Film

Lifeforce

Name: Lifeforce
Genre: Horror, Science Fiction, Action, Mystery
Released: 1985
Cast: Steve Railsback, Peter Firth, Frank Finlay, Mathilda May, Patrick Stewart

Tobe Hooper's 1985 sci-fi horror about naked space vampires descending on London is gloriously unhinged—operatic, sensual, grotesque, and utterly committed to its own absurdity. It's a film that swings for the fences and occasionally connects. For anyone who loves genre cinema willing to be strange and vulnerable.

TMDb rating

3.1

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy big, gleefully overheated sci-fi horror where practical effects and sheer audacity matter more than logic, and you don't mind a plot that lurches from space shuttle to infected London with a grin.

Skip it if you want a tight, sober thriller; this one is loud, uneven and happy to stall in its own excess, and its tone swings between solemn and absurd.

What it asks of you: Runs an hour and three-quarters, with a slow, sprawling first half before the London chaos takes hold, so settle in for a patient build and forgive its genre hopping.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

The Hidden1987

An alien parasite possesses bodies across Los Angeles in this tight, inventive thriller that shares Lifeforce's body-horror premise but executes it with lean, escalating dread and genuine scares.

But It's more grounded and less visually operatic, so if you're after Hooper's baroque excess, this will feel restrained by comparison.

Videodrome1983

Cronenberg's hallucinatory body-horror masterpiece—sexuality and technology fused into nightmare logic. The same willingness to be disturbing and sensual that makes Lifeforce magnetic, but with sharper teeth.

But Dense, deliberately disorienting, and genuinely unpleasant at times. It doesn't care if you enjoy it, only if you feel it.

The Quatermass Xperiment1955

Hammer's original alien contamination film—austere, eerie, and genuinely creepy. Proves the template that Hooper adapted: extraterrestrial infection, institutional confusion, escalating horror.

But 1950s British restraint means no nudity, no operatic excess, and a slower pace. It's cerebral rather than sensational.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Lifeforce

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Guinea Pig Part 2: Flower of Flesh and Blood1985

Both are 1985 films that weaponize the beautiful human body as the site of horror and desire, using nudity not for titillation but as a source of real transgression.

Verhoeven's brutal medieval rape-revenge epic shares Lifeforce's sensual ugliness and refusal to moralize its own provocations. It's a film that makes the body matter viscerally, disturbing and magnetic in equal measure.

But It's graphically violent and sexual in ways that feel designed to alienate. Some will find it exploitative rather than exploratory.

Guinea Pig Part 2: Flower of Flesh and Blood poster

Near Dark1987

Bigelow's vampire road movie is violent, seductive, and kinetic—it understands that vampires work because they're predatory and attractive simultaneously, a tension Lifeforce also grasps.

But It's a vampire film first and a genre experiment second. If you want sci-fi spectacle, this goes intimate instead.

Possession1981

Andrzej Żuławski's fever-dream about marriage dissolution and Lovecraftian chaos—gonzo, sexual, grotesque, and genuinely unhinged in a way that feels like Lifeforce's spiritual cousin.

But Deliberately obscure and unpleasant, more interested in psychological torment than narrative coherence. Very much an acquired taste.

Scanners1981

Cronenberg on ESP and paranoia, with body-horror set pieces that rival Lifeforce's commitment to making human flesh unsettling. Taut, weird, and visually inventive.

But The plot is thinner than you'd like, and it's more interested in the grotesque spectacle than emotional payoff.

The Blob1988

Zombie's remake of the '50s creature feature combines body-horror, cosmic dread, and practical FX excess with genuine sympathy for the characters. Wildly entertaining in a similar register to Lifeforce.

But It's a remake of a B-movie, and some of the plotting is thin. The tone can feel scattered.

Altered States1980

Finney's scientist experiment-gone-wrong features psychedelic transformation sequences and a willingness to be visually outrageous that echoes Hooper's baroque sensibility.

But It's half psychological drama, half hallucinogenic spectacle, and the two sides don't always cohere. Some will find it self-indulgent.

A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge1985

Released the same year as Lifeforce, this sequel also embraces homoerotic subtext and body-horror, with a similar disregard for taste. Genuinely weird and unafraid of its own strangeness.

But It's widely dismissed as the worst entry in the franchise. The plot is muddled and the execution uneven, even as its queerness fascinates.

A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge poster

Dead Mountaineer's Hotel1979

Both films trust the audience to sit with unsettling imagery and cosmic dread without needing explanation. Both are willing to be strange in their own era's grammar.

A Georgian supernatural mystery hosted by Soviet-era production values and a glacial, dreamlike pacing. It's strange science-fiction adjacent horror that prioritizes mood over logic—hypnotic and utterly unconcerned with whether you understand what's happening.

But Deliberately opaque, slow-moving, and visually flat by design. Subtitled. It asks enormous patience from the viewer for ambiguous payoff.

Mulholland Drive2001

Both are about transformation and seduction, where identity dissolves and the border between desire and violation blurs. Both trust enigma over explanation.

Lynch's fractured Hollywood nightmare has the same hallucinatory logic and sexual undertones as Lifeforce—a film that operates more on mood and image than narrative sense, seductive and unmoored from reality.

But It's deliberately fragmented and doesn't resolve. Three-and-a-half hours of beautiful confusion that some will find pretentious or unbearably slow.