Best Sci-Fi Movies On Netflix (May 2023)

The selection of sci-fi films is one of its strongest departments within the larger list of movies on Netflix, and it has a nice mix of classics alongside a number of newer, stranger films. Navigating digital volumes on Netflix can be a little tricky, but that’s why it’s good to seek out recommendations. For a little help navigating that 3,500+ Netflix inventory, these are some of our favorite sci-fi selections.

You can also take a look at our list of the best sci-fi movies of all time for a deeper selection.

Inception (2010)

Featuring the kind of all-star cast that most directors can only dream of as well as the high-caliber characterization and performances to back it up, Inception won four Academy Awards the year of its release. Beyond the accolades, this is broadly considered Nolan’s most personal film due to its head-on engagement with themes of guilt and death. With the heady concept of a thief who takes information through visits to people’s subconscious minds as its starting point, the pain of losing someone as well as the long-lasting effects of grief are the real subjects at play. With unforgettable scenes between its actors and a delightfully ambiguous conclusion, this is a must-watch for anyone who has enjoyed Christopher Nolan’s movies and other work.

The Wandering Earth (2019)

Kicking off with the bonkers premise of humanity pushing the earth out of orbit in order to embark on a 2500-year-ish journey to a new hospitable solar system, The Wandering Earth takes place seventeen years after this catalyst. Zooming in on the potentially devastating effects of the long-term space travel of an entire planet, we meet Liu Peiqiang and his now-adult son Liu Qi. Peiqiang is attempting to return to Earth only to be greeted with immediate global catastrophe as gravitational instability causes environmental chaos. This leads to some of the wildest blockbuster action scenes in recent memory, with the incredible effects work effectively suspending any disbelief spurred by some of the more over-the-top moments.

Advantageous (2015)

A woman who has risen to the top of her field is primed to lose everything due to her status as “lesser” due to race and gender. She is fired suddenly due to simply aging out of the position according to her superiors, and the conditional privilege she experienced immediately vanishes as she fights to provide for her daughter.

As with so many of the best sci-fi films, Advantageous is about a sci-fi premise, but the important part of the story is the human cost. By showing us a mother struggling with a series of complicated decisions she makes in order to protect her daughter while sadly failing to change the future that will require much the same from the child, the lines between reality and fantasy all but disappear.

The Mitchells vs. the Machines (2021)

After an ugly fight between young filmmaker Katie and tech-phobic father Rick leaves her laptop destroyed, he tries to make it up to her by getting the family together in order to drive her to her new college. However, when a soon-to-be obsolete home robot decides to take vengeance upon her creator by launching all of humanity into space, the Mitchells find themselves suddenly on the run and fighting to survive. The Mitchells vs the Machines features an all-star voice cast with the likes of Maya Rudolph, Abbi Jacobson, Danny McBride, and Eric Andre, this is a story of a family laying down their differences when it matters, but with plenty of chaotic robot fights in the mix.

Okja (2017)

Fans of Bong Joon-Ho rejoice! This film features a massive cast with many celebrity appearances, and it tells a surprisingly heartwarming tale of a young girl named Mija and her beloved genetically-engineered superpig. Though the corporation that created Okja inevitably wants their creation back at a point, Mija fights them tooth and nail, showing the level of dedication a person can have for their pets.

Mobile Suit Gundam (1989)

A compilation film collecting the first part of the Mobile Suit Gundam series that kicked off in 1979, this is on a lot of lists of the best anime of all time for great reason. When humans colonize outer space to solve the issue of overpopulation, some of the furthest colonies branch off and a war begins in which much of the human population on Earth perishes. Enlisting the help of a teen boy named Amuro Ray to pilot the enormous fighter robot RX-78-2 Gundam, the door swings wide open to giant robot fights in space. Yet, by treating the pilots as regular soldiers fighting an ugly war, Gundam revolutionized its genre and became one of the most important anime series ever produced. All the Gundam films are great, but you’ve got to start somewhere.

