Sci-Fi Standouts
by TheOneYouMiss | created - 01 Dec 2020 | updated - 18 Feb 2023 | PublicScience Fiction films that changed the landscape. Some are great, but most started great and fell apart. This is the time travel film paradox lol
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1. Primer (2004)
PG-13 | 77 min | Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Four friends/fledgling entrepreneurs, knowing that there's something bigger and more innovative than the different error-checking devices they've built, wrestle over their new invention.
Director: Shane Carruth | Stars: Shane Carruth, David Sullivan, Casey Gooden, Anand Upadhyaya
Votes: 113,819 | Gross: $0.42M
2. Time Lapse (2014)
Not Rated | 104 min | Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Three friends discover a mysterious machine that takes pictures twenty-four hours into the future, and conspire to use it for personal gain, until disturbing and dangerous images begin to develop.
Director: Bradley King | Stars: Danielle Panabaker, Matt O'Leary, George Finn, John Rhys-Davies
Votes: 48,975
3. Upstream Color (2013)
Not Rated | 96 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi
A man and woman are drawn together, entangled in the life cycle of an ageless organism. Identity becomes an illusion as they struggle to assemble the loose fragments of wrecked lives.
Director: Shane Carruth | Stars: Amy Seimetz, Frank Mosley, Shane Carruth, Andrew Sensenig
Votes: 34,904 | Gross: $0.44M
4. Timecrimes (2007)
R | 92 min | Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi
A man accidentally gets into a time machine and travels back in time nearly an hour. Finding himself will be the first of a series of disasters of unforeseeable consequences.
Director: Nacho Vigalondo | Stars: Karra Elejalde, Candela Fernández, Bárbara Goenaga, Nacho Vigalondo
Votes: 68,567 | Gross: $0.04M
5. Coherence (2013)
Not Rated | 89 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi
Strange things begin to happen when a group of friends gather for a dinner party on an evening when a comet is passing overhead.
Director: James Ward Byrkit | Stars: Emily Baldoni, Maury Sterling, Nicholas Brendon, Elizabeth Gracen
Votes: 145,104 | Gross: $0.07M
6. Predestination (I) (2014)
R | 97 min | Action, Drama, Sci-Fi
As his last assignment, a temporal agent is tasked to travel back in time and prevent a bomb attack in New York in 1975. The hunt, however, turns out to be beyond the bounds of possibility.
Directors: Michael Spierig, Peter Spierig | Stars: Ethan Hawke, Sarah Snook, Noah Taylor, Madeleine West
Votes: 303,616 | Gross: $0.07M
7. Triangle (2009)
R | 99 min | Fantasy, Mystery, Sci-Fi
Five friends set sail and their yacht is overturned by a strange and sudden storm. A mysterious ship arrives to rescue them, and what happens next cannot be explained.
Director: Christopher Smith | Stars: Melissa George, Joshua McIvor, Jack Taylor, Michael Dorman
Votes: 129,150
8. Exam (2009)
Not Rated | 101 min | Crime, Horror, Mystery
Eight candidates for a highly desirable corporate job are locked together in an exam room and given a final test with just one seemingly simple question. However, it doesn't take long for confusion to ensue and tensions to unravel.
Director: Stuart Hazeldine | Stars: Adar Beck, Gemma Chan, Nathalie Cox, John Lloyd Fillingham
Votes: 124,839
9. The Man from Earth (2007)
Not Rated | 87 min | Drama, Fantasy, Mystery
An impromptu goodbye party for Professor John Oldman becomes a mysterious interrogation after the retiring scholar reveals to his colleagues he has a longer and stranger past than they can imagine.
Director: Richard Schenkman | Stars: David Lee Smith, Tony Todd, John Billingsley, Ellen Crawford
Votes: 199,451
10. The Man from Earth: Holocene (2017)
98 min | Drama, Fantasy, Sci-Fi
A 14,000-year-old college professor notices that he has finally started showing signs of aging. Meanwhile, four of his students get suspicious of him and start investigating his past.
