25 sci-fi films that question the nature of life itself

Directed by Stanley Kubrick and based on the work of Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey looms large in the history of the sci-fi film. Filled with powerful imagery and deep existential musings, it is the type of film designed to make the viewer question everything they thought they knew about human life, creativity, and the nature of the universe itself. Moreover, it is one of those films that challenges received notions of what film as a medium is capable of accomplishing. The final image of the Star Child remains an indelible image of the infinite possibilities inherent in the human condition. 

Some of the best sci-fi movies engage with questions of the body: its composition, its autonomy, and its (in)violability. Annihilation, an adaptation of the book of the same name by Jeff VanderMeer, engages with all of these questions as it follows a group of scientists as they infiltrate a mysterious anomaly known as the Shimmer, which randomly combines the DNA of all living things in its confines. It’s a viscerally disturbing film, as it forces both its characters and the viewer to think deeply and uncomfortably about just what it is that makes people human and how easy it is to lose oneself and become something radically and terrifyingly other.  

Few science fiction films have had quite the lasting influence of The Matrix. To this day, the imagery of the red pill vs. the blue pill is one that percolates in popular culture. Furthermore, its central premise, in which all of humanity has been enslaved by robots who use humans as a source of energy, has increasing relevance in the age of AI. Like all good sci-fi, it probes the darkest areas of the human imagination, summoning up collective fears, and desires, about the possibilities and dangers inherent in using AI.

Christopher Nolan is arguably one of the most visionary directors in Hollywood, and he has a knack for creating visually striking and narratively complex films. With Interstellar, he pairs a man’s desperate desire to save Earth (and his daughter) with a rumination on the nature of time, human agency, and existence itself. It’s the type of film that sweeps the viewer up in its own visual and intellectual majesty, and while some parts might come dangerously close to mere sentiment, it nevertheless manages to.

District 9 is one of those sci-fi films which uses the trappings of the genre — in this case, an alien invasion — to examine such pressing social questions as the plight of migrants and just what it is that constitutes personhood. The film's main character is Wikus van de Merwe, a bureaucrat whose fate and his very identity soon become entangled with that of the trapped aliens (dismissively and pejoratively referred to as prawns).  

The mark of a truly great sci-fi film is its ability to take the viewer out of their body and to make them feel as if they’ve entered some strange and unsettling realm. Few films have accomplished this with as much potency as Solaris, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. Within its story about a crew of a spaceship orbiting a sinister planet, there is a deeper engagement with issues such as emotional distress, psychosis, and trauma, particularly once the main character, Kris Kelvin, falls prey to the same crises as the members of the ship he has come to evaluate. The final shot of Solaris is breathtaking, beautiful, and obliterating and, as such, is a testament to Tarkovsky’s achievement. 

The works of the writer Philip K. Dicĸ have proved to be particularly rich for a science fiction film. Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner  remains one of the most fascinating, if often enigmatic, of the director’s works. Taking place in the near future in which Rick Deckard (played by Harrison Ford) investigates synthetic humans known as replicants. Given the extent to which the replicants act and seem to feel just like their human counterparts, Blade Runner confronts the question which has haunted so much of speculative fiction, namely what constitutes personhood and who (or what) deserves to be seen as an individual deserving of respect, humanity, and rights. 

Everything Everywhere All at Once is not only a showpiece for the formidable acting talents of its star, Michelle Yeoh; it is also a film that challenges the boundaries of genre. In the film, Yeoh’s Evelyn finds that she is the only person who can save the multiverse from the destructive entity known as Jobu Tupaki, who is, it turns out, an alternative version of her daughter. The film deftly weaves its intergenerational immigrant saga with reflections on the nature of reality and, grounded by emotionally evocative performances from its cast, makes its engagement with deep philosophical questions feel intimate and moving.  

