The 30 Best Sci-Fi Movies on Every Streaming Service

From the perpetual-motion machine that is the Star Wars franchise to the films of Denis Villeneuve and Christopher Nolan, science fiction has been enjoying a long moment at the movies over the last several years. Whether they focus on futuristic action or provide commentary on dangerous tech, the genre is hot, a sandbox where planet-shattering blockbusters and introspective indies alike can thrive. That means it’s also all over the streamers. Where should you go if you’re looking to find your next favorite sci-fi movie or revisit some of the best of all time? Let us guide you into the future.

Netflix

Dune: Part Two

Year: 2024
Runtime: 2h 45m
Director: Denis Villeneuve

You can only watch the second of the recent Dune films on Netflix for now, but the first is likely to return soon. The second half of Villeneuve’s saga fulfills the promise of the first, turning the set-up of the 2021 film into a full-blooded action tale of a new messiah. Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya lead an all-star cast in a film that understands both scope and character. It may not play quite as well at home as it did in theaters, but it still rocks.

Starship Troopers

Year: 1997
Runtime: 2h 9m
Director: Paul Verhoeven

The bugs! No one else but the director of RoboCop could have made this unforgettable sci-fi/action epic about giant bugs from outer space. On the surface, it’s a wildly entertaining action movie about young soldiers trying to stop an unimaginable force. Dig deeper and you’ll find richly rewarding satirical levels about the military complex and fascism.

They Cloned Tyrone

Year: 2023
Runtime: 1h 59m
Director: Juel Taylor

This is one of the best Netflix original films, and almost no one has even heard of it. John Boyega, Teyonah Parris, and especially Jamie Foxx simply rock in this genre hybrid that plays like nothing else on the streaming service. Boyega plays an average dude who gets shot one night in his neighborhood but wakes up the next day, somewhat startling the pimp (Foxx) and prostitute (Parris) who saw him get gunned down. They look into the conundrum and discover a sci-fi premise that’s clever and kind of terrifying.

Upgrade

Year: 2018
Runtime: 1h 39m
Director: Leigh Whannell

It feels like the cult following of this movie should be growing right about now. Do your part! Leigh Whannell wrote and directed this clever sci-fi/action flick about a man who gets a chip implanted in his body that, well, changes him. Logan Marshall-Green is fun in the lead role but it’s really Whannell’s show as the director shows off his playful action spirit.

Prime Video

Donnie Darko

Year: 2001
Runtime: 1h 53m
Director: Richard Kelly

It’s a mad world in Richard Kelly’s sci-fi hit starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Drew Barrymore, Patrick Swayze, and Jena Malone. Darko made almost nothing in theaters but developed a loyal following on the home market, becoming one of the more acclaimed sci-fi films of the ’00s. Join in the conversation that seems to constantly surround this film. (We can only hope Kelly will be encouraged to make another one soon; he hasn’t directed in over a decade.)

Gattaca

Year: 1997
Runtime: 1h 42m
Director: Andrew Niccol

Andrew Niccol’s 1997 sci-fi drama truly was ahead of its time. Unpacking themes of eugenics that would only become more feasible with medical and technological advancements over the last quarter-century, Niccol’s excellent genre flick tells the story of a future where genetics are determined. With great work by Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, and Jude Law, it’s a movie you really should revisit.

Her

Year: 2014
Runtime: 2h
Director: Spike Jonze

Spike Jonze won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for this 2013 film about a man who falls in love with his A.I. Joaquin Phoenix gives one of the most vulnerable performances of his career as Theodore, who gets closer to the Siri-esque Samantha, voiced perfectly by Scarlett Johansson. Jonze’s film is a smart unpacking of man’s relationship to technology and the never-ending need for connection.

A Quiet Place: Day One

Year: 2024
Runtime: 1h 39m
Director: Michael Sarnoski

Who would have guessed that this would work? John Krasinski handed his franchise off to the director of Pig and the luminous Lupita Nyong’o to tell a prequel story of the day that the murderous aliens arrived. It’s a sharply made genre flick, elevated greatly by the consistently impressive work from Nyong’o.

Hulu

The Abyss

Year: 1989
Runtime: 2h 20m
Director: James Cameron

James Cameron’s 1989 sci-fi blockbuster is one of the most prominent films never to have been released on Blu-ray in the United States — but that finally changed in March with the 4K release, and it’s also finally more readily available on streaming too. People who love this movie really love this movie, and it’s great to see it finally coming to the fans who have deserved it for so long.

