Paste's The 50 Best Monster Movies of All Time

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By Jim Vorel and Paste Movies Staff | September 29, 2022 | 10:27am

When you hear the term “monster movie,” you might think you know what to expect. A giant, irradiated bug stomping all over a modern metropolis, perhaps, or an inhuman beast stalking a group of campers foolish enough to blunder into its territory. The connotation of “monster” is a negative one, after all, but it’s also a term that reveals the inherent prejudice of those who use it. A “monster” is simply that which we find exotic, frightening and difficult to categorize—it’s an aberration in the natural order, and with that realization the fear comes naturally. We always fear what we don’t understand, as the likes of H.P. Lovecraft and Carmine Falcone have memorably opined.
A “monster movie,” then, is a bit wider term than one might initially realize, composed of everything from man’s battles against the natural world (as in Jaws) to struggles with the repressed self, as seen in almost any werewolf feature. There are beasts aplenty here, and a smattering of snarling aliens, but also lovable monsters and misunderstood creatures that never wanted to do any harm. Some are unabashed villains, while others are actually the protagonists of their films.

Here are the 50 best monster movies of all time, but first let’s discuss which movies you will and won’t see on this list.
Defining a “Monster Movie”

— The threat or focus of a monster movie has to be something inhuman. Human behavior can of course be “monstrous,” but a monster as we’re defining it here isn’t a human, unless that human has physically transformed somehow. By that token, an earthly animal (like the shark in Jaws, or the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park) can be “monsters,” per se, especially if they’re presented in unrealistically heightened ways, such as being bigger than normal, or operating with unnatural malevolence. A human can also transform into a monster, as in the case of a werewolf.

— Alien creatures, likewise, are also capable of being monsters, but they’re far more likely to qualify if they kill by physically attacking you with tooth and claw. The xenomorph of Alien? Monster. The ray gun-wielding, chattering martians of Mars Attacks? Not monsters.

— The monsters shouldn’t be supernatural in origin. By this token, a ghost is not a monster. Neither is a zombie, as they’re undead and not a flesh-and-blood creature. Disqualifying “undead” in general also keeps vampires off this particular list, but don’t fret: You can visit our list of the 100 best vampire films of all time, or the 50 best zombie movies of all time.

— In order to keep the list from being completely dominated by entries from specific franchises such as the Godzilla series, we will hold ourselves to a maximum of only two entries per franchise. Never fear, we’ve ranked every Godzilla movie in the past, as well.