The best sci-fi movies on Netflix right now

It took Zack Snyder two movies to retell the story of The Magnificent Seven in space, which is essentially what Rebel Moon is. Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire introduced Kora (Sofia Boutella), and revealed her personal connection to Motherworld, the heart of the empire that dominates the known universe. It also established that Kora is the title character in the sequel, Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver.

Kora and her remaining allies triumphed in the first part of the film when they survived an Imperium trap. But now the real challenge begins, because the Imperium is marshaling its forces to conquer Veldt, Kora’s adopted home. And she’ll do anything to protect her people, even if it kills her.

Very early on in They Cloned Tyrone, a drug dealer named Fontaine (John Boyega) is brutally murdered in front of one of his clients, Slick Charles (Foxx), and one of his Slick’s girls, Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris). But much to the surprise of Slick Charles and Yo-Yo, Fontaine shows up the next day without any memory of what happened to him.

While investigating the mystery of Fontaine’s apparent resurrection, the trio uncover a clone conspiracy that has very troubling implications for their lives and their future. And if they want to save themselves, Fontaine, Slick Charles, and Yo-Yo need to fight back.

In the future, overpopulation and famine have forced world governments to strictly enforce a One-Child Policy. But not everyone is so keen on following the rule, especially a group of seven identical sisters (Noomi Rapace) who are forced to live a fugitive existence, constantly pursued by the Child Allocation Bureau. Led by Nicolette Cayman (Glenn Close), the Bureau is ruthless, but the sisters outwit them by assuming the identity of a single person and each entering the world only one day of the week. It works until Monday doesn’t come home.

This Chinese blockbuster sees a meteor strike the Earth. Onboard is a destructive alien lifeform that spawns and soon threatens humanity. After elite forces are almost completely wiped out trying to save their city, one surviving soldier, Tai Loo (Louis Koo), discovers that there’s a larger conspiracy connected to the invasion.

Stowaway is a sci-fi film that explores just how far human beings are willing to go to protect one another, breathing new meaning into words like “sacrifice” and “preservation.” Following the crew (played by Anna Kendrick, Toni Collette, and Daniel Dae Kim) of a Mars-bound spacecraft, the trio of planetary researchers discovers an accidental fourth passenger named Michael (Shamier Anderson) trapped aboard the vessel. Literally entangled in a carbon dioxide purifier, the dislocated launch engineer inadvertently destroys the device, robbing everyone aboard of precious oxygen. As the clock starts ticking on how much air is left to breathe, the crew is forced to consider some perilous and tragic choices in order to arrive on Mars safely. There’s nothing like the absence of familiar Earth to raise the stakes in any live-or-die situation, and Stowaway handles this familiar sci-fi formula with an impactful narrative.

Want to get the kids into sci-fi? This techpocalyptic animated thrill ride from Lord/Miller (The Lego Movie, Solo: A Star Wars Story) ought to do the trick. Teenager Katie Mitchell has trouble connecting with her oddball family, especially when it comes to her father, who just could not be more different than Katie. But when he fears he might lose her forever when she leaves for film school, Katie’s father cancels her plane ticket to LA and takes the family on a road trip instead. Unfortunately, mid-trip, a scorned artificial intelligence (A.I.) called Pal incites a robotic rebellion, rounding up all the people of the Earth to send them out to space. Narrowly escaping capture, the Mitchells are now the last free humans on Earth, and with the help of a couple of damaged robots, they must find a way to save humanity — and their family.

Waking up with no memory of your identity would be pretty bad, right? Imagine that, on top of amnesia, you’re also inexplicably trapped in a cryogenic pod that’s slowly running out of air. That’s the premise for the French language sci-fi drama Oxygen. Mélanie Laurent plays the imprisoned protagonist who has nothing but her buried memories and the pod’s uncooperative computers to piece together who she is and how to survive. Oxygen looks to be a claustrophobic and gripping thriller, and it will be available for streaming beginning Wednesday, May 12.

Don’t be afraid to read subtitles when watching Mirage. This Spanish sci-fi film has a story that is universal no matter which language is used. Adriana Ugarte stars as Vera Roy, a woman who inadvertently discovers a way to communicate with a teenager named Nico Lasarte (Joel Illescas) 25 years in the past. After helping Nico prevent his own accidental death, Vera discovers that her own world and timeline have greatly changed. Vera’s daughter no longer exists, and her husband, David (Álvaro Morte), is married to someone else. Subsequently, Vera desperately searches for a way to regain what she lost.

Bong Joon-ho earned Best Director and Best Picture Oscars for Parasite, but he was making remarkable movies well before that recognition. Okja is one of his most polemical films, taking on the meat industry and capitalism at large in this touching sci-fi drama for Netflix. The story follows Mija, a young girl who has grown up in the mountains of South Korea with a fictional super-pig best friend named Okja. But when the multinational conglomerate Mirando Corporation kidnaps Okja and transports her to New York to launch an entirely new meat industry, it’s up to Mija to save her best friend. A caustic satire of the greed and grotesqueness of American food processing, Okja pokes fun at everyone from self-obsessed CEOs to bumbling, naive activists in a sci-fi romp that hits close to home.