If you're looking for more like this, take a look at our list of the best anime on Netflix right now.

What Happened to Monday (2017)

In a dystopian future where the solution to overpopulation is to limit each household to only one child, twins and other births involving more than one child result in euthanization. A grandfather works to hide seven identical girls by having each go out one day of the week pretending to be the same person. Naturally, this goes haywire in this film, and a dystopian sci-fi action movie is born. There is no getting out of this write-up without commending Noomi Rapace’s juggling of the various personalities of each sister. Watching the women interact, it’s easy to forget that they’re all quite literally the same person offscreen. Further, it’s the characterization that makes the story click as well as it does, as each death is meaningful, felt through the other sisters.

I Am Mother (2019)

Mother is a humanoid robot that tends to embryos in an apparently deserted underground facility. Raising one of these to young adulthood and referring to the young woman as Daughter, the two form an emotional bond that is both unsettling and endearing. When a stranger appears at the base telling Daughter of the genocide that AI like Mother has unleashed on the human population, the once safe (if creepy) world that Daughter has known becomes uncertain and terrifying.

Hinging on its disturbing, horror-infused vibes and solid acting by Hilary Swank and Clara Rugaard along with the collaborative performance of Mother, this is not to be missed by fans that love a good ominous sci-fi film. I Am Mother is one of those stories that is remarkably difficult to describe without inevitably giving away a major twist, but that’s all the more reason for genre fans to seek it out for themselves. Claustrophobic dystopian tales that keep you on your toes until after the credits roll like Solaris (1979) or Moon (2009) will delight in the heady concepts tucked into a roller coaster plot.

Don’t Look Up (2021)

This star-studded black comedy introduces us to two scientists that discover a dangerous comet that threatens to destroy the planet. It then shifts focus to public response to their discovery. With a pending extinction event at hand, world leaders refuse to act due to an unwillingness to do anything that would reflect poorly on their public image or campaign donors. As such, you don’t have to stretch too far to find an analogy for current real world anxieties in Don’t Look Up.

Watching these fictional politicians meander and deflect as a deadly comet rockets toward the planet adds humor to some of the more upsetting elements of modern-day life while also assuring us that it doesn’t have to be this way. Not hopeful by any stretch, Don’t Look Up still remains darkly humorous as it warns us of allowing planetary threats to go unchecked.

Bubble (2022)

In this sci-fi parallel to Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale The Little Mermaid, a number of reality-bending bubbles are isolated to the city of Tokyo after an explosion at Tokyo Tower, but they make the city uninhabitable for the general population. Despite the danger, a number of young people engage in high-stakes parkour tournaments, bouncing around the abandoned city with Tokyo Tower considered the ultimate, as of yet unreachable, goal.

A teen named Hibiki is shocked to find a girl who appears to have little to no context for human interactions who he names Uta. As the bubbles become increasingly unstable and threaten all who reside within the city, Hibiki and Uta are forced to act.

Attack on Titan and Death Note creator Tetsurō Araki has created a number of influential anime series, but Bubble hits a decidedly more fanciful note. The central characters are charming, but this is a film that leans into the full action capabilities of parkour and anime combined to weave a gorgeous vision of a post-apocalyptic Tokyo. It might not necessarily break new ground, but it’s a beautiful movie to take in nonetheless, and full of all the bleak overtones one might expect of any proper dystopian film.

Stowaway (2021)

Sporting a legendary cast including Anna Kendrick, Daniel Dae Kim, Shamier Anderson, and Toni Collette, Stowaway takes the Bugs Bunny-style concept of our protagonist falling asleep in a rocket to Mars and turns it into a tense sci-fi flick about human resiliency and sacrifice. After our lead is told there’s no way to get him back to safety until the ship has completed its mission, things get even worse as they realize that the oxygen supply is rapidly leaking and won’t last through the trip. For anyone who is a little exhausted by some of the bleaker dystopian themes that sci-fi has long made a home for, Stowaway manages to be heartbreaking and heartwarming all in one go. Focusing on the sense of horror that would come realizing that you’re trapped in space to the escalating fear of hearing you may indeed never get back, it leans into character development amid the high-stakes action and encourages its audience to bond with the cast as they struggle with one no-win situation after another.

