The 12 Best Sci-Fi Movies Streaming On Netflix Right Now
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The Best Sci-Fi Movies Streaming On Netflix Right Now
With so many streaming services out there, it's getting harder and harder to find what you're looking for. To make it worse, some of these services would rather you just take what the algorithm serves up than do something so humdrum as manually browsing through a genre list. It makes it hard to find new stuff and even just to remember what's out there. Making it that much worse, these lists are in flux all the time. We were about to include Blade Runner 2049 on this list only to find that it was leaving Netflix as we were preparing it. And so we waded into the murky waters of Netflix, spear held aloft, and went to work finding as many of the most watchable sci-fi movies as we could.
This list includes everything from iconic science fiction classics by celebrated directors to animated movies, superhero films, and brand-new Netflix originals. All of it is available on Netflix right now, as we publish this, ready for you to search up and watch.
Once you've read through this list, make sure to check out some of our other lists--if you're one of the many people canceling their Netflix subscriptions, check out our list of the best HBO Max sci-fi. We also have a list of the best sci-fi of the 2010s that covers a variety of streaming services and features movies like Dredd, Under the Skin, and Mad Max: Fury Road. If you're all tuckered out on long science fiction movies, though, check out our list of the best short-ass movies around the streaming world.
1. Mitchells vs. the Machines
Child-friendly animated fare, more often than not, requires not just a television and a streaming subscription, but also the patience of a parent who can sit through something meant to keep a six-year-old's attention more than to say anything meaningful. Mitchells vs. the Machines is the rare case of a kid-focused movie that's able to do both. The story is simple--a well-meaning dad and his just-graduated daughter have grown apart, and he wants to reconnect with her. She's always buried in technology and aspires to become a filmmaker; he, meanwhile, doesn't take the time to understand her short films at all, or the gadgets that run her life. A miserable road trip turns into a quest to save the world when a tech mogul accidentally unleashes a powerful AI on the world that wants to dispense of all humans. This is one of the easiest Netflix originals to recommend. Fun performances from Abbi Jacobson (Broad City), Danny McBride (Pineapple Express), and Maya Rudolph (Bridesmaids) inform an absolutely frenetic pace that feels like one of the few accurate representations of a creative teenager's mind. Despite the silly plot, the characters are always lovable and relatable, even when they're at odds.
2. Sorry to Bother You
It's really hard to explain how Sorry to Bother You is a science fiction movie without spoiling one of its best surprises. Director Boots Riley brings us the story of Cassius Green (LaKeith Stanfield), who discovers his inner salesman as a labor revolution and rising commerce mogul butt heads around him. This is a deeply political, incredibly strange movie. Tessa Thompson is an absolute scene stealer throughout this entertaining commentary on capitalism, labor, and choice.
3. Don't Look Up
You need to be in the right mood for Don't Look Up; this film about climate change from Anchorman director Adam McKay is a two-and-a-half hour panic attack. A small troupe of scientists works hard to warn the world about a meteor on a collision course with Earth. Despite the irrefutable evidence, the people of Earth struggle to care. Don't Look Up is as funny and as hamfisted as it is nihilistic.
4. Men In Black
Sometimes the classics are the best. That's right, Men in Black is a classic now; it's 25 years old. I'm sorry, old kids. Men in Black feels like a quintessential Will Smith vehicle, but it doesn't ride on his charisma alone. Tommy Lee Jones gives one of his surliest performances, and Vincent D'Onofrio shows just how talented he is as a physical actor nearly 20 years before he would don the cufflinks of Marvel's Kingpin, where he would always manage to look taller, broader, and stronger than anyone else on the show. And all he wants is some sugar water before he finds the galaxy on Orion's belt.
