Polygon readers, welcome to the alarmingly futuristic-sounding year of 2023. There are a ton of excellent sci-fi motion pictures in the months ahead, like the strange time-travel action thriller 65 starring Adam Chauffeur, Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool, Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two, not to discuss the debut of Gerard Johnstone’s M3GAN today. If you’re looking for some brave brand-new worlds to view right now, however, from the comfort of your own house, relax– we’ve got you covered.
We have actually combed through Netflix’s library this month to bring our leading choices for the best sci-fi films presently offered to stream on the service. Let’s dive in!
The Nest
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Photo: Saban Films Year: 2021 Run time: 1h 44m Director: Tim Fehlbaum Cast: Nora Arnezeder, Sarah-Sofie Boussnina, Iain Glen If you’re looking for a moody and melancholic sci-fi thriller that rubs shoulders with the tone of Alfonso Cuarón’s Kid of Guys and the visual of Joseph Kosinski’s Oblivion, Tim Fehlbaum’s 2021 movie is perfect for you. Alternatively entitled Tides, The Colony follows an expedition group from a human nest on a far-off world called Kepler-209 who go back to Earth to test whether the world is yet viable for human habitation. The occupants of Kepler-209 have actually become sterile because leaving the planet, and so returning to Earth now stands as humankind’s best and last hope for survival.
As Roxana Hadadi wrote in her review for Polygon:
In its early scenes, The Nest works as a plaintive visual exploration of what survival might look like if we advance our ruinous climate course: continuous flooding and swirling waters, movable cities constructed on weak ships, nomadic individuals wrapped in outfits that safeguard them from the aspects and allow for ease of movement. Cinematographer Markus Förderer and production designer Julian R. Wagner create a haunting world, however The Colony is often too actual. Fehlbaum’s presentation of solitude is packed with thuddingly obvious imagery (Blake alone on the beach, Blake alone in a well flooding with tidewater), however its very first 20 approximately minutes are a disquieting visualization of loss.
Illang: The Wolf Brigade
Image: Cho Won Jin/Netflix Year: 2018 Run time: 2h 19m Director: Kim Jee-woon Cast: Gang Dong-won, Han Hyo-joo, Jung Woo-sung A live-action adjustment of Hiroyuki Okiura and Mamoru Oshii’s 1999 anime thriller Jin-Roh, Kim Jee-woon’s 2018 movie transforms the original’s alternate 1950s Japan setting to a reunified Korea circa 2024 while losing none of the previous’s tonal melancholy and kinetic bite. The film follows Im Joong-kyung, a member of a heavily armed police force, whose nascent relationship with the sis of a suicide bomber shakes his resolve and forces him to question ethics of his actions. Don’t think of Illang: The Wolf Brigade as a replacement for Jin-Roh, but rather as a companion piece with its own take on the subtleties and dehumanizing effects of domestic militarism for the sake of evident peace.– TE
Minority Report
Image: 20th Century Studios Year: 2002 Run time: 2h 25m Director: Steven Spielberg Cast: Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell, Max von Sydow Tom Cruise stars in Steven Spielberg’s 2002 adjustment of Philip K. Dick’s short story as John Anderton, an authorities captain in the year 2054 who functions as the commander of an experimental new program that focuses on “Precrime”– predicting future circumstances of criminal activity and intervening previously stated criminal offenses are dedicated. When John himself is implicated in a murder, he’ll need to outsmart and outrun his associates in order to clear his name, all while tracking down the culprit or offenders accountable for framing him.
A sci-fi action thriller about the dangers of institutional overreach and the power of human option over predestination, the film’s production design has actually given that gone on to influence a generation of comparable real-life innovations, consisting of though not restricted to customized advertising and gesture-based motion-sensing user interface technology like Microsoft’s Kinect devices.– TE
The Mist
< image class=
“c-picture “data-cid=”site/picture _ element-1673289792_5573_71491″data-cdata=”> Image: The Weinstein Company Year: 2007 Run time: 2h 6m Director: Frank Darabont Cast: Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harden, Laurie Holden Frank Darabont is among the ruling masters of effective Stephen King adaptations, responsible for such well-known films as The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. 2007’s The Mist, Darabont’s third take on King’s work and his last film to date, follows the Drayton household– David, Steff, and their young kid, Billy– who are required to look for shelter in their regional supermarket along with their next-door neighbors in the wake of a mystical storm that showers their town in a blanket of mist populated by bloodthirsty creatures.
It’s not simply the animals they need to stress over, nevertheless, as the townspeople start to descend into idolatry and barbarism out a desperate desire to find security in the face of worry. There are a great deal of fantastic components to The Mist, not the least of which is its ending– one that not only diverges significantly from that of the source product, but which has given that made considerable praise from King himself.– TE
Spectral
Image: Legendary/Netflix Year: 2016 Run time: 1h 47m Director: Nic Mathieu
Cast: James Badge Dale, Max Martini, Emily Mortimer
If you’re itching for a sci-fi potboiler that’s less worried with grandiose thematic depth and more with explosive metropolitan warfare against extraterrestrial ghosts and evil spirits, this is precisely what you’re trying to find. Spectral follows Mark Clyne (James Badge Dale), a DARPA engineer who is designated to an unique forces unit in Moldova to investigate a strange phenomenon found using his innovation: a speculative line of hyperspectral imaging goggles. As it ends up, the soldiers themselves aren’t just detected by some unknown glitch, however ghostlike creatures who start to assault the troops for their own inscrutable factors. This is admittedly not an especially wise or initial film, but if a four-legged robotic drone shining a massive flashlight cannon at a crowd of shapeshifting smoke ghosts sounds cool, give this a shot.– TE