Great Sci-Fi Films you may not have seen

by MelancholyPonyAndTheCircusBoy | created - 07 Nov 2013 | updated - 02 Feb 2015 | Public

underrated, unknown or just plain hated

 Refine See titles to watch instantly, titles you haven't rated, etc
  • Instant Watch Options
  • Genres
  • Movies or TV
  • IMDb Rating
  • In Theaters
  • Release Year
  • Keywords




IMDb user rating (average) to
Number of votes to »




Reset
Release year or range to »




































































































1. 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: 200,255

2. Sleep Dealer (2008)

PG-13 | 90 min | Drama, Romance, Sci-Fi

59 Metascore

The near future. Like tomorrow. In a world marked by closed borders, corporate warriors, and a global computer network, three strangers risk their lives to connect, break through the barriers of technology, and unseal their fates.

Director: Alex Rivera | Stars: Luis Fernando Peña, Leonor Varela, Jacob Vargas, Metztli Adamina

Votes: 6,687 | Gross: $0.08M

3. A Scanner Darkly (2006)

R | 100 min | Animation, Comedy, Crime

73 Metascore

An undercover cop in a not-too-distant future becomes involved with a dangerous new drug and begins to lose his own identity as a result.

Director: Richard Linklater | Stars: Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr., Rory Cochrane

Votes: 117,161 | Gross: $5.50M

4. One Point O (2004)

R | 95 min | Drama, Horror, Mystery

After receiving mysterious empty packages inside his apartment, a young computer-programmer begins a personal investigation into their origins.

Directors: Jeff Renfroe, Marteinn Thorsson | Stars: Richard Rees, Jeremy Sisto, Udo Kier, Deborah Kara Unger

Votes: 5,985

5. Code 46 (2003)

R | 93 min | Drama, Romance, Sci-Fi

57 Metascore

A futuristic Brief Encounter (1945), this is a love story in which the romance is doomed by genetic incompatibility.

Director: Michael Winterbottom | Stars: Tim Robbins, Samantha Morton, Om Puri, Togo Igawa

Votes: 21,134 | Gross: $0.20M

6. Gattaca (1997)

PG-13 | 106 min | Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller

64 Metascore

A genetically inferior man assumes the identity of a superior one in order to pursue his lifelong dream of space travel.

Director: Andrew Niccol | Stars: Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, Jude Law, Gore Vidal

Votes: 323,338 | Gross: $12.34M

7. Europa Report (2013)

PG-13 | 90 min | Adventure, Drama, Mystery

68 Metascore

An international crew of astronauts undertakes a privately funded mission to search for life on Jupiter's fourth largest moon.

Director: Sebastián Cordero | Stars: Sharlto Copley, Michael Nyqvist, Christian Camargo, Embeth Davidtz

Votes: 75,532 | Gross: $0.13M

8. Moon (2009)

R | 97 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi

67 Metascore

Astronaut Sam Bell has a quintessentially personal encounter toward the end of his three-year stint on the Moon, where he, working alongside his computer, GERTY, sends back to Earth parcels of a resource that has helped diminish our planet's power problems.

Director: Duncan Jones | Stars: Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey, Dominique McElligott, Rosie Shaw

Votes: 376,802 | Gross: $5.01M

9. THX 1138 (1971)

R | 86 min | Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller

75 Metascore

In the 25th century, a time when people have designations instead of names, a man, THX 1138, and a woman, LUH 3417, rebel against their rigidly controlled society.

Director: George Lucas | Stars: Robert Duvall, Donald Pleasence, Don Pedro Colley, Maggie McOmie

Votes: 54,635 | Gross: $2.44M

10. Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010)

R | 110 min | Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi

49 Metascore

Despite being under heavy sedation, a young woman tries to make her way out of the Arboria Institute, a secluded, quasifuturistic commune.

Director: Panos Cosmatos | Stars: Eva Bourne, Michael J Rogers, Scott Hylands, Rondel Reynoldson

Votes: 16,916 | Gross: $0.06M

11. eXistenZ (1999)

R | 97 min | Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi

70 Metascore

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: 107,246 | Gross: $2.84M

12. Being John Malkovich (1999)

R | 113 min | Comedy, Drama, Fantasy

90 Metascore

A puppeteer discovers a portal that leads literally into the head of movie star John Malkovich.

Director: Spike Jonze | Stars: John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, Catherine Keener, John Malkovich

Votes: 353,441 | Gross: $22.86M

13. Antiviral (2012)

Not Rated | 108 min | Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi

55 Metascore

In a blackly satirical near future, a thriving industry sells celebrity illnesses to their obsessed fans. Employee Syd March's attempts to exploit the system backfire when they involve him in a potentially deadly mystery.

