Sci-fi is a genre full of plenty of heavy hitters. There are giant franchises, endless sequels, and blockbuster effects, and the biggest ones tend to end up wedged deep in our minds. Unfortunately, that means a lot of genuinely good science fiction slips through the cracks. After all, not every movie needs a $200 million budget to be enjoyable.
Netflix is packed with sci-fi flicks beyond the obvious hits, especially smaller movies that come jam-packed with some interesting ideas that you may not have even thought of. They're the kind of thing that you stumble onto late at night and end up thinking about long after the credits roll.
The problem is knowing where to start. And, uh, that part is pretty difficult. With so many movies on the streaming service competing for your attention, a lot of great sci-fi gets buried fast. To help narrow things down, I've picked out three Netflix sci-fi movies you probably haven’t seen yet, each offering something a little different. All you have to do is press play.
'What Happened to Monday' (2017)
Noomi Rapace plays seven identical sisters living in a dystopian future where a strict one-child policy has been imposed to cut down on overpopulation. Each sister is named after a day of the week, and to avoid detection by the Child Allocation Bureau led by Glenn Close’s Nicolette Cayman, they share one single identity. As you can imagine, this doesn't always go smoothly.
Everything changes when Monday does not return home, which forces her siblings to try to figure out what's happened to her. Between sleuthing out her whereabouts and dodging the Child Allocation Bureau, they've got to figure out how to navigate everyday life without their main "Karen Settman", who's usually at the head of everything. If you liked "Mickey 17", this feels somewhat similar.
Stream now on Netflix
'Spectral' (2016)
Dr. Mark Clyne (James Badge Dale) is a DARPA engineer called to war when U.S. forces face an invisible and deadly threat. Armed with his own technology and joined by a Special Operations team, Clyne has to find a way to help the soldiers understand what's killing them and how to stop it.
As the mysterious "spectral" beings rip through the military ranks and continue killing, Clyne and the team race to figure out a way not only to show the world what kind of threat it's facing, but how to fight an enemy you can't even see, let alone expose it.
Stream now on Netflix
'Oxygen' (2021)
This French sci-fi thriller stars Mélanie Laurent as a woman who wakes up inside a cryogenic pod with no memory of who she is or how she got there. There's another problem, too: her air is running out. She has only the pod’s AI to help her figure out who she is and how to get out of the sticky situation.
Much like movies like "Locke," "Oxygen" takes a terrifying and claustrophobic situation and runs with it beautifully. You're always left guessing what happened with the oxygen in the pod and what caused the protagonist's amnesia. When all is revealed, it's such a deliciously decadent moment that you'll want to watch the movie a second time.
Stream now on Netflix
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