More than almost any other genre, science fiction is very much interested in the perils and the promise of the future and the technology to be found there. Like all of the best sci-fi, Minority Report  tackles some of the bigger questions regarding the human condition, focusing on the major issue of predestination and whether (and to what extent) human activity, including criminality, can be predicted. Tom Cruise delivers one of his better performances as John Anderton, a policeman framed for a murder using psychics who can predict crimes before they happen. This kind of film leaves the viewer both excited and terrified about what the future holds. 

With Alien, Ridley Scott established himself as a director of the first caliber. He skillfully weaves together body horror and sci-fi musings about human frailty in the face of a being far more powerful than any individual person. It’s a film designed to elicit the audience's shivers of disgust and dismay, to question and query the porous boundary between self and other, between the human body and alien parasite. Furthermore, Alien is also a fascinating exploration of the permeability of sex and gender and how this is very much a source of anxiety, dread, and terror. 

Though most films in the Alien franchise have hewed close to their horror origins, Prometheus, which acts as something of a prequel, is more straightforwardly science fiction. The film explores many pressing topics that have long haunted the sci-fi imagination, including the nature of the other, the origin of humanity itself, and, of course, the roots of the alien creatures themselves. What’s more, its visual beauty — like so many of director Ridley Scott’s other notable films — is a message in itself, reminding the human viewer that there is far more to the cosmos than just Earth and its tiny inhabitants. 

Frank Herbert’s Dune  remains one of the most popular and influential science fiction novels ever written, and it finally gets the big screen treatment it deserves with Denis Villeneuve’s 2021 adaptation. Overwhelming in its sheer epic scale, Dune immerses the viewer in a perilous and beautiful science fiction landscape, focusing in particular on the desert planet Arrakis. In particular, it focuses on the journey of Paul Atreides as he confronts his destiny as a chosen one. The film’s skilled blending of epic scope and personal drama shows just how little agency the human has in the vast scope of time and the universe. 

Based on the Pierre Boulle novel, Planet of the Apes remains a testament to science fiction’s willingness to confront humanity with its greatest fears. Starring Charlton Heston as an astronaut named Taylor, the film follows his misadventures after his spaceship crash lands on a planet where apes are the dominant species and humans are primitive brutes. The film’s final revelation — that he has been on Earth all along — remains as potent and devastating as it was when it was first released. Planet of the Apes is a timely reminder of humanity’s seemingly relentless death drive and ability to drive itself off the ledge into extinction. 

After the failure of Tim Burton’s attempt to reimagine the franchise, Rise of the Planet of the Apes was a welcome return to form. This origin story focuses on Caesar, a chimpanzee who develops advanced intelligence as the result of the testing of an Alzheimer’s drug. Gradually radicalized by humanity’s mistreatment of him and his fellow apes, he leads a rebellion while deadly flu sweeps the planet. The film set new standards in the use of motion capture technology. Its story of Caesar’s growing revolutionary consciousness probes the vexing question of just how much, if anything, truly separates humans from their ape counterparts. 

The films of Lars von Trier are designed to be challenging, and he often works to keep the viewer at something of a distance from his characters, even as he dives into some deep philosophical and emotional waters. In Melancholia,  he focuses on a pair of sisters who have to confront both the ugliness of their lives and the end of the world as a rogue planet is set to collide with Earth. Kirsten Dunst delivers a particularly powerful performance, and the film poses the disturbing question: is melancholy and defeatism the only true answer to assured global oblivion?

Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley both deliver stirring (and sometimes disturbing) performances in Splice, in which they play a pair of scientists who create a chimera of human and animal DNA. Of course, the result of such experiments, Dren, soon proves far more menacing than either had anticipated. Released in 2009, this type of film is uncomfortable precisely because it is so near to what science has actually managed to attain. What’s more, it is also a timely warning about the dangers of humanity’s desire to play God and the darkness into which such dabbling can lead. 