5. Spiderhead
Our relationship with pharmaceuticals is very different in America than in other places. While commercials are assaulting us with the names of countless drugs to ask our doctors about at every ad break, that's illegal in many other countries. It seems to make sense, then, that a movie like Spiderhead would come out here. This Netflix original stars Chris Hemsworth as the warden of a luxurious prison where inmates live semi-independently in return for taking experimental drugs. Of course, not all is as it seems. And despite what the 2016 Ghostbusters: Answer the Call suggested, you can put Chris Hemsworth in glasses and make him look smart.
6. Spider-Man 2
Sam Raimi almost nailed the modern comic-book film on his first go with Spider-Man. It only took him one more try to perfect the formula with Spider-Man 2. While that formula seems to have been lost to time along with the one for the Super Soldier serum, Spider-Man 2 remains an excellent superhero film that keys into the most enduring themes of one of the most popular comic book characters around; that's thanks in large part to Alfred Molina's Doctor Octopus, a patently absurd character that he instills with pathos and empathy even as Peter struggles with the balance of power and responsibility that he must uphold to protect New York.
7. Bird Box
One great way to ruin a good monster movie is to show the monster too early; Alien and Jaws are both classics because they used their monsters frugally for maximum effect. But what if you never showed the monster? In this Sandra Bullock-starring Netflix original, an entity appears that causes anyone who sees it to commit suicide. Survivors cover their windows in blankets and newspapers to keep themselves safe. After a series of harrowing events, Bullock's character and her children attempt to journey downriver with caged birds that respond to the entity. You never see the monster, and viewers are left to only theorize what it might look like.
8. Blame!
Set sometime in the future, Blame! takes place inside an AI-constructed megastructure that once began on Earth, but spun out of control and has built out who-knows-how-far into space, creating a maze of unimaginably huge "rooms" that can be big enough to contain entire planets. A seemingly immortal man named Killy, wanders the megastructure endlessly in search of the Terminal Gene to stop construction. Killy is the main character in the original manga but is more of a supporting character in the film, which follows a small village located somewhere in the megastructure and its struggles to survive. The movie is more atmospheric than anything, and can be tough to comprehend at times, but gives an incredible sense of scale and of the helpless position that the remainder of humanity is in inside the megastructure.
9. Blade Runner
Sure, Blade Runner might be on just about every "best sci-fi" list out there, but it's worth repeating (and rewatching!). This movie is an enduring symbol of cyberpunk and a classic in the filmographies of both director Ridley Scott and star Harrison Ford. The 1982 film came well before CGI and is also an untouchable showcase for the pinnacle of practical effects in film.
10. A Clockwork Orange
Kids, ask your parents before you watch this one. This 1971 Stanley Kubrick film imagines a dystopian near-future where youth gangs are out of control. Alex DeLarge (Malcolm McDowell) and his droogies go on violent, drug-fueled rampages before Alex is imprisoned and subjected to new rehabilitation techniques. A Clockwork Orange is an intense, upsetting film even half a century removed from its release, with lots to say about crime, rehabilitation, delinquency, psychology, and more.
11. The Mist
The Mist leans slightly more toward science fiction on the grounds that the monsters are of the cosmic horror variety. Based on a Stephen King novella, The Mist focuses on a group of people trapped in a supermarket enveloped in a supernatural mist that brings Lovecraftian monsters of all kinds with it. While there are monsters, this movie is primarily one of those "lock people in a place and see what happens" movies. And no matter what YouTube tells you, the bleak ending is not accompanied by Smash Mouth's All-Star.
12. Johnny Mnemonic
This 1995 film is a seminal work in cyberpunk cinema. Starring Keanu Reeves and based on a William Gibson story of the same name, Reeves plays the titular character, a data courier who carries his delivery in a cybernetic implant in his head. His mission is a race against time, with the overloaded implant and yakuza in pursuit threatening his life. The movie isn't actually very good--it was originally intended to be a low-budget art film until its budget was increased from $1.5 million to around $30 million, and Gibson distanced himself from the project. It's a relic of its time, though, and has all the hallmarks of cyberpunk stories of the era, even if it doesn't deliver the goods.