20 Futuristic Movies To Steam On Hulu In January 2023

Science fiction films included, the Hulu collection has a tendency to be a bit of a mixed bag; movies come and go rather quickly, making compilations like this one all the more useful. The sci-fi movies currently on the market cover a wide range of genres, from classic anime like Akira to critically praised films like Blade Runner to horror movies that mix genres like Come True or the 2022 Predator prequel Prey. There is even a small amount of Godzilla!

A Glitch in the Matrix

Year: 2021
Rodney Ascher is the filmmaker
No rating
108 minutes total
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What if everyone in the world was a simulation? Neo might respond with “Whoa” in response. You could feel less fazed than Keanu Reeves’ sci-fi chosen one if you’ve played a video game in the last 20 years or, say, had survived a quarantine by moving from screen to screen. Using a few zealots and a slew of pop cultural references, director/editor Rodney Ascher’s film A Glitch in the Matrix considers simulation theory—the long-running genre playground and thought experiment—going down the rabbit hole through its history from Greek philosophers to want tobe stoner iconoclasts. The lengthy documentary has moments of engrossment and isn’t particularly interested in persuading us of anything, but it’ll at least start a few odd conversations. Jake Oller

Akira

Year: 1988
Katsuhiro Otomo is the director
Stars: Mami Koyama, Nozomu Sasaki, and Mitsuo Iwata
Grade: R
124 minutes total
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Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira set the standard for all anime films from the early 1990s to the present. Akira, which was adapted from the first few chapters of Otomo’s renowned manga series, set a new standard for cinematic excellence and was the most costly animated movie ever made. It shocked the whole industry. Akira is set in the expansive metropolis of Neo-Tokyo, constructed on the ashes of the past and teetering precariously on the brink of social instability, thirty-one years after World War III was ignited by a catastrophic explosion that devoured the city of Tokyo. The movie tells the experiences of two adolescent motorcycle gang members named Kaneda Shotaro and Tetsuo Shima, whose lives are forever altered one fatal night outside the city. Kaneda and his comrades watch helplessly as Tetsuo is taken away by an undercover military unit after colliding with a strange child during a turf war with another bike gang. From that point forward, Tetsuo starts to exhibit startling new psychic powers as Kaneda urgently tries to mount a rescue. These two boyhood buddies will eventually cross paths and clash in a dramatic series of showdowns centred around a sinister mystery whose very roots lie at the dark heart of the city’s terrible past: a power known only as “Akira.” Akira is regarded as a classic of the cyberpunk genre, much like the film Ghost in the Shell that came after it, but its sources of inspiration go far beyond paying homage to William Gibson’s Neuromancer or Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. Akira is a movie whose roots and aesthetic are deeply ingrained in the history of post-war Japan, from the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and the student uprisings known as “Anpo” to the nation’s economic boom and the then-emerging Bosozoku racing counterculture. Akira is a movie with several meanings, not the least of which is a subliminal fable against nuclear power and a polemic against rapacious capitalism and the arrogance of “progress.” But perhaps most poignantly, it is the tale of witnessing your best buddy transform into a monster at its core. With its visual vision resonating across every major creative form and inspiring a whole generation of artists, filmmakers, and even musicians in its wake, Akira is almost entirely to blame for the early 1990s explosion in anime in the West. Every anime fan must at some point or another debate Akira’s status as the greatest anime movie ever made because of these and a plethora of other factors. Live long, Akira! Tonsaint Egan

Blade Runner

Year: 1982
Ridley Scott is the filmmaker
Starring: Sean Young, Edgar James Olmos, Rutger Hauer, Harrison Ford
Grade: R
117 minutes total
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The world of Ridley Scott’s dismal, wet, and crammed Blade Runner set the standard for the representation of pre-apocalyptic dystopias, much as The Road Warrior set the look and tone for innumerable post-apocalyptic cinema-scapes to follow. In addition, he had a cast of performers, including Harrison Ford, Sean Young, Rutger Hauer, and others, who helped bring this Philip K. Dick-inspired story of a replicant-retiring policeman to grimy, convincing life. A captivating meditation on the hidden loneliness of the human (and possibly inhuman) condition lies beneath the film’s stunning set design and outstanding performances, and it has continued to reverberate (and inspired new works, including Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049) to this day. Mike Burgin

