cliché and tired at this point. We got the message loud and clear with 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby, but horror filmmakers simply can’t resist the idea. The Alien franchise – brilliant though it is – is essentially a rape and childbirth analogy, for example. Face-huggers violate the throats of humans and use them as incubators for their young - which burst forth and kill the host in gruesome fashion, before continuing the cycle of murder and mayhem. The reason the film is so successful in its storytelling is that the monster is indiscriminate in its attacks. It targets men and women equally, and the ‘Big Bad’ (the Queen) is female – creating an effective juxtaposition between her and Ripley. The films still use the concept of pregnancy and childbirth as a horror tr...

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