Cinephiles have been treated to a barrel of sci-fi gems over the last couple of years: from Dune, Denis Villeneuve’s 2021 reimagination of Frank Herbert’s tome, to M3GAN, the 2022 robot comedy-horror, to The Matrix Resurrections, to Christopher Nolan’s 2021 time travelling action thriller, Tenet we’ve enjoyed a good run.
There have also been some excellent TV shows landing on the various platforms, such as the Star Wars spin-off series Obi-Wan Kenobi, Andor, Apple TV+’s Silo, Black Mirror and HBO’s post-apocalyptic drama, The Last of Us.
As if that wasn't enough, there are dozens of fantastic science fiction films out there that are available to watch right now. From modern masterpieces to classics of the genre, we pick some of the best sci-fi movies to discover from home.
Primer (2004)
If you get to the end of Primer and understand everything that’s going on, you’re doing extremely well. The film is one of the most notoriously complex movies ever to tackle time and the idea of looping, and the low budget gem has been fascinating and perplexing fans since it came out. It focuses on two friends who accidentally create a device in their garage that creates a time loop. After initially using it to make money on the stock market, the pair discover the nightmarish impacts of time travel and find themselves pulled inexorably deeper down the rabbit hole.
The film makes no concessions with its audience. The characters speak in complicated engineering jargon from the start and the acts of time travel themselves have a gruelling effect on the characters, sometimes lasting entire days. It leaves viewers confused, in the most compelling way possible.
Available on Prime Video
Interstellar (2014)
Interstellar is principally about the love between widowed engineer father Joseph Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) and his daughter Murph (Jessica Chastain). The Earth is dying, so Cooper has to travel through black holes and interdimensional portals and even time to find a solution - and find his way back to her. There are bombastic visuals and tender performances from McConaughey, Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain, and it was also the first major movie credit for Timothée Chalamet.
Available on NOW
Annihilation (2018)
The stunning sci-fi epic is Apocalypse Now with added aliens, and a whole lot more strangeness. This brilliantly weird high-concept film is one of the best original Netflix movies yet, following cellular biology professor Lena (Natalie Portman) as she ventures deeper into a mysterious zone called the Shimmer. Gina Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson and Oscar Isaac also give strong performances in a film packed with haunting imagery and inventive world building. In the film the outer worlds reflect inner turmoil – Annihilation explores grief and mental illness through fantastical and unforgettable visual imagery.
Available to watch on Netflix
Arrival (2016)
It’s the film that established director Denis Villeneuve as one of the auteurs of modern sci-fi cinema, and one that should have won Amy Adams the Best Actress Oscar. Arrival tells the story of aliens arriving on earth, with Adams playing a linguistics expert brought in by the military to translate for them. As her understanding of the alien language grows and the world lurches on the edge of war, she comes to experience time in a non-linear fashion and see her own life in new, meaningful and devastating ways.
It’s so much more than a film about alien encounters. It’s a film about communication, and what humans can achieve when they make efforts to understand each other.
Available to watch on Netflix
Under the Skin (2013)
In Scarlett Johansson’s impressive, varied and sometimes controversial career, Under the Skin stands out as her strangest movie. Here she plays an alien life form who drives around Scotland in a van seducing men, only for them to meet terrifying, unexpected ends after visiting her apartment. In terms of sheer strangeness, Jonathan Glazer’s film is a remarkable movie, with stark imagery that will stay with you long after the credits roll. It’s sci-fi at its most visceral and unsettling.
Available on Prime Video
Coherence (2013)
This interesting, knotty movie was shot for next to nothing back in 2014 and made more of an impact than many films with budgets 10 times the size. The film took £109,000 at the box office, nearly tripling its tiny budget of £39,000, and has become a cult favourite.
It sees a group of friends get together for a dinner party on the night a comet is due to fly over North America. After the event, the group venture outside and encounter doubles of themselves, realising that the event has created a series of alternative realities. What follows is a nicely twisty drama, cannily directed by James Ward Byrkit.
There are no flashy CGI gimmicks or grandiose set-pieces, but this brain-teasing movie packs an awful lot of intrigue into a lean 88-minute running time and shows a huge amount of creativity and originality.
