Sci-fi on Netflix

A commercial crew answers a distress call and finds something that does not want to be rescued. Ridley Scott's 1979 film is still the cold standard for science fiction that wants to scare you.

Ripley goes back, this time with Marines who think guns will be enough. James Cameron turns the nightmare into a war film, and both halves still work.

Jennifer Lopez has to trust an AI she hates in order to stop the one she built. A 2024 Netflix science-fiction action film, big and straightforward.

Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein, on Netflix, treats the creature as a person the world refuses to look at. Long, sad, and made of weather.

Postwar Tokyo, a pilot who already survived one disaster, and Godzilla treated like a real catastrophe. The 2023 film, on Netflix.

Assassins in the present kill targets sent from the future, until one of them is sent himself. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, on Netflix.

A toy company builds a doll that bonds a little too well with a grieving kid. Funny until the head tilt. On Netflix.

Siblings on a horse ranch notice something in the sky that does not want to be filmed. Jordan Peele, spectacle and dread, on Netflix.

A pill gives you five minutes of a superpower, and it might also kill you. Jamie Foxx and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, on Netflix.

Miles Morales learns there are other Spider-People, and the movie looks like a comic that learned to move. On Netflix.

A pilot from the future crash-lands in his own childhood and has to team up with the kid he used to be. Ryan Reynolds, on Netflix.

In an alternate 1990s, a girl and a robot cross a wasteland of abandoned machines. The 2025 Netflix film, big, strange, and aimed at the couch.

A scientist in the Arctic tries to warn a returning spaceship not to come home. George Clooney, on Netflix. Quiet science fiction.

A prison is a vertical shaft, and the food only goes down. People at the top eat. People at the bottom wait. On Netflix.

The children of captured superheroes have to save them, and they are better at it than the adults expected. A Netflix family action film.