Netflix is hiding 7 sci-fi movies that are much better than its blockbusters

Netflix has no shortage of great sci-fi movies to watch, including a lot you’ve probably heard of: Alien, Transformers One, Starship Troopers, War Machine, Jurassic World Dominion…there’s a lot on offer, and a lot of it is really good.

But there are other, lesser-known sci-fi features that are as good or better than those blockbusters, and they deserve some attention.

I Am Mother

Robot mother knows best

I Am Mother is a creepy 2019 movie about a girl (Clara Rugaard) who is raised in an isolated environment by a seemingly benevolent robot known only as Mother (voiced by Rose Byrne). When a stranger (Hilary Swank) shows up in the compound, the Daughter learns that Mother may have been lying to her about the state of the outside world.

I Am Mother is a suspenseful, tightly written sci-fi thriller that basically only has three cast members, but that’s all it needs. It will probably remind you of other dystopian movies you’ve seen, but it’s so good that you won’t care.

Spectral

Soldiers vs ghosts

Soldiers in Chișinău, Moldova encounter translucent, fast-moving, ghost-like apparitions that move about the battlefield killing at will. What are they, and can they be stopped? The characters spend the film trying to find the answers to those questions, and giving us some uniquely thrilling action sequences while they’re at it.

The characters in Spectral feel a little generic, but the premise helps keep the movie afloat. And the “ghosts” end up having an interesting origin story.

What Happened to Monday

Someone ask Tuesday

In a dystopian future, the world is drastically overpopulated. The Child Allocation Bureau enforces a strict one-child policy, which is bad news for septuplet sisters, all of whom are played by Noomi Rapace. Raised by their grandfather (Willem Dafoe), each of the sisters is named after a day of the week. They are only allowed to leave the house on that day, all of them pretending to be one woman named Karen Settman.

This premise is obviously pretty close to ludicrous, but the chugs along at a good pace, the performances are excellent, and the conflict is gripping despite how ludicrous it is. One day, Monday doesn’t come home, and the other sisters must track her down. Glenn Close stars as the head of the child Allocation Bureau, so this enjoyable B-movie is stacked with stars.

Save Yourselves!

The invasion will not be live-streamed

Let’s take a comedy break. Save Yourselves! is a brisk, 90-minute sci-fi movie about an NYC-based couple who decide to unplug for a weekend in the country. Unfortunately, that happens to be the weekend when poofy little aliens who feed on ethanol invade the Earth. The couple catches on later, and does what they can to save the planet.

Save Yourselves! has a clever premise, terrific chemistry between John Paul Reynolds and Sunita Mani, and more than enough laughs to be worth the price of admission. It can be hard to make a good sci-fi comedy, but this one pulls it off.

Release Date

October 2, 2020

Runtime

93 Minutes

Director

Alex Huston Fischer, Eleanor Wilson

Oxygen

With a 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes!

This French thriller is the highest-rated movie on our list. It hooks you immediately: a woman (Mélanie Laurent) wakes up in a sealed cryogenic pod. She has no memory of who she is or how she got there. The on-board AI won’t open the pod without an administrator code, which she doesn’t have. Finally, the oxygen levels in the pod are falling, and if she doesn’t figure something out soon, she’s going to die.

You might not think that a movie set almost entirely in a tight confined space could be exciting, but Oxygen proves you wrong. It’s only 100 minutes long and uses every one of them. We experience the twists and turns along with the woman, who finds out her name is Liz. Mélanie Laurent’s performance carries the movie from start to finish, and it will have you on the edge of your seat the entire time.

Release Date

May 12, 2021

Runtime

100 minutes

Director

Alexandre Aja

Writers

Christie LeBlanc

Producers

Franck Khalfoun, Grégory Levasseur, Noomi Rapace, Vincent Maraval, Brahim Chioua, Laurence Clerc, Noémie Devide, Christie LeBlanc

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  Laura Boujenah

  Alice Hansen

Stowaway

Anna Kendrick goes to space, hates it

Anna Kendrick, Daniel Dae Kim, and Toni Collette star as astronauts on a two-year voyage to Mars. They discover that someone has accidentally stowed away on the ship, and that there isn’t enough oxygen to last all four of them the whole trip.

Stowaway is beautifully filmed, impeccably acted, and goes out of its way to appear scientifically plausible. It’s an underappreciated gem of a sci-fi flick.

Release Date

June 24, 2021

Runtime

117 minutes

Director

Joe Penna

Writers

Ryan Morrison

Producers

Anna Kendrick, Nate Bolotin, Aram Tertzakian, Clay Pecorin, Jordan Yale Levine, Nick Spicer, Russell Geyser, Maximilian Leo, Jonas Katzenstein, Ulrich Schwarz, Philipp Stendebach, Russ Posternak, Jordan Beckerman, Jane Oster Sinisi, Maxime Cottray

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  Anna Kendrick

  Zoe Levenson

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  Toni Collette

  Marina Barnett

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  Shamier Anderson

  Michael Adams

Mirage

Durante la tormenta

Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

Mirage is a Spanish-language thriller with a mind-bending premise. A woman named Vera (Adriana Ugarte) moves into a new house. During an electrical storm, she is able to communicate with Nico (Julio Bohigas-Couto), a boy who lived in this same house back in the late ’80s. Vera knows that Nico dies an early death, and is able to help him prevent that by warming him of his future. But then she finds herself in a whole new timeline where her daughter doesn’t exist and her husband doesn’t know who she is. She tries to restore the original timeline, or maybe to create a better one, with the help of the adult Nico (Chino Darín).

Time travel movies are famously hard to get right, and Mirage may not hold up as well under intense scrutiny as some of its competitors. But it’s still a fun, unpredictable watch.

There’s always more

On Netflix, the last seven movies are always just the tip of the iceberg. These are some of the better lesser-known sci-fi gems on Netflix, but there are others worth checking out if you still need to scratch that sci-fi itch, including In the Shadow of the Moon, Spiderhead, and Paradise. There may even be some sci-fi blockbusters you haven’t caught up on, both those that come highly recommended (Frankenstein, Don’t Look Up, Godzilla Minus One, Nope) and those that come with a warning label (The Electric State, Rebel Moon).