Ready for the inexplicable and inspiring? Science fiction is—and has long been—one of the most exciting genres in filmmaking. Critic Craig Mathieson has scoured Prime Video for the 25 best science fiction movies available.
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Last updated: June 16, 2022
Arrival (2016)
Watch on Prime VideoDirected with menacing wonder by Denis Villeneuve, this is compelling and original hard science fiction, with Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner as two experts trying to communicate with obliquely intentioned aliens landed on an increasingly panicky planet. The story folds in on itself, so that triumph is tragedy and vice-versa in an elegiac requiem.
Back to the Future (1985)
Watch on Prime VideoIf you’ve got a souped-up DeLorean that can travel through time the you’ve got a science fiction film—but Robert Zemeckis gives you so much more. In one of the finest enduring examples of Hollywood filmmaking, a young man (Michael J. Fox) finds himself back in the 1950s and infringing on his parents tentative connection. It remains an inventive delight.
Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)
Watch on Prime VideoMany a space opera was produced in the wake of Star Wars’ phenomenal success, and renegade producer Roger Corman got in on the act with this unofficial intergalactic remake of The Magnificent Seven, which even cast the western’s Robert Vaughn. It’s an Argo-worthy project, but the credits are full of then talented newcomers: script by John Sayles, score by James Horner, and visual effects from the one and only James Cameron.
Battleship (2012)
Watch on Prime VideoDirector Peter Berg wanted to make a blockbuster and went all in on this alien invasion epic, even if it required a tie-in to a popular board game. Taylor Kitsch is the young US navy officer taking on the first wave of alien invasion in a full-tilt overdose of CGI action, military nostalgia, and Rihanna running the weapons deck. An exemplary example of the ludicrously entertaining Hollywood experience.
Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Watch on Prime VideoIf you’ve ever had a bad thought about Tom Cruise, this alien invasion blockbuster is the film for you: his character, callow soldier William Cage, endlessly dies in a daily loop tied to an alien invasion. Respawning like a video game character, he trains with a hard-nosed warrior, Emily Blunt’s unyielding Rita Vrataski, as the battlefield carnage becomes the blackest of jokes and dying becomes the only way to stay alive.
The Endless (2018)
Watch on Prime VideoA film in which the possibility that everyone gets out alive is as horrifying as no-one, this immersive and empathetic slow burn thriller took the filmmaking team—and lead actors—Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead into the mainstream. The pair play brothers who revisit the rural home of the cult they fled a decade prior, discovering unknown forces that could be economic inequality or Lovecraftian monsters—or a mix of the two.
Event Horizon (1997)
Watch on Prime VideoBefore the Resident Evil franchise took flight, British genre filmmaker Paul W.S. Anderson arrived in Hollywood with this tense then grizzly deep space horror story. When an experimental ship missing for seven years reappears in 2047 orbiting Jupiter, Laurence Fishburne and Sam Neill’s recovery crew soon realise that it has brought a malevolent force back with it—those realisations aren’t soon forgotten.
Greenland (2020)
Watch on Prime VideoReleased exclusively to Prime Video in Australia, the latest collaboration between director Ric Roman Waugh and star Gerard Butler is a straight-faced update of 1990s disaster dramas such as Deep Impact. Butler plays an Atlanta engineer trying to save his fractured family from a looming extinction-level event, resulting in a series of moral dilemmas and violent intrusions amidst escalating destruction.
In Time (2011)
Watch on Prime VideoIn his subsequent directing career, The Truman Show writer Andrew Niccol has shown an obsession with science fiction conceits that reveal underlying inequality. In this Robin Hood-themed dystopian thriller, the future’s currency is time: the rich are young and immortal, the desperate poor working for another day of life. Justin Timberlake is the worker who crashes the system, and Amanda Seyfried his entitled hostage turned accomplice.
Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Watch on Prime VideoLana and Lilly Wachowski returned to science-fiction with this weird and sometimes wilful space opera, which has Mila Kunis as the galactic princess unknowingly living on Earth, and Channing Tatum as the interstellar warrior with canine DNA who helps restore her birthright. It’s not good, but it’s memorable, whether it’s the vertiginous flight scenes, unexpected bureaucratic satire (hello Terry Gilliam!), or Eddie Redmayne giving a hilariously mannered villain’s turn.
The Last Man on Earth (1964)
Watch on Prime VideoRichard Matheson’s 1954 novel I Am Legend has been adapted multiple times, most prominently as a 2007 Will Smith blockbuster. But the first take was this outsourced British production, shot in Italy, with Vincent Price as the sole survivor of a plague that filled the world with vampiric-like creatures. Note: Prime Video also has a colourised version of the film streaming, but the original B&W is best.
The Matrix (1999)
Watch on Prime VideoGravity was driven by computer code and special effects bent reality’s rationale in the movie that rebooted science fiction and the action movie for the looming 21st century, starring Keanu Reeves as the everyman who becomes a digital warrior in a rebellion against a machine regime. Lana and Lilly Wachowski’s blockbuster remains masterfully complete.
Men in Black (1997)
Watch on Prime VideoIgnore the box-office mandated sequels and disappointing reboot: the founding entry of this action-comedy franchise about the agency secretly policing aliens living on Earth is the only Men in Black movie that matters. Barry Sonnenfeld’s idiosyncrasies as a filmmaker dovetail with the dynamic of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones as mismatched partners. It’s close to amazing how lively and self-aware this blockbuster is.
