More than 25 years ago, Steven Spielberg and a talented group of puppeteers and craftsman worked painstakingly for months to create E.T. the Extraterrestrial, who would become perhaps the most beloved non-human movie character of all time. If those people knew that their efforts would eventually lead to Aliens in the Attic, they would have probably just given up and done a sequel to 1941 instead.
Now, I have not seen Aliens in the Attic yet; I say “yet” because it strikes me as one of those movies my kids might convince me to take them to in a weak moment, like on a Sunday afternoon after it’s been raining for days and there stands a good chance that if we don’t leave the house, someone will actually commit violence.
But even if it’s not a pained, derivative cross between E.T. and Gremlins (my God, I think I just channeled the pitch meeting), I still say there are plenty of other aliens-among-us movies that are probably better – even if they’re worse. Here are just five:
