The Hulu library tends to be something of a mixed bag for most film genres, science fiction included—films come and go fairly rapidly, making lists like this one that much more valuable. The sci-fi films now available run a gamut of different styles, from iconic anime such as Akira or horror films that blend genres such as Come True or 2022 Predator prequel Prey. And there are some sneaky sci-fi entries like Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s Something in the Dirt as well.
You may also want to consult the following, sci-fi centric lists:
The 100 best sci-fi movies of all time
The 100 best sci-fi TV shows of all time
The best sci-fi movies on Netflix
The best sci-fi movies on Amazon Prime
The best sci-fi movies on HBO Max
1. Akira
Year: 1988
Director: Katsuhiro Otomo
Stars: Mitsuo Iwata, Nozomu Sasaki, Mami Koyama
Rating: R
The sum total of anime cinema from the early ’90s to present day is marked by the precedent of Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira. Adapted from the early chapters of Otomo’s landmark manga series, Akira was the most expensive animated film of its time and cinematic benchmark that sent shockwaves throughout the industry. Set thirty-one years after after World War III was sparked by a massive explosion that engulfed the city of Tokyo, Akira is set in the sprawling metropolis of Neo-Tokyo, built on the ruins of the former and teetering precariously on the cusp of social upheaval. The film follows the stories of Kaneda Shotaro and Tetsuo Shima, two members of a youth motorcycle gang whose lives are irrevocably changed one fateful night on the outskirts of the city. While clashing against a rival bike gang during a turf feud, Tetsuo crashes into a strange child and is the promptly whisked away by a clandestine military outfit while Kaneda and his friends look on, helplessly. From then, Tetsuo begins to develop frightening new psychic abilities as Kaneda tries desperately to mount a rescue. Eventually the journeys of these two childhood friends will meet and clash in a spectacular series of showdowns encircling an ominous secret whose very origins rest at the dark heart of the city’s catastrophic past: a power known only as “Akira.” Like Ghost in the Shell that followed it, Akira is considered a touchstone of the cyberpunk genre, though its inspirations run much deeper than paying homage to William Gibson’s Neuromancer or Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. Akira is a film whose origins and aesthetic are inextricably rooted in the history of post-war Japan, from the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and the “Anpo” student protests of that era to the country’s economic boom and the then-nascent counterculture of Bosozoku racing. Akira is a film of many messages, the least of which a coded anti-nuclear parable and a screed against wanton capitalism and the hubris of “progress.” But perhaps most poignantly, at its heart, it is the story of watching your best friend turn into a monster. Akira is almost singlehandedly responsible for the early 1990s boom in anime in the West, its aesthetic vision rippling across every major art form, inspiring an entire generation of artists, filmmakers and even musicians in its wake. For these reasons and so many more, every anime fan must grapple at some point or another with Akira’s primacy as the most important anime film ever made. Long Live Akira! —Toussaint Egan
2. Alien
Year: 1979
Director: Ridley Scott
Stars: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Ian Holm, John Hurt, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, Yaphet Kotto
Rating: R
Conduits, canals and cloaca—Ridley Scott’s ode to claustrophobia leaves little room to breathe, cramming its blue collar archetypes through spaces much too small to sustain any sort of sanity, and much too unforgiving to survive. That Alien can also make Space—capital “S”—in its vastness feel as suffocating as a coffin is a testament to Scott’s control as a director (arguably absent from much of his work to follow, including his insistence on ballooning the mythos of this first near-perfect film), as well as to the purity of horror as a cinematic genre. Alien, after all, is tension as narrative, violation as a matter of fact: When the crew of the mining spaceship Nostromo is prematurely awakened from cryogenic sleep to attend to a distress call from a seemingly lifeless planetoid, there is no doubt the small cadre of working class grunts and their posh Science Officer Ash (Ian Holm) will discover nothing but mounting, otherworldly doom. Things obviously, iconically, go wrong from there, and as the crew understands both what they’ve brought onto their ship and what their fellow crew members are made of—in one case, literally—a hero emerges from the catastrophe: Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), the Platonic ideal of the Final Girl who must battle a viscous, phallic grotesque (care of the master of the phallically grotesque, H.R. Giger) and a fellow crew member who’s basically a walking vessel for an upsetting amount of seminal fluid. As Ripley crawls through the ship’s steel organs, between dreams—the film begins with the crew wakening, and ends with a return to sleep—Alien evolves into a psychosexual nightmare, an indictment of the inherently masculine act of colonization and a symbolic treatise on the trauma of assault. In Space, no one can hear you scream—because no one is listening. —Dom Sinacola
3. Dual
Year: 2022
Director: Riley Stearns
Stars: Karen Gillan, Aaron Paul, Beulah Koale
Rating: R
In Dual, everyone talks like they’re a robot. Perhaps that’s because they want to better integrate new Replacements, clones made of terminally ill or otherwise on-their-way-out people, into the world. Maybe it’s because the delivery is supposed to be as dry, strange and winning as the low-key sci-fi itself. Regardless, this idiosyncratic acting choice by writer/director Riley Stearns is just one of many over the course of his third and (so far) best movie. The world of Dual is near-future, or present-adjacent but in another dimension. Its video chat is Zoom-like, but texting has more of a coding aesthetic. Its minivans still run on gas, but you can make a clone out of spit in an hour. Its people still love violent reality TV, but its shows sometimes involve government-mandated fights to the death between people who discover they’re no longer dying and their Replacements. It’s the latter situation in which Sarah (Karen Gillan) finds herself. After puking up blood, creating a clone to take over her life and receiving improbable good news from a scene-stealingly funny doctor, Sarah finds that she has a year to prepare for the fight of (and for) her life. Stearns shoots the film in grim, hands-off observations sapped of color and intimacy, but with amusing angles or choices (like a long take watching characters do slo-mo play-acting) that add visual energy to the bleakness. As we see this unfurl, we root for Sarah’s success not because we want her to get her old, sad life back, but because the training process has opened her up to life beyond those walls. It can be read as a redemptive allegory representing a life-shaking break-up or other crisis, but Stearns’ deadpan script and wry situations rarely give you enough distance to consider Dual beyond the hilarious text in front of you. Gillan goes beyond a cutesy Black Mirror performance to find tragedy, obscene humor and warmth even in her relatively stoic roles, but the shining star of the show is Aaron Paul, who gets the biggest laugh lines as her intense combat instructor. Somewhere between a living instruction manual and the “Self-Defense Against Fresh Fruit” Monty Python sketch, Paul’s character is a riot as he attempts to familiarize Sarah with weapons and desensitize her to violence. His performance is just as committed as his serious scene partner’s, but when the two are in the groove together, Dual transcends to such big-hearted, surreal silliness that I had a hard time calming my laughter down as the film reminded me that death was on the line. Stearns’ work has always been a bit of a specific flavor, a little like that of Yorgos Lanthimos where if you’re not in on the dark joke you can feel ostracized from the universe of the movie, and Dual is both his most successful and most eccentric yet. But if you’re blessed with matching taste, where you’ll put up with a bunch of over-literal, stiff-backed oddballs dealing with a clone crisis, you’ll find a rewarding and gut-busting film that’s lingering ideas are nearly as strong as its humorous, thoughtful construction.—Jacob Oller
4. Predator
Year: 1987
Director: John McTiernan
Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Jesse Ventura
Rating: R
A slasher film where battle-hardened soldiers replace the traditional nubile teens. Sounds like a recipe for a good time. And, indeed, Predator delivers on all fronts, from its cheesy approximation of “manly” dialogue (“I ain’t got time to bleed”) to the dated-yet-still-impressive special effects to the abundance of gory, creative violence. Subsequent installments in the sci-fi franchise have never truly captured the original’s meathead appeal. Besides, as any frequent viewer of VH1’s I Love the ‘80s can attest, the decade just wouldn’t have been the same without it.—Mark Rozeman
5. The Host
Year: 2006
Director: Bong Joon-ho
Stars: Song Kang-ho, Byun Hee-bong, Park Hae-il, Bae Doona, Go Ah-sung, Oh Dal-su
Rating: R
Runtime: 119 minutes
Before he was breaking out internationally with a tight action film like Snowpiercer, and eventually winning a handful of Oscars for Parasite, this South Korean monster movie was Bong Joon-ho’s big work and calling card. Astoundingly successful at the box office in his home country, it straddles several genre lines between sci-fi, family drama and horror, but there’s plenty of scary stuff with the monster menacing little kids in particular. Props to the designers on one of the more unique movie monsters of the last few decades–the mutated creature in this film looks sort of like a giant tadpole with teeth and legs, which is way more awesome in practice than it sounds. The real heart of the film is a superb performance by Song Kang-ho (also in Snowpiercer and Parasite) as a seemingly slow-witted father trying to hold his family together during the disaster. That’s a pretty common role to be playing in a horror film, but the performances and family dynamic in general truly are the key factor that help elevate The Host far above most of its ilk. —Jim Vorel
6. Prey
Year: 2022
Director: Dan Trachtenberg
Starring: Amber Midthunder, Dakota Beavers, Dane DiLiegro, Stormee Kipp, Michelle Thrush, Julian Black Antelope
Rating: R
Filmmaker Dan Trachtenberg’s Predator prequel Prey succeeds by daring to embrace what prior sequels did not: Simplicity. The basics of Predator cinema boil down to skull trophies and rival combat, but most of all, the thrill of an uninterrupted hunt. With brutal ease, writer Patrick Aison translates Predator codes to hunter-gatherer dichotomies in Native American cultures. There’s nothing scarier than the laws of natural hierarchies on display in their most elemental forms, and that’s what Prey recognizes with menacing regard. Trachtenberg understands what Predator fans crave, and executes without mercy. Set in the Northern Great Plains of 1719, Prey pits a Predator challenging any species’ alphas—wolves, bears, people—against a Comanche tribe. Taabe (Dakota Beavers) leads other boys on hunts while his sister Naru (Amber Midthunder) practices her deadliest skills in secrecy. She’s dismissed by most for her gender, but not by Taabe. Naru’s chance to defeat a lion (thanks to Taabe) and earn her warrior’s rite of passage fails when a Predator’s alien technology distracts from afar—which no one believes. Only Naru can protect her family and tribespeople from the unknown Yautja threat since no one will listen, which will be the warrior-wannabe’s ultimate test. Prey is inarguably the best Predator since the original. The film gets so much right, paying homage to John McTiernan’s 1987 masterwork—through cigars and direct quotes that it’ll have fans hooting—and adding Indigenous representation with real cultural strength. Trachtenberg and Aison keep things simple, and that’s the special sauce. The performances are tough-as-nails, action sequences absurdly gory and intensity streamlined like a high velocity arrow. By going back to beginnings, Prey sheds pounds of franchise dead weight for a leaner, meaner Predator prequel with all the spine-tearing, one-liner-spouting gladiatorial conquest that fans desire—computer-generated or not. —Matt Donato
7. Dune
Year: 2021
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Stars: Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Zendaya, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Jason Momoa
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 155 minutes
Both technologically innovative and narratively faithful to the original text, Denis Villeneuve’s Dune is bolstered by its seamless special effects and starpower above all else. Considering the director’s previous work in these arenas—namely Enemy, Arrival and Blade Runner 2049—he should be totally adept for the challenge. Yet there exists a nagging query that begs to be quelled: How much of this film is predicated on the sheer fact that cinematic advancements have finally rendered Dune an attainable possibility? Though it remains true to the first part of the text’s unhurried pace and detailed world building, Villeneuve’s adaptation feels overlong and void of subtext. It’s important to note that the film only adapts the first part of Herbert’s novel, which is notoriously kind of a slog. Much of the plot is focused on worldbuilding and creating an incremental immersion into the immaterial political hierarchies that shape this unknown yet familiar world. Admittedly, Villeneuve evokes and embraces this unhurriedness—a choice that just might predicate Dune’s future fortune. By limiting the scope to Part I, Villeneuve’s Dune maintains a consistent tone and sense of time—though it invariably drags over the course of two and a half hours. However, the meandering pace may perfectly suit fans of the original novel, which captures a certain pensive density indicative of the text. To be fair, there is a plain reason as to why Villeneuve opts for a subdued and sedated Dune. With so many failed attempts at adapting Herbert’s novel preceding it, how could the project ever fully embrace auteur-driven artistic risk? It translates as Villeneuve playing it safe, expending all of his energy on ensuring that his remake can’t possibly flop. Though Dune is faithful and fantastical in vision, its existence is merely proof that the enduringly popular novel can, in fact, be adapted into a box office hit.—Natalia Keogan
8. Europa Report
Year: 2013
Director: Sebastian Cordero
Stars: Christian Camargo, Anamaria Marinca, Michael Nyqvist, Daniel Wu, Karolina Wydra, Sharlto Copley
Rating: PG-13