Alien

Year: 1979
Runtime: 1h 57m
Director: Ridley Scott

The one that changed everything. Alien didn’t just launch a megafranchise or create an iconic character in Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley. It shifted the entire sci-fi/horror landscape forever. And what’s even more stunning over four decades later is how much it still rips. From beginning to end, this is one of the rare movies that could be called perfect.

Arrival

Year: 2016
Runtime: 1h 56m
Director: Denis Villeneuve

The French Canadian director guided Amy Adams to one of her best performances in this sharp sci-fi film about an alien invasion that says more about the people on Earth than the interstellar visitors. Based on a short story called “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang, Arrival asks how we would communicate with an alien species — a task handled by a linguist played by Adams. A time-twisting narrative and Villeneuve’s undeniable craftsmanship made this a smash hit.

Interstellar

Year: 2014
Runtime: 2h 49m
Director: Christopher Nolan

No one else makes movies like Christopher Nolan, a man who took his superhero success and used it to get gigantic budgets to bring his wildest dreams to the big screen. Who else could make this sprawling, emotional, complicated film about an astronaut (Matthew McConaughey) searching for a new home for humanity? It’s divisive among some Nolan fans for its deep emotions, but those who love it really love it. Celebrate its tenth anniversary with them.

Max

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Year: 2004
Runtime: 1h 47m
Director: Michel Gondry

Michel Gondry directed Charlie Kaufman’s script into one of the best films of the ’00s, a story of romance and regret. Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet are breathtaking as an estranged couple who have decided to erase the memory of their relationship from their minds. Would you remove a formative part of your life because the heartbreak was too painful? This is a straight-up masterpiece.

Inception

Year: 2010
Runtime: 2h 28m
Director: Christopher Nolan

After the crazy success of The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan went and made one of the most ambitious blockbusters ever made, cementing himself as one of the most interesting auteurs working in the Hollywood system. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as a man who leads a team into other people’s dreams for the purposes of corporate espionage at first. Of course, he brings some personal baggage with him. This movie is a reminder of Nolan’s incredible vision and robust filmmaking. It’s held up wonderfully. One wishes there were more big-budget filmmakers taking these kinds of risks.

The Martian

Year: 2015
Runtime: 2h 22m
Director: Ridley Scott

One of the best late films from an all-time master, this sci-fi gem sees Matt Damon playing an astronaut who gets stranded on Mars and has to use his ingenuity to get home. One of the many reasons this movie rules is how much it values intelligence and knowledge, two things that more blockbusters could stand to elevate.

RoboCop

Year: 1987
Runtime: 1h 43m
Director: Paul Verhoeven

This is Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 masterpiece, a film that foretold how technology would impact law enforcement in ways that took decades to come true. A brilliant action satire, the movie tells the story of a Detroit cop who is murdered and revived as the title character, a superhuman cyborg enforcer. It’s even more riveting and relevant almost four decades later. (Note: Both original-era sequels and the 2010s reboot are also on Max.)

Peacock

Coherence

Year: 2016
Runtime: 1h 20m
Director: James Ward Byrkit

Eight friends get together for a dinner party in Northern California as news of a passing comet overhead can be heard. What starts as a traditional character-driven drama becomes something very different when the power goes out and, well, things stop making sense. An incredibly smart script anchors this study of alternate universes that plays out in a disturbingly relatable way.

The Endless

Year: 2018
Runtime: 1h 51m
Directors: Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead

The brilliant Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead direct and star in this sci-fi thriller about two brothers who return to a cult from which they escaped years earlier. They learn that there’s more to this group than they remember or understand. It’s a riveting film about cycles and trauma, embedded in a truly thrilling story. After you watch this one, hunt down Spring, Synchronic, and their latest, Something in the Dirt. You won’t be disappointed.

Monolith

Year: 2024
Runtime: 1h 34m
Director: Matt Vesely

Lily Sullivan is stunning in this excellent, under-seen indie sci-fi flick about a podcaster who becomes obsessed with rumors of monoliths being randomly discovered in the world and what it could mean. More about obsession than it is a traditional sci-fi flick, it still qualifies because of how much it gets under the skin of why we look to the stars and imagine what could come from them.