Director: Richard Schenkman | Stars: David Lee Smith, Doug Haley, Davi Santos, Vanessa Williams
Votes: 10,156 | Gross: $0.01M
11. Mr. Nobody (2009)
R | 141 min | Drama, Fantasy, Romance
A boy stands on a station platform as a train is about to leave. Should he go with his mother or stay with his father? Infinite possibilities arise from this decision. As long as he doesn't choose, anything is possible.
Director: Jaco Van Dormael | Stars: Jared Leto, Sarah Polley, Diane Kruger, Linh-Dan Pham
Votes: 245,342 | Gross: $0.00M
12. Looper (2012)
R | 119 min | Action, Drama, Sci-Fi
In 2074, when the mob wants to get rid of someone, the target is sent into the past, where a hired gun awaits - someone like Joe - who one day learns the mob wants to 'close the loop' by sending back Joe's future self for assassination.
Director: Rian Johnson | Stars: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt, Paul Dano
Votes: 601,577 | Gross: $66.49M
13. Cube (1997)
R | 90 min | Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi
A group of strangers awaken to find themselves placed in a giant cube. Each one of them is gifted with a special skill and they must work together to escape an endless maze of deadly traps.
Director: Vincenzo Natali | Stars: Nicole de Boer, Maurice Dean Wint, David Hewlett, Andrew Miller
Votes: 247,005 | Gross: $0.50M
14. Cypher (2002)
R | 95 min | Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller
An unsuspecting, disenchanted man finds himself working as a spy in the dangerous, high-stakes world of corporate espionage. Quickly getting way over-his-head, he teams up with a mysterious femme fatale.
Director: Vincenzo Natali | Stars: Jeremy Northam, Lucy Liu, Nigel Bennett, Timothy Webber
Votes: 32,032
15. Cube²: Hypercube (2002)
R | 94 min | Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi
Eight strangers awaken with no memory, in a puzzling cube-shaped room where the laws of physics do not always apply.
Director: Andrzej Sekula | Stars: Kari Matchett, Geraint Wyn Davies, Grace Lynn Kung, Matthew Ferguson
Votes: 70,269
16. Cube Zero (2004)
R | 97 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi
A young programmer whose job is to watch over the reality-warping Cube defies orders to rescue an innocent mother trapped in one of its rooms.
Director: Ernie Barbarash | Stars: Zachary Bennett, Stephanie Moore, Martin Roach, Michael Riley
Votes: 42,623
17. The Thirteenth Floor (1999)
R | 100 min | Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller
A computer scientist running a virtual reality simulation of 1937 becomes the primary suspect when his colleague and mentor is murdered.
Director: Josef Rusnak | Stars: Craig Bierko, Gretchen Mol, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Vincent D'Onofrio
Votes: 76,993 | Gross: $15.50M
18. eXistenZ (1999)
R | 97 min | Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi
A game designer on the run from assassins must play her latest virtual reality creation with a marketing trainee to determine if the game has been damaged.
Director: David Cronenberg | Stars: Jude Law, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Ian Holm, Willem Dafoe
Votes: 106,873 | Gross: $2.84M
19. Dark City (1998)
R | 100 min | Fantasy, Mystery, Sci-Fi
A man struggles with memories of his past, which include a wife he cannot remember and a nightmarish world no one else ever seems to wake up from.
Director: Alex Proyas | Stars: Rufus Sewell, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly, William Hurt
Votes: 211,573 | Gross: $14.38M
20. Source Code (2011)
PG-13 | 93 min | Action, Drama, Mystery
A soldier wakes up in someone else's body and discovers he's part of an experimental government program to find the bomber of a commuter train within 8 minutes.
Director: Duncan Jones | Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, Jeffrey Wright
Votes: 548,150 | Gross: $54.71M
21. The Fountain (2006)
PG-13 | 97 min | Drama, Mystery, Romance
As a modern-day scientist, Tommy is struggling with mortality, desperately searching for the medical breakthrough that will save the life of his cancer-stricken wife, Izzi.
Director: Darren Aronofsky | Stars: Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz, Sean Patrick Thomas, Ellen Burstyn
Votes: 248,377 | Gross: $10.14M
22. Enemy (2013)
R | 91 min | Drama, Mystery, Thriller
A man seeks out his exact look-alike after spotting him in a movie.