Blade Runner 2049

Year: 2017
Denis Villeneuve is the filmmaker
Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Ana de Armas, Sylvia Hoeks, Robin Wright, Mackenzie Davis, Lennie James, Dave Bautista, and Jared Leto are among the actors.
Grade: R
163 minutes total
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Since Ridley Scott produced one genre masterpiece after another dithering over the question of what constitutes “reality,” the discussion has become a staple of adult-oriented sci-fi fare. However, Blade Runner 2049 excels in how intimately Villeneuve (along with writers Hampton Fancher and Michael Green) attempt to have us experience this world through the unreal eyes of a Replicant, K. (Ryan Gosling). The best case scenario is when empathy—caring about these robots—is the inevitable outcome of the filmmakers’ storytelling, forcing us to consider what “humanity” is.

Therefore, Blade Runner 2049 is unquestionably the most beautiful thing to emerge from a major studio in a while. Roger Deakins leaned into the overwhelming discomfort that permeates the monolithic Los Angeles Ridley Scott constructed, instilling Jordan Cronenweth’s lived-in feeling of a future on the verge of obsolescence. The immensity of the movie is only rivalled by the pervasive sensation of gloom; the lighting alternates ceaselessly, amplifying and obliterating the sense-shattering corporate structures and hyper-styled rooms where humanity retreats from the dead natural environment they have created. There is a vast planet, a solar system, orbiting this miserable metropolis. It is so out of proportion that San Diego is now a literal enormous dump for the trash from New L.A., yet a great deal of it is hidden in shade and opacity and is therefore always out of reach. Villeneuve and Deakins have paid homage to what Scott and Cronenweth accomplished with the original movie—putting a potboiler inside a beautifully imagined alternate reality—while poking fun at its limitations. There is no other way to adequately sum up what they have accomplished than to say that they understand. — Dom Sinacola

Come True

Year: 2021
Anthony Scott Burns, director
Julia Sarah Stone and Landon Liboiron star.
No rating
105 minutes total
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Become Real, In essence, Anthony Scott Burns’ hybrid sci-fi/horror movie dramatises what director Rodney Ascher explores in his 2015 documentary The Nightmare on sleep paralysis. What if your worst worries actually came true? What if you were unable to distinguish between the world of the awake and the world of the asleep? What if it doesn’t matter if the dreams are real or not since they still oppress you and prevent you from getting any rest, reprieve, or sanity? The movie is awful conceptually. In more concrete words, it’s really unnerving and a great example of how to build one type of dread on top of another. Don’t you ever get the feeling that you’re seeing something that you shouldn’t be? Riff (Landon Liboiron), the scruffy Daniel Radcliffe impersonator performing a questionable science experiment while passing it off as a sleep study, is asked Sarah (Julia Sarah Stone). The subsequent unsettling feeling—that an unfathomable terror is watching you—places the movie in close proximity to It Follows, another film about disenchanted youngsters fleeing from evil they don’t understand and can’t combat. In addition to being current, atmospheric, and cutting, it is also unique. Burns creates terror that is so visceral and tangible that it feels like it could at any moment jump off the screen and into our own minds—or, worse, our actual lives. — Andy Crump

