From Canvas to Screen: The Influence of Sci-Fi Horror Art on Cinema
If you bump into the “Sci-Fi Fantasy Horror” page on the internet, you’ll see quite a collection of digital arts that pretty much sum up the state of sci-fi horror film industries of today. Dozens of them revolve around the themes of robots, space, mechanical creatures, extraterrestrial species, monsters (or mutants), futuristic weapons, post-apocalypse, and cyberpunk, among others. You’ll find more or less the same themes on DeviantArt, too. Everything looks impressive at first, but on a second look, the collections also raise many questions. Why does it seem that just about every artist is stuck in the aesthetics and ideas from the bygone decades of the 1980s (and perhaps 1970s) with sci-fi horror art? Is there a good reason that most humanoid robots depicted as carrying weapons look very much like the Terminator? Do all sci-fi weapons have to look like something taken straight out of Star Wars and Blade Runner? Do we need that many exposed wires in a spaceship?
It has been well established that science fiction is an exercise to imagine (or predict) the future. Well, it’s not always accurate, but the imagination at least shows how the future might look. In particular, the film industry has presented a lot of hypothetical yet certainly thought-provoking scenarios about our world in the future; it gives us alien invasion, robot revolution, zombie apocalypse, AI-powered dystopia, barren Earth, and much more. But somewhere in between those bleak pictures, Hollywood also offers glimpses of wonder like flying cars, interstellar travel, teleportation, cure for cancers, state-of-the-art prosthesis, etc. And if you really think about it, there’s barely anything new or refreshingly imaginative over the last few decades.
What about horror art? We’re glad to say that you can find a much larger variety of options. While many of them are essentially body horrors, there’s no shortage of physiological torture and bleak atmosphere all around. Of course, it’s impossible to list everything here, but you never really need all of them, anyway. Taking a close look at Francisco Goya’s “Black Paintings,” Chet Zar’s “White Walker” (or his entire dark visual arts for that matter), and Bill Stoneham’s “The Hands Resist Him” should be enough to get a reasonably good grasp of how horror on canvas has affected the film industry at large.
As you get to the point of sci-fi horror, where the two genres mix into a single platform, it gets pretty difficult to keep the creative freedom from each of them intact. For instance, you can’t always combine the concept of witches and devils from the horror genre with laser blasters and nanotechnology (from its sci-fi counterpart). It’s possible, but crafting a coherent story that connects those elements together might take some real leap of faith, especially if you expect the audience to find it believable.
It’s true that artworks on canvas are never bound by the limit of what’s believable. An artist can paint the most gruesome image, but then again, the end product will be strictly horror, not sci-fi. And the opposite is also true; take a glance at John Berkey’s “Pre-Flight” and “Burning City” as references. “Pathway to the Kysh Anomaly” by Jim Burns is probably among the closest you can get to sci-fi horror, but it’s relatively new, so the artwork might be affected by films rather than the other way around.
If there’s an artwork in which the influence of the cinema simply can’t be overstated, it would be “Necronom IV” by H. R. Giger. It ended up being the original inspiration of “Xenomorph,” the creature everyone remembers, from the iconic 1979 sci-fi horror film “Alien” directed by Ridley Scott.
While paintings, illustrations, 3D assets, digital drawings, and many sci-fi horror art certainly can be exceedingly imaginative, there isn’t always a direct correlation between visualization on canvas and cinemas in that genre. John Berkey’s space paintings are so futuristic, they fall right into the sci-fi category and make for excellent Star Wars posters; Francisco Goya’s artworks were openly attributed by Guillermo del Toro himself as part of the inspirations behind Pan’s Labyrinth, which is not at all sci-fi.
We think it’s safe to say that every working sci-fi horror formula has been almost completely explored by the film industry. You’ve seen various blends of elements that actually delivered, and those that didn’t. And in the film industry, trying a new formula is a risky undertaking. This is also the main reason even modern sci-fi horror films still use the same basic building blocks of their decades-old predecessors. A lot of modern movies in the subgenre still rely on familiar premises, such as extraterrestrial species terrorizing the crew of a spaceship, aliens invading Earth, humanoid robot posing threats to humans, AI revolting against people, science experiments ending up creating monsters, or deadly zombie virus spreading out of control.
Since all these formulas have been proven effective, it’s no surprise that many new films – and also arts – use similar stuff. Not that canvas-based artworks have no influence on sci-fi horror cinema. Sci-fi horror, as a literary art, is also pretty old, appearing for the first time in the 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley. Also, plenty of modern sci-fi horror arts are drawn digitally. They’re CGI rather than paintings on canvas.
Do you think movie posters can be categorized as sci-fi horror art? Can you name some sci-fi horror movies that are based on novels? We’d love to hear from you.
Other Things You Might Want to Know
Guillermo del Toro’s filmography (as director):
Title
Year
Notes
Cronos
1993
Mimic
1997
The Devil’s Backbone
2001
Blade II
2002
Hellboy
2004
Pan’s Labyrinth
2006
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
2008
Pacific Rim
2013
Crimson Peak
2015
The Shape of Water
2017
Nightmare Alley
2021
Pinocchio
2022
Co-directed with Mark Gustafson
Frankenstein
TBA
Post-production
How many TV series are in the Terminator franchise?
There are two so far, including Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008 – 2009) on Fox and Terminator Zero (2024) on Netflix. The latter is an anime.
Is Star Wars sci-fi horror?
Star Wars films feature a lot of monsters and strange creatures from the galaxy, but it’s not exactly horror, but more like science fantasy.