Jake Gyllenhaal delivers a surprisingly nuanced performance in Donnie Darko, where he plays a teen plagued by visions of an impending apocalypse (and a man in a very disturbing-looking rabbit costume). What follows is a profound yet deeply unsettling examination of the nature of time and free will, and there is a potent dread that seems to hang over the entire film. In so effectively inhabiting the main character’s psychology, the film also calls for something deep and richly emotional in the human soul, a hallmark of the best that science fiction can accomplish.  

Time and how humans perceive it — and the limitations imposed by such perception — are at the heart of Arrival,  a directorial triumph from Denis Villeneuve (arguably one of today’s most skilled directors of science fiction films). Amy Adams is in particularly fine form as Louise Banks, who is recruited to try to interface with a race of invading extraterrestrials. It’s a film that questions everything humans think they know about the world, their place, and their way of making sense of their past, present, and future. Heady though it is, it never loses sight of the rich and deep emotional magic at the heart of its story.

Director Alex Garland hit the ground running with his first film, Ex Machina, which focuses on an intelligent robot and the attempts by others to discover whether she can pass the Turing test. This is one of those films which feels even more prescient than when it was released in 2014. Alicia Vikander’s Ava treads the fine line between human and machine.

The loneliness of space — and the existential crisis this can engender in those who encounter it — is a recurring motif in much science fiction, including in Moon, which stars Sam Rockwell as a miner on the moon. In addition to its powerful imagery, which evokes the desolate landscapes of its setting, it also uses its story to explore what it actually means to be human, particularly since its protagonist is a pair of clones being exploited by a sinister corporation. Rockwell, as always, digs deep into the rich complexities of his character. Rockwell’s character, also named Sam, pushes back against the ever-encroaching efforts of corporations to reduce people to the labor they can provide.

As he has done so often in his career, Steven Spielberg asks the big questions in A.I. Artificial Intelligence, a film which has only become more and more relevant as A.I. has become increasingly part of the cultural conversation. Haley Joel Osment stars in the film as David, who is a rare android who can actually love. Though the film does sometimes veer into the realm of the sentimental, it never loses sight of the major questions it is asking through its story, particularly concerning the nature of personhood in an age in which the boundary between human and machine is increasingly blurred, where it exists at all.

Throughout his career, John Carpenter has excelled at creating films that blur the boundary between horror and science fiction. The Thing perfectly exemplifies this tendency, focusing as it does on a group of researchers who confront a sinister creature that can take the shape of any other being. The central creature is itself the stuff of nightmares, and both the characters and the viewer are left to wonder just how much anyone can trust that the people they know are who they say they are. The film's ending, which sees two survivors slowly succumbing to the Antarctic cold, is a bleakly existentialist one, highlighting the futility of life, struggle, and meaning itself.

For all that the future is often a site of promise for speculative fiction, it is also a temporal space filled with uncertainty. In Children of Men, based on the novel of the same name, humanity has lost the ability to reproduce, leading to an almost total collapse of global civilization. When a young woman becomes pregnant, she becomes a catalyst for potential social change. Children of Men is the type of film that makes one really investigate and think deeply about the value of human life, how fragile the world is as it exists currently, and how easily it could be plunged into chaos. 

Joaquin Phoenix delivers one of his usual soulful, if also idiosyncratic, performances in Her,  in which he plays a man who falls in love with Samantha, his virtual assistant (voiced by Scarlett Johansson). A skilled blend of romance and science fiction, the strange romance at its center is at once touching and thought-provoking. It is a film that rewards serious thought, particularly as it asks viewers to consider what constitutes love and connection and whether one can or should develop such strong attachments to a being that lacks a physical body. 

The book Body Snatchers has been adapted into film several times, but the 1978 version is the best in many ways. Its chilling story of an invading race of creatures that take over human hosts adeptly explores issues of paranoia and alienation, aptly capturing the distrust of its era. It's the ending of this version, however, that truly allows it to stand out from the other versions of the story, as the last of the surviving characters sees one of her former friends, only to realize he has become one of the aliens. Her helpless screaming punctuates the film’s overall cynicism regarding human agency and the future.