Crimes of the Future

Year: 2022
David Cronenberg was the helmer.
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Don McKellar, Viggo Mortensen, Léa Seydoux, and Scott Speedman
Grade: R
107 minutes total
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The most recent work from the master of body horror, whose second film shares the same name, is a return to (de)form after two decades of more subdued drama. Even though it leaves a few errant narrative tools sewed into its scarred cavities, Crimes of the Future thrills by digging into the juicy guts of the art world and stitching it up into a riveting, ambitious sci-fi noir. In the surreal and avant-garde 1970 film Crimes of the Future, imaginative diseases grow in a world without women that has been decimated by viruses. In a shattered society that is now ruled by fetishists and rushing toward a terrible, damnable biological reaction, new organs are made (and occasionally venerated). While Cronenberg’s 2022 sequel on the theme of organic novelty in a disintegrating civilization is by no means a remake, it explores the same niche concerns that have permeated his films from the start. Fortunately, it does so with fresh subtextual success and a much simpler and more approachable text (despite the full-frontal nudity and graphic autopsies). This film contains colour, diegetic sound, and movie stars, in contrast to Cronenberg’s earlier works. It uses cutting-edge effects to complement its perversion while adhering to conventional dramatic pacing. And at least now, the characters converse with one another in that detached, FM-2030 essay style that one could see in a psychology textbook. — while the camera delves further into the fascinating organs. specifically, Saul Tenser’s insides (Viggo Mortensen). He and Caprice (Lea Seydoux) are performance artists who use the growth and destruction of neo-organs as their medium. Saul erects them, Caprice chops them down. This was made possible by our degradation of the planet, which resulted in its oceans being flooded with plastic and its air being polluted. Right now, humanity is literally numb. In clubs and on the street, people use knives to slice each other. Recreational surgical procedures are common. Many people can’t really feel pain till they’re asleep. The metaphor used by Crimes has several sharpened edges, including this unconscious agony. To adapt to this nerve-dead environment, art is changing. Literally, humans are included. That is why radical transhumanist Lang (Scott Speedman), National Organ Registry investigators Wippet (Don McKellar), and Timlin (Kristen Stewart), as well as Saul’s ability to squeeze out unpleasant new lumps of viscera, find him fascinating. The trio aids in integrating Cronenberg’s pessimistic forecasts’ flourishing, subversive multimedia with the dystopian bureaucracy. There will undoubtedly be new cogs in old machines and new rebels in old resistances when we inevitably wreck everything. Crimes of the Future proves to the new kids on the block that an old master can still dissect with the best by being erudite and exploitative, gory yet kind. Cronenberg’s vision of the future recognises that the true death of an artist and the death of civilization as a whole arise from the same sad inability to evolve—even if that innovation is only renovation—and that Crimes of the Future is a representation of a trailblazer finally seeing the horizon. Jake Oller

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Dual

Availability: April 15, 2022
Riley Stearns helms the film
Stars: Beulah Koale, Karen Gillan, and Aaron Paul
Grade: R
94 minutes total
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Everyone in Dual speaks like a robot. It’s possible that they wish to better integrate the world’s new Replacements—clones created from people who are terminally ill or are otherwise nearing the end of their lives. Perhaps this is intentional, as the delivery is meant to be as dry, odd, and endearing as the understated sci-fi itself. Nevertheless, Riley Stearns, the writer and director of his third and (so far) finest film, made a number of eccentric performance choices throughout the course of the film. Dual’s universe is located in a different dimension, either close to the future or the present. Zoom-like video chat is available, although messaging seems more like coding. Although its minivans still use gas, clones can be created from spit in just one hour. Although its viewers still enjoy violent reality TV, some of its programmes occasionally feature battles to the death between participants who learn they are no longer dying and their Replacements. The latter circumstance is the one that Sarah (Karen Gillan) finds herself in. Sarah discovers that she has a year to be ready for the fight of (and for) her life after passing blood, making a clone to take over her life, and hearing impossible good news from a scene-stealingly amusing doctor. The film is shot by Stearns in gloomy, detached observations devoid of colour and intimacy, but with humorous choices or viewpoints (such as a long take when actors do play-acting in slow motion) that give visual intensity to the gloom. We support Sarah’s success as we see this unfold because the training process has given her access to life outside of those confines, not because we want her to return to her previous, depressing life. Although Stearns’ deadpan script and sharp circumstances occasionally offer you enough distance to examine Dual beyond the amusing text in front of you, it can be taken as a redemptive allegory symbolising a life-shattering break-up or other disaster. Even in her often stoic parts, Gillan goes above and beyond a cutesy Black Mirror performance, finding sadness, vulgar humour, and warmth. However, Aaron Paul steals the show as her aggressive combat instructor, receiving the most laugh lines. As he tries to acquaint Sarah with weaponry and desensitise her to violence, Paul’s persona is a riot, somewhere between a live instruction manual and the Monty Python sketch “Self-Defense Against Fresh Fruit.” His performance is just as sincere as that of his sombre scene partner, but when the two are on the same page, Dual transforms into such big-hearted, surreal silliness that I found it difficult to control my laughing even as the movie kept reminding me that death was at stake. Dual is both Stearns’ most successful and outlandish film to date. His work has always had a certain flavour, similar to that of Yorgos Lanthimos, where if you’re not in on the dark joke you can feel excluded from the movie’s universe. However, if you have similar tastes and are willing to put up with a bunch of stiff-backed, overly literal oddballs coping with a clone problem, you’ll find a satisfying and gut-wrenching movie whose lingering ideas are almost as strong as its hilarious, intellectual construction. Jake Oller

