous, largely unpopulated spaceship.

Well, any worthwhile Alien flick features a certain creature implanting a certain, uh, other creature in a person's chest cavity. It isn't always for the faint of heart, but there are few more iconic images in the history of horror cinema than a face-hugger latching onto its victim. Romulus delivers.

No spoilers, but that final creature in Romulus ... I haven't seen anything freakier in the 2024 calendar of films. If he's not an icon, I'm not sure what is, ya know?