Director: Denis Villeneuve | Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal, Mélanie Laurent, Sarah Gadon, Isabella Rossellini
Votes: 213,836 | Gross: $1.01M
23. Identity (2003)
R | 90 min | Mystery, Thriller
Stranded at a desolate Nevada motel during a nasty rain storm, ten strangers become acquainted with each other when they realize that they're being killed off one by one.
Director: James Mangold | Stars: John Cusack, Ray Liotta, Amanda Peet, John Hawkes
Votes: 266,270 | Gross: $52.16M
24. The Method (2005)
115 min | Drama, Thriller
7 Spanish top corporate job candidates are left in a room and informed on computer screens about their tasks and that one of them is an observer. Let the psyching begin.
Director: Marcelo Piñeyro | Stars: Eduardo Noriega, Najwa Nimri, Eduard Fernández, Pablo Echarri
Votes: 12,131 | Gross: $0.01M
25. The Belko Experiment (2016)
R | 89 min | Horror, Thriller
In a twisted social experiment, eighty Americans are locked in their high-rise corporate office in Bogotá, Colombia, and ordered by an unknown voice coming from the company's intercom system to participate in a deadly game of kill or be killed.
Director: Greg McLean | Stars: John Gallagher Jr., Tony Goldwyn, Adria Arjona, John C. McGinley
Votes: 58,086 | Gross: $10.16M
26. Highlander (1992–1998)
TV-14 | 60 min | Action, Adventure, Fantasy
Duncan MacLeod is Immortal, and must live in modern society, concealing his true nature while fighting other Immortals.
Stars: Adrian Paul, Stan Kirsch, Jim Byrnes, Peter Wingfield
Votes: 17,741
27. Infinity Chamber (2016)
103 min | Sci-Fi, Thriller
A man trapped in an automated prison must outsmart a computer in order to escape.
Director: Travis Milloy | Stars: Christopher Soren Kelly, Cassandra Clark, Cajardo Lindsey, Jesse D. Arrow
Votes: 11,693
28. Radius (2017)
Not Rated | 93 min | Drama, Horror, Mystery
A man wakes up with no memory of who he is, and finds that everyone who comes within a certain distance of him suddenly dies.
Directors: Caroline Labrèche, Steeve Léonard | Stars: Diego Klattenhoff, Charlotte Sullivan, Brett Donahue, Bradley Sawatzky
Votes: 19,512
29. Inception (2010)
PG-13 | 148 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
A thief who steals corporate secrets through the use of dream-sharing technology is given the inverse task of planting an idea into the mind of a C.E.O., but his tragic past may doom the project and his team to disaster.
Director: Christopher Nolan | Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Elliot Page, Ken Watanabe
Votes: 2,539,372 | Gross: $292.58M
30. The Matrix (1999)
R | 136 min | Action, Sci-Fi
When a beautiful stranger leads computer hacker Neo to a forbidding underworld, he discovers the shocking truth--the life he knows is the elaborate deception of an evil cyber-intelligence.
Directors: Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski | Stars: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving
Votes: 2,043,732 | Gross: $171.48M
31. Self/less (2015)
PG-13 | 117 min | Action, Mystery, Sci-Fi
A dying real estate mogul transfers his consciousness into a healthy young body, but soon finds that neither the procedure nor the company that performed it are quite what they seem.
Director: Tarsem Singh | Stars: Ryan Reynolds, Natalie Martinez, Matthew Goode, Ben Kingsley
Votes: 103,747 | Gross: $12.28M
32. Life (I) (2017)
R | 104 min | Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller
A team of scientists aboard the International Space Station discover a rapidly evolving life form that caused extinction on Mars and now threatens all life on Earth.
Director: Daniel Espinosa | Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, Ryan Reynolds, Hiroyuki Sanada
Votes: 252,311 | Gross: $30.23M
33. Secrets of Sulphur Springs (2021–2023)
TV-PG | 24 min | Adventure, Drama, Family
Griffin moves to a seemingly haunted town named Sulphur Springs with his family. He meets Harper, a girl from school, and they unlock a time-traveling portal and encounter a lurking ghost.
Stars: Preston Oliver, Kyliegh Curran, Elle Graham, Madeleine McGraw
Votes: 4,081
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