See You Yesterday (2019)

While the title might make it sound like this is a run-of-the-mill time travel movie, See You Yesterday is a surprising entry to one of the genre’s favorite tropes. Deceptively light in its opening scenes, the central premise of the story kicks off when teenage scientist CJ loses her brother in a police shooting, leaving her and her family reeling. However, unlike so many that have experienced a similar loss in the real world, CJ can actually change things to ensure it never happened. Implementing her newly discovered secret of time travel, she and her friend Sebastian go back in time to prevent this tragedy from ever occurring. Yet, the cyclical nature of time means that new threats and disasters appear every time she attempts to correct the mistakes of the past.

While staying soundly in the realm of an improbable sci-fi adventure, See You Yesterday deals with some of the heaviest real-world issues imaginable while remaining disarmingly good-intentioned. Full of lovable homages to sci-fi of yesteryear while keeping its feet firmly grounded in the possibilities of the future, this is a remarkable debut from director Stefon Bristol that is braced by impressive performances from lead actors Eden Duncan-Smith, Dante Crichlow, and Astro.

Cargo (2019)

In a future where humans and demons have entered a mutually beneficial truce, this gleefully bizarre dark comedy introduces us to Prahastha, a demon scientist, and Yuvishka, an astronaut. The two work aboard the spacecraft Pushpak 634A to provide Post Death Transition Services. This entails that they help ease the shift from life to death in order for people to be recycled for rebirth. Creating an enjoyable mixture of existential thought exercises, observations on human nature, and commentary on social media, Cargo shows Prahastha interacting with individuals on their way to the great beyond while quietly dealing with his own isolation. Both written and directed by Arati Kadav, Cargo delights in its own morbid humor while making some salient points about the nature of life and death along the way, making it an indie sci-fi gem and a top contender for future cult classic.

The Mist (2007)

Based on the Stephen King novella of the same name, The Mist was Frank Darabont’s third King adaptation following the success of The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. A rare horror film featuring a true ensemble cast, with several recognizable faces stepping in to tell the tale of a town hit by a mysterious storm and shrouded in inescapable fog. Centering on David Drayton, the townspeople are forced to convene in a neighborhood supermarket while attempting to understand what has befallen their town. Significantly moodier than many entries on this list and soundly falling on the “horror” side of sci-fi, the bleak overtone gives way to a study of the desperate things humans do in moments of crisis. An underrated hit among King adaptations, The Mist doesn’t offer any solutions, but it will leave you with many questions.

Pitch Black (2000)

With a fourth entry in the ongoing Riddick saga, Riddick: Furya confirmed, there’s no time like the present to revisit the surprise hit that helped make Vin Diesel a star. Tapping into a perfect combination of tried and true genre tropes, Diesel’s charisma, and a terrifying concept, this film once seemed destined for obscurity but became an iconic franchise in its own right. Trapped on a planet with three suns, pending hours of darkness cause alarm for the crew of a grounded spaceship, as it is when the planet’s nightmarish predators feed. Convict Riddick is forced to work with the others if he has any hope of survival. Vin Diesel shines as Riddick, but not without support from fellow greats Radha Mitchell, Keith David, and Cole Hauser, among others. Not necessarily groundbreaking but delightfully tense, Pitch Black remains an exciting watch more than two decades down the line.

Best Movies on Netflix by Genre:

Please note: This list pertains to U.S. Netflix subscribers. Some titles may not currently be available on international platforms. This article is frequently amended to remove films no longer on Netflix and to include more action films that are now available on the service.

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