Europa Report

Year: 2013
Sebastian Cordero, director
Stars include Michael Nyqvist, Daniel Wu, Karolina Wydra, Sharlto Copley, Christian Camargo, Anamaria Marinca, and
Grade: PG-13
89 minutes total
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Sebastian Cordero’s inventively structured thriller, which has elements of 2001, is riveting not only for its apparent scientific accuracy but also for the passion it captures among a group of people who have traditionally been associated with pocket protectors, taped eyewear, and social discomfort. The six scientists travelling on the Europa One (Kubrick’s ship was dubbed the Discovery One; HAL and his crew were going to the gas giant itself) are real, breathing people with families and concerns and ambitions and feelings. They are also simply smarter than the majority of us and engaged in a mission more important than any of us will ever undertake. In this spoof documentary/fake found-footage mystery, the privately funded space exploration business Europa Ventures releases a documentary on the fate of its first manned expedition to look into the possibility of alien life in our solar system. The stakes are high. The costs may be high, but Europa Report is convinced—and wants to persuade you—that it will probably require some horror to explore such frontiers. —Annlee Elliott

Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack

2001 Shusuke Kaneko, director
Stars include Takashi Nishina, Kaho Minami, Masahiro Kobayashi, Ryudo Uzaki, and Chiharu Niiyama.
No rating
105 minutes total
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absurd title, fantastic film. Mothra, Ghidorah, and Baragon are surprise remade as “Earth Guardians” who must defend Japan, while Godzilla is once more reimagined and redesigned as the villain. This time, Godzilla is at the pinnacle of his power, and his grudge against Japan is far more personal. Even together, Mothra, Baragon, Ghidorah, and the military have little hope of defeating this iteration of the King of the Monsters. He has more possibilities to unleash his destructive potential than ever before, and this is the biggest ass-kicker he has ever been. This edition even includes a solid human tale. There isn’t really much you can propose to make it better. James Vorel

Godzilla vs. Destoroyah

Year: 1995
Takao Okawara is the director.
A list of the cast members includes Takura Tatsumi, Yoko Ishino, Yasufumi Hayashi, Sayaka Osawa, Megumi Odaka, and Masahiro Takashima.
No rating
103 minutes total
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This is unquestionably the best and most emotionally impactful Godzilla film ever created. Godzilla appears to be odd right away—why is he glowing red and appears to be filled with molten lava? It turns out that Godzilla’s heart is a reactor that is physically melting down as a result of being powered by nuclear radiation. In order to defeat the evil Destoroyah, unquestionably one of Godzilla’s most formidable foes, he must be stronger than ever. Also substantially involved is “Godzilla Junior,” who is now a capable monster in his own way and resembles his father after losing his Minilla identity. The only other genuine “death of Godzilla” aside from the original Gojira occurs when Godzilla melts down after defeating Destoroyah and transfers his abilities to Godzilla Junior. You almost want to cry when the series’ black-and-white film plays. James Vorel

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Inception

Christopher Nolan is the filmmaker

Stars include Michael Caine, Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy, Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy, and Tom Berenger.
Grade: PG-13
148 minutes total
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The “it was all a dream” cliche is the most cringe-inducing twist in film history (notable exceptions like The Wizard of Oz aside). With his sci-fi drama Inception, filmmaker Christopher Nolan creates a tense and fast-paced work in which the central conceit serves as the entire narrative and not just a plot element. The plot and visuals build with a measured and constant