Minority Report (2002)
Watch on Prime VideoInspired by a Philip K. Dick short story, this rattling Steven Spielberg blockbuster is set in 2054 America where police arrest murderers before they act, based on the findings of mutated psychics. Tom Cruise—unsurprisingly running a lot—is the catcher who becomes the quarry when a report names him, and the film inventively intertwines tech fear, noir mystery, and progress couched in the wondrous and inexplicable.
Overlord (2018)
Watch on Prime VideoAustralian director Julius Avery brought the gore to this period nightmare, which adds Nazi experiments to create super-soldiers to the already chaotic 1944 D-Day invasions of occupied France. When a group of American paratroopers stumble upon an experimental lab, there are mad scientists and monsters aplenty—shout out to Pilou Asbaek, who can play either handily.
The Quiet Earth (1986)
Watch on Prime VideoThe wonderful New Zealand actor Bruno Lawrence, best known to Australian audiences as the conniving producer in television’s Frontline, gives a magnetic performance as a scientist who wakes one day to discover that his project has erased the world of other people. Freedom and fear spin out of control, with director Geoff Murphy making the possibilities feel claustrophobic.
Ready Player One (2018)
Watch on Prime VideoPopular culture is both a salve and a source of spectacle in Steven Spielberg’s rampant digital adventure, where a grim 21st century future is offset by a vast virtual reality game whose fantastical dimensions house an impossible quest. Tye Sheridan is the boy wonder protagonist and Ben Mendelsohn his corporate adversary, but the real star is the famous I.P. redeployed for Spielberg’s lavish pleasure.
Split Second (1992)
Watch on Prime VideoA B-movie from the end of the straight-to-video era, this prescient police procedural is set in a 2008 London where global warming has left parts of the city underwater. Rutger Hauer plays a loner homicide cop—of course he gets a rookie partner—hunting for a bloody killer he appears to have a psychic connection to. The plot is generic, the performances solid (yes, that’s Kim Cattrall) and the production design evocative.
Star Trek (2009)
Watch on Prime VideoJ.J. Abrams was given the reins of science fiction’s most storied franchise, successfully relaunching it a mere 43 years after the original television series debuted. This mix of slick action and heartfelt homage lets the likes of Chris Pine, Zoe Saldana, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban and Anton Yelchin step into familiar roles. Assigned villain duty, Eric Bana gives an operatic performance that remains an outlier for his career.
Things to Come (1936)
Watch on Prime VideoH.G. Wells penned the adaptation of his 1933 novel about an endless war that leads to the collapse of civilisation (World War II was already looming) and a science-driven resurgence. Directed with expressive clarity by William Cameron Menzies, it’s a fantasia about technocrats, but there are some pungent scenes and performances—particularly Sir Ralph Richardson as a ruthless warlord.
The Tomorrow War (2021)
Watch on Prime VideoChris Pratt gets his sardonic action hero on as a former Green Beret turned teacher who finds himself drafted by time travel to 2051, where humanity is fighting a losing war with alien creatures. The Lego Batman Movie director Chris McKay isn’t great with the actors, but the digitally designed “whitespikes”—and the tension leading up to their bloodthirsty reveals—are impeccably crafted. Vicarious fun as intended.
Train to Busan (2016)
Watch on Prime VideoYou could quibble about the human survivors being able to punch the undead, but nonetheless this South Korean zombie apocalypse thriller has a bracing momentum that begins with a high-speed train pulling away from the platform just as flesh-hungry zombies spill onto the platform. Facades and distinctions fall as the passengers struggle to stay alive through ingenious set-pieces.
Transformers (2007)
Watch on Prime VideoBy all account hands-on studio head Steven Spielberg smoothed out Michael Bay’s contrary mix of mawkish sentiment and garish shooting style for this pure blockbuster about warring robots bringing their eternal conflict to Earth. The theme of technological dread is touched on, but this trip to teenage boy heaven, starring Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox, brooks little interruption in its pursuit of digital cinematic sensation.
The Vast of Night (2020)
Watch on Prime VideoA bracing reminder of how suggestion is one of genre film’s most potent strengths, this independent production escalates quickly as a young DJ and receptionist running the night shift at a 1950s New Mexico radio station try to make sense of an unknown signal as strange calls start coming in. Andrew Patterson’s movie plays like a throwback to science fiction’s past, but also blazes a path forward.
World War Z (2013)
Watch on Prime VideoRacing across the globe as a zombie apocalypse takes hold, Brad Pitt’s greying U.N. investigator gives this undead epic with its digital hordes a human centre and appreciable scale. Reportedly made and remade, Marc Forster’s stitched-together blockbuster works in reverse: moving from the overwhelming to the intimate while cribbing details from Max Brooks’ source novel.
Zoe (2018)
Watch on Prime VideoIndependent filmmaker Drake Doremus continued his move into science fiction, following up the dystopian Equals with this romantic drama about the chemistry and crises of compatibility that stars Ewan McGregor and Lea Seydoux as colleagues at an artificial intelligence facility. There are echoes of Ex Machina, but with a soulful, light-soaked intent that also invokes Spike Jonze’s Her.
UPDATES
Titles are added and removed from this page regularly to reflect changes to Prime Video’s catalogue. The reviews no longer available on this page can be read here.