With echoes of 2001, director Sebastian Cordero’s innovatively structured thriller enthralls with not only its apparent scientific accuracy, but the passion it portrays among a class of people historically characterized by pocket protectors, taped eyewear and social awkwardness. Aboard the Europa One (Kubrick’s vessel was called the Discovery One), the six scientists bound for Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons (HAL and his crew were headed for the gas giant itself), are living, breathing human beings, with families and fears, ambition and emotions. They’re also just smarter than most of us and on a mission more significant than any of us will experience ever in our lives. The stakes are high in this mock doc/faux found-footage mystery, in which the privately funded space exploration company Europa Ventures issues a documentary on the fate of its first manned mission to investigate the possibility of alien life within our solar system. The sacrifices may be steep, but Europa Report is convinced—and wants to convince you—that a certain amount of horror is likely what it will take to explore such frontiers. —Annlee Ellingson
9. Infinity Pool
Year: 2023
Director: Brandon Cronenberg
Stars: Mia Goth, Alexander Skarsgard, Cleopatra Coleman
Rating: R
Getting too deeply into what exactly happens in Infinity Pool is like outlining the recirculating edge of its title’s horizon-flouting construction. It won’t take away from its pleasures, but you can’t really understand until you’re in it. Until Cronenberg drives you down an unlit backroad, long enough that you start wondering if you’re dreaming or awake. But what’s clearest in this gallows comedy is that its characters exist. The people who think they’ve solved reality, the conceited class with the luxury of being horny for death, because death has never been real to them. Infinity Pool’s inspired critique of this crowd is fierce and funny, its hallucinations nimble and sticky, and its encompassing nightmare one you’ll remember without needing to break out the vacation slideshow. —Jacob Oller
10. The Abyss
Year: 1989
Director: James Cameron
Stars: Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Michael Biehn
Rating: PG-13
Waaaayyyy back in 1989, before disappearing beneath the waves with Titanic and Ghosts of the Abyss, James Cameron was torturing his cast and crew with the infamously punishing shoot of this nail-biter sci-fi thriller involving the deep sea exploration of an unidentified sub. Though generally remembered as “lesser Cameron,”—mainly due to a deus ex machina ending—The Abyss nevertheless rivets viewers with genuine tension throughout. (Claustrophobics, in particular, might want to give this one a wide berth.) Ed Harris is phenomenal as the foreman of a deep sea drilling rig in way over his head (sorry), and Cameron regular Michael Biehn gets to play the heavy this time. Of course, this being a Cameron project, the SFX were well ahead of its time, and still impress to this day. —Scott Wold
11. Prometheus
Year: 2012
Director: Ridley Scott
Stars: Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Guy Pearce, Idris Elbra, Logan Marshall-Green, Charlize Theron
Rating: R
For decades, Ridley Scott resisted the pop-cultural desire to see him return to the nightmare world he originally created in 1979’s Alien. This only built anticipation to see that very thing happen over the years, to the point that 2012’s Prometheus became one of the year’s most hotly anticipated experiences. And Scott delivered … a film that explored the issues he found most intriguing within the world of Alien, subverting the audience’s expectations and earning their ire in the process. Prometheus is a beautiful, immaculately designed film, brimming with intriguing philosophical quandaries on the nature of mankind’s existence, destiny and power to build and destroy. Unfortunately, it’s also a rather clumsy creature feature at the same time, rightly derided at the time of release for empty-headed characters making some of the dumbest decisions in the history of the genre. It’s difficult to reconcile these parts of Prometheus together, but with the clarity of time, it’s easier than ever to praise Scott’s boldness in delivering something other than just another xenomorph story. Prometheus has plenty of flaws, but a lack of ambition was never one of them. —Jim Vorel
12. Something in the Dirt
Year: 2022
Directors: Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead
Stars: Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead
Rating: R
Poke around online for any amount of time and you’ll inevitably stumble upon a strange corner promoting one oddity or another. Even if you promise only to follow friends on social media, to read trusted sources, to avoid all but the most wholesome memes, strangeness—and those pushing it to make a buck—will find you. That might take the form of an algorithm recommending some flat-Earther nonsense after you looked up a flatbread recipe, or of a random LinkedIn message from a half-remembered co-worker who’s fallen into something that doesn’t call itself a cult but avoids doing so almost conspicuously. And that’s not even touching QAnon, COVID deniers or the History Channel. Capitalized conspiracy surrounds us. Half mock-doc, half sci-fi two-hander, all bone-dry L.A. satire, Something in the Dirt takes a bemused look at those all too happy to exploit phenomena and each other—with the typical small-scale charm of an Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson project. Delving into their own DIY careers, filmmakers Moorhead and Benson respectively play John, a religious wedding photographer, and Levi, his new bartender bum neighbor, who decide to make a documentary together after seeing a freaky bit of unexplainable floating and shining in the latter’s apartment. Enamored by the levitation and refracting aura of an irregular glassy prism (alongside a swollen closet door that won’t shut into its equation-covered jambs), the pair of oddballs dig into all the strange explanations for what might be going on. Is it geography? Geology? Ghosts? Whatever the case, they naturally also discuss how much a quick-and-dirty doc about their investigation might net them after a sale to Netflix. It’s L.A., after all. The pair of indie all-stars have made some of the best genre films of the last few years (seriously, go watch The Endless right now), so it makes sense for them to integrate self-reflection into this uncomfortable semi-spoof. When you make a movie—especially when you make them like Benson and Moorhead—you live in your own little world. Something in the Dirt’s silly, strange and unnerving depiction of this process judges the sanity of those willing to do so while explaining why, for some people, it’s the only thing that makes sense.—Jacob Oller
13. Crimes of the Future
Year: 2022
Director: David Cronenberg
Stars: Viggo Mortensen, Léa Seydoux, Kristen Stewart, Don McKellar, Scott Speedman
Rating: R
Sharing a title with Cronenberg’s second film, the latest from the body horror auteur is a return to (de)form after two decades of more dialed-back drama. Digging into the art world’s juicy guts and suturing it up as a compelling, ambitious sci-fi noir, Crimes of the Future thrills, even if it leaves a few stray narrative implements sewn into its scarred cavities. The dreamy and experimental Crimes of the Future (1970) sees creative cancers develop in a womanless world ravaged by viruses. New organs are created (and sometimes worshiped) in a broken society now run by fetishists and hurtling towards a dire, damnable biological response. While Cronenberg’s 2022 do-over on the subject of organic novelty in a collapsing society isn’t a remake by any stretch of the new flesh, it addresses the same pet interests that’ve filled his films since the beginning. Thankfully, it does so with new subtextual success and a far more straightforward and accessible text (despite the full-frontal nudity and graphic autopsies). Unlike Cronenberg’s early work, this movie has color, diegetic sound and movie stars. It embraces traditional dramatic pacing and supplements its perversion with cutting-edge effects. And at least now the characters speak to each other—in that detached, psychology-textbook-meets-FM-2030-essay style—while the camera dives deep into the guts that fascinate us. Specifically, the guts of Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen). He and Caprice (Lea Seydoux) are performance artists whose medium is the generation and removal of neo-organs. Saul builds them up, Caprice slices them out. Our destruction of the world, filling its oceans with plastic and its air with pollution, allowed this to happen. Humanity is now literally numb. People slice each other with knives at clubs, or in the street. Recreational surgery is commonplace. Many can only feel real pain while asleep. This unconscious suffering is just one of many sharpened sides of Crimes’ metaphor. Art is evolving to meet this nerve-deadened world on its terms. Humans are too, literally. That’s why Saul’s able to squeeze out nasty new lumps of viscera and why National Organ Registry investigators Wippet (Don McKellar) and Timlin (Kristen Stewart), as well as radical transhumanist Lang (Scott Speedman), find him fascinating. The trio help narratively blend the dystopian bureaucracy and thriving, subversive multimedia generated by Cronenberg’s nihilistic predictions. When we eventually ruin things, there will just as surely be new cogs in old machines as there will be new rebels in old resistances. Erudite and exploitative, gory yet gentle, Crimes of the Future shows the new kids on the chopping block that an old master can still dissect with the best. But Crimes of the Future’s more meaningful impact is in its representation of a trailblazer finally seeing the horizon. Cronenberg’s view of the future understands that the true death of an artist and the death of society at large result from the same tragic failure to evolve—even if that innovation is simply renovation.—Jacob Oller
14. Come True
Year: 2021
Director: Anthony Scott Burns
Stars: Julia Sarah Stone, Landon Liboiron
Rating: NR