Director: Brandon Cronenberg | Stars: Caleb Landry Jones, Lisa Berry, Sarah Gadon, Malcolm McDowell

Votes: 15,420

14. Pi (1998)

R | 84 min | Drama, Horror, Mystery

72 Metascore

A paranoid mathematician searches for a key number that will unlock the universal patterns found in nature.

Director: Darren Aronofsky | Stars: Sean Gullette, Mark Margolis, Ben Shenkman, Pamela Hart

Votes: 186,485 | Gross: $3.22M

15. Primer (2004)

PG-13 | 77 min | Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller

68 Metascore

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: 114,211 | Gross: $0.42M

16. Solaris (1972)

PG | 167 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi

93 Metascore

A psychologist is sent to a station orbiting a distant planet in order to discover what has caused the crew to go insane.

Director: Andrei Tarkovsky | Stars: Natalya Bondarchuk, Donatas Banionis, Jüri Järvet, Vladislav Dvorzhetskiy

Votes: 98,298

17. Stalker (1979)

Not Rated | 162 min | Drama, Sci-Fi

85 Metascore

A guide leads two men through an area known as the Zone to find a room that grants wishes.

Director: Andrei Tarkovsky | Stars: Alisa Freyndlikh, Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy, Anatoliy Solonitsyn, Nikolay Grinko

Votes: 144,824 | Gross: $0.23M

18. The Fountain (2006)

PG-13 | 97 min | Drama, Mystery, Romance

51 Metascore

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: 248,809 | Gross: $10.14M

19. Videodrome (1983)

R | 87 min | Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller

58 Metascore

A programmer at a Toronto TV station that specializes in adult entertainment searches for the producers of a dangerous and bizarre broadcast.

Director: David Cronenberg | Stars: James Woods, Debbie Harry, Sonja Smits, Peter Dvorsky

Votes: 103,041 | Gross: $2.12M

DEATH TO VIDEODROME! LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH!

20. Eden Log (2007)

R | 98 min | Drama, Horror, Mystery

A man wakes up in an underground cave, next to a dead body. He has no memory of how he got there and starts to try and work his way to the surface and escape from the network of tunnels, which seem to be some kind of ancient civilisation.

Director: Franck Vestiel | Stars: Clovis Cornillac, Vimala Pons, Zohar Wexler, Sifan Shao

Votes: 6,846

21. The Quiet Earth (1985)

R | 91 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi

A scientist awakens to find himself alone in the world. In a desperate attempt to search for others, he finds only two who have their own agenda.

Director: Geoff Murphy | Stars: Bruno Lawrence, Alison Routledge, Pete Smith, Anzac Wallace

Votes: 27,638 | Gross: $2.12M

22. Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)

R | 86 min | Adventure, Comedy, Drama

72 Metascore

Three magazine employees head out on an assignment to interview a guy who placed a classified advertisement seeking a companion for time travel.

Director: Colin Trevorrow | Stars: Aubrey Plaza, Mark Duplass, Jake Johnson, Karan Soni

Votes: 130,868 | Gross: $4.01M

23. The Thirteenth Floor (1999)

R | 100 min | Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller

36 Metascore

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: 77,309 | Gross: $15.50M

24. 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: 129,885

25. Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)

Not Rated | 67 min | Horror, Sci-Fi

A businessman accidentally kills The Metal Fetishist, who gets his revenge by slowly turning the man into a grotesque hybrid of flesh and rusty metal.

Director: Shin'ya Tsukamoto | Stars: Tomorô Taguchi, Kei Fujiwara, Nobu Kanaoka, Shin'ya Tsukamoto

Votes: 25,940

26. Seconds (1966)

R | 106 min | Sci-Fi, Thriller

71 Metascore

An unhappy middle-aged banker agrees to a procedure that will fake his death and give him a completely new look and identity - one that comes with its own price.

Director: John Frankenheimer | Stars: Rock Hudson, Frank Campanella, John Randolph, Frances Reid

Votes: 22,215

27. Open Your Eyes (1997)

R | 119 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi

A very handsome man finds the love of his life, but he suffers an accident and needs to have his face rebuilt by surgery after it is severely disfigured.

Director: Alejandro Amenábar | Stars: Eduardo Noriega, Penélope Cruz, Chete Lera, Fele Martínez

Votes: 73,275 | Gross: $0.37M



Recently Viewed