Source Code

Year: 2011
Runtime: 1h 34m
Director: Duncan Jones

The director of Moon returned with an excellent sci-fi film about a man who has to relive the same eight minutes over and over again to try and solve the mystery of who blew up a commuter train on its way into Chicago. Jake Gyllenhaal is excellent in the lead role, and he’s ably assisted by Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, and Jeffrey Wright. This movie rules.

Paramount+

Annihilation

Year: 2018
Runtime: 1h 55m
Director: Alex Garland

Paramount notoriously had no idea what to do with Alex Garland’s film and barely promoted it in American theaters, dropping it on Netflix in the rest of the world, which is where it now returns five years later. And it’s amazing. One of the best films of 2018 stars Natalie Portman as a woman who enters an alien occurrence to find out what happened to her husband there. Although that barely scratches the surface of this complex, already-beloved film.

Minority Report

Year: 2002
Runtime: 2h 25m
Director: Steven Spielberg

One of Steven Spielberg’s best modern movies is this adaptation of a Philip K. Dick story about a future in which crime can be predicted before it happens. Tom Cruise stars as a man who is convicted of a crime he has no intent of committing in a fantastic vision of a future in which the systems designed to stop crime have been corrupted. It’s timely and probably always will be.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Year: 1991
Runtime: 2h 17m
Director: James Cameron

Any list of the best sequels ever made that doesn’t include this is flatly wrong. James Cameron took the ideas of his 1984 sci-fi breakthrough and expanded on them in this action masterpiece that reverses roles and made movie history. Linda Hamilton returns as Sarah Connor, the woman who knows that her son is the key to the future. She’s great, but the movie belongs to Ah-nuld and, even more, Cameron, who flexes his action-directing muscle here in unforgettable ways.

War of the Worlds

Year: 2005
Runtime: 2h 31m
Director: Steven Spielberg

The star and director of Minority Report reunited for this phenomenal adaptation of the classic H.G. Wells tale about the end of the world. Tom Cruise plays an ordinary guy who tries to survive the day the enemy aliens arrived in this incredibly well-directed action epic that plays well as escapism but can also be read as one of the first great movies about 9/11.

Disney+

Avatar

Year: 2009
Runtime: 2h 42m
Director: James Cameron

The world became Pandora again as the excellent Avatar: The Way of Water opened in theaters in 2023 and made a bajillion dollars. And the third movie is dropping in late 2025! It really helps the new adventure to be familiar with the arc of Jake Sully and the Na’vi — so take the time to revisit James Cameron’s stunning vision on Disney+ before going back.

Star Wars

Year: Various
Runtime: Various
Director: Various

Consider this a placeholder for all of the various films in the Lucasverse that are on Disney+, the only place where you can watch all of them and the associated original TV series if you so choose. (And certainly don’t miss Andor.)

Shudder

birth/rebirth

Year: 2023
Runtime: 1h 38m
Director: Laura Moss

This mesmerizing riff on Frankenstein is one of the best horror films of 2023. Judy Reyes stars as a nurse whose daughter dies at the age of 5 only to be brought back to life by a morgue technician (an unforgettable Marin Ireland) who has been experimenting with a daring new process. How far would you go to bring a child back from the dead? What lines would you cross? This is an unforgettable piece of work.

Color Out of Space

Year: 2020
Runtime: 1h 50m
Director: Richard Stanley

Richard Stanley co-wrote and directed this adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft short story of the same name, marking his first time behind the camera since the disastrous 1996 production of The Island of Dr. Moreau. This one went much better. Nicolas Cage plays the patriarch of a family that moves to a remote farm where a glowing meteor seems to crash in the front yard. And then things get really weird in a way that only a Lovecraft movie can.

Tremors

Year: 1990
Runtime: 1h 36m
Director: Ron Underwood

Kevin Bacon stars in this 1990 low-budget action B-movie that became such a cult hit that it spawned an entire franchise (the seventh film in the series is currently in production). There’s something so wonderfully simple about Tremors — average people trying to survive an attack by creatures under the sand. It’s funny, quickly paced, and easy to revisit if you haven’t seen it in 30 years or to rewatch even if you have.

Apple TV+

The Gorge

Year: 2025
Runtime: 2h 7m
Director: Scott Derrickson

Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy have a blast in this gloriously silly sci-fi action flick that recalls similarly goofy ’80s genre hits. The gifted pair play snipers on either side of a gorge that holds, well, something terrifying. A love story with giant monsters that might be emerging from hell? You don’t see something like this every day.