Come True, Anthony Scott Burns’ horror first, sci-fi second hybrid film essentially dramatizes what filmmaker Rodney Ascher gets at in his 2015 sleep paralysis documentary The Nightmare. What if your worst fears manifested in the real world? What if you couldn’t tell the difference between the land of the waking and the realm of the slumbering? What if the difference doesn’t even matter because, whether the nightmares are real or not, they still smother you and deny you rest, respite and sanity? Conceptually, the movie is frightening. In more practical terms it’s deeply unsettling, a terrific, sharply made exercise in layering one kind of dread on top of another. “Don’t you ever feel like you’re seeing something that you’re not supposed to?” Sarah (Julia Sarah Stone) asks Riff (Landon Liboiron), the scruffy Daniel Radcliffe stand-in conducting an ill-advised science experiment masquerading as a sleep study. The ever-present unnerving sensation that follows—that unspeakable terror is hovering over your shoulder—puts the film in close company with It Follows, another movie about disaffected youth on the run from evil they don’t understand and can’t fight. It’s contemporary, atmospheric and cuts deep—and more than that, it’s original. Burns conjures horror so vivid and tactile that at any time it feels like it might leap off of the screen and into our own imaginations or, worse, our own lives.—Andy Crump
15. Monsters
Year: 2010
Director: Gareth Edwards
Stars: Scott McNairy, Whitney Able
Rating: R
Monsters is the film that gave the world its first look at director Gareth Edwards, who parlayed its micro-budget success (this movie was less than $500,000) into a chance to direct blockbusters Godzilla and then Rogue One: A Star Wars Story–an incredible leap forward in prominence in the film community. Monsters, on the other hand, is almost like a sci-fi relationship drama, a film about a journalist tasked with escorting a tourist across a dangerous, quarantined zone of Central America that has become home to alien lifeforms. Edwards skillfully makes the most of on-location shooting and very limited FX to evoke a sense of how the aliens are effectively transforming the planet, and of how their arrival changed everything for mankind. Ultimately, though, you’re watching this film for the performances and subtle interplay between its characters rather than any kind of spectacle. Go in looking for a scary movie or action romp, and you’ll be disappointed. You need to take it for what it is: A realistic story about what it might be like for two average people with complicated emotional baggage being thrust into a challenging scenario. Whatever you do, just don’t see the 2014 sequel in name only, Monsters: Dark Continent. —Jim Vorel
16. Aporia
Year: 2023
Director: Jared Moshe
Stars: Judy Greer, Edi Gathegi, Payman Maadi, Adam O’Byrne
Rating: R
Build a relationship, a home, a family, a life with the person you love over the years, and you will still occasionally give them The Look, the one that says, “who are you, and how well do I know you?” It’s the look Sophie (Judy Greer) gives her husband, Mal (Edi Gathegi), partway through Jared Moshe’s Aporia, when through the miracle of technology she puts the wrong things right and effectively brings him back from the grave. Mal starts out the film in the ground, seen only in flashbacks to better days before getting struck by Darby (Adam O’Byrne), a drunk driver, and dying. Then comes Jabir (Payman Maadi), a family friend and erstwhile physicist from an unidentified country who makes a living in America driving indifferent fares around town. Jabir has a remedy for Sophie’s grief, but it’s a doozy both existentially and ethically, in the tradition of so much science fiction cinema. Jabir has built a device one could generously call a “time machine” the way one could call a hellfire missile “demolition equipment.” It can’t send Sophie back in time, but it can send a burst of quantum-mechanical energy straight into Darby’s brain and kill him, before the day he kills Mal, which means Mal never dies and Sophie’s life doesn’t fall apart. Presented with her personal version of the ultimate time travel question – would you kill baby Hitler? – Sophie dithers, then pulls the trigger. The good news is, Mal is back, and everything’s back to normal. The bad news is, Darby has a family, Sophie has a conscience, and one morally suspect decision leads to a whole bunch of better-intended ones with their own imperfect outcomes. Greer, in one of her too-infrequent starring roles, plays to Sophie’s anxieties as well as her wants all at once, a tight-wound ball of nerves. Every time she disperses her tension, every time she talks with Mal and Jabir about disaster scenarios, the tension whips right back around like a boomerang, and she starts her emotional cycle all over again. It’s a performance that suits Greer’s reputation for playing unhinged types, reminding viewers that her reputation as a comic actor is built on a well-rounded skill set. Moshe is a gentle filmmaker, evinced by his realist aesthetic, unadorned by special effects, and his intrinsic compassion for Sophie’s dilemma. He cares. But he is necessarily stern, because for a movie like Aporia to work, a director has to mean what they’re saying, and he holds little back. Our actions matter, big or small, and now’s a good time for the sci-fi genre to give us a needed reminder.—Andy Crump
17. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Year: 2005
Director: Garth Jennings
Stars: Martin Freeman, Zooey Deschanel, Sam Rockwell, Mos Def, Alan Rickman, Bill Nighy
Rating: PG
Prior to 2005, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was the sort of cult, absurdist novel that one might have been tempted to label as unfilmable, not only for its strange characters and story but primarily for the ephemeral difficulty of translating Douglas Adams’ absolutely unique sense of humor to the screen. Director Garth Jennings, however, gave Hitchhiker’s Guide a very fond and colorful shot, which, although not completely successful, may well have been the best that anybody could have done under the circumstances. The screenplay thankfully had contributions from Adams himself prior to his death in 2001, and there are entire sequences that faithfully interpret iconic sequences from the novel, such as the transformation of a pair of missiles into … a bowl of petunias, and a very confused sperm whale. Suffice to say, the result is still rather opaque to many viewers, but the strong casting of Martin Freeman and Sam Rockwell in particular (along with the sad-sack voice of Alan Rickman) ultimately make for a passable interpretation of one of the most beloved comedy novels ever. —Jim Vorel
18. Underwater
Year: 2020
Director: William Eubank
Stars: Kristen Stewart, Vincent Cassel, Jessica Henwick, John Gallagher Jr., Mamoudou Athie
Rating: PG-13
Underwater turned out to be the most unusual type of Lovecraftian adaptation for the 2020s–a film that didn’t advertise itself as one, and instead left the association as a third act reveal of sorts. And even then, this is one of the odder takes on Lovecraft’s arcana, for the simple fact that we don’t usually see this mythology in the context of what is essentially a big budget action/disaster movie. Lovecraftian stories are most typically marked by their intimate settings and most scope–a family under attack, or an obsessed researcher delving into materials he should know better than to explore. Lovecraftian monsters slither into the frame (or linger outside it) with slowly building suspense–they don’t usually topple underwater research stations in a cacophony of explosions and screeching metal. And yet that’s what we have in Underwater, a genuine Lovecraftian monster/disaster movie. —Jim Vorel
19. No One Will Save You
Year: 2023
Director: Brian Duffield
Stars: Kaitlyn Dever
Rating: PG-13
Kaitlyn Dever heroically carries what’s essentially a one-woman show as townie Brynn Adams, a lonesome soul fighting off bug-eyed gray trespassers. That’s…pretty much it. She’s seen scribbling letters to a presumed deceased Maude Collins before the flying saucers appear, but then sci-fi terror begins and Duffield channels everything from Signs to The McPherson Tape. Brynn dashes around her creaky wooden childhood home, Brynn hides from alien entities, and Brynn flees from an unknown fate should the cosmic outsiders catch her in their spaceship tractor beams. The craftsmanship behind No One Will Save You showcases Duffield’s strengths with restricted resources. Visual effects studio DNEG nails the creation of traditional X-Files-lookalike aliens down to their bulbous craniums and slender-freaky figures, but that’s only one component. Duffield does a splendid job collaborating with cinematographer Aaron Morton to frame his interstellar guests as stalkers, often peering just out of frame before swelling in size and entering with emphasis. No One Will Save You adheres to a golden creature feature rule by showing Brynn’s adversaries early and never shying away from full-screen reveals, which wafts an appropriate air of confidence. As Brynn cowers behind refrigerator doors or turns her hatchback into an impromptu firebomb, the aliens always hold their impressive on-screen presence. —Matt Donato
20. A Glitch in the Matrix
Year: 2021
Director: Rodney Ascher
Rating: NR
What if we all live inside a simulation? If you’re Neo, you might reply with “Whoa.” If you’re anyone that’s played a videogame in the last 20 years or, say, lived through a quarantine by transitioning from screen to screen, you might remain relatively unfazed compared to Keanu Reeves’ sci-fi chosen one. A Glitch in the Matrix, from director/editor Rodney Ascher, considers simulation theory—the long-running genre playground and thought experiment—using a handful of zealots and a slew of pop cultural pulls, following the rabbit hole through its history from Greek philosophers to wannabe stoner iconoclasts. The long-winded documentary is engrossing in spurts and isn’t particularly interested in convincing us of anything, but it’ll at least serve as the jumping-off point for a strange conversation or two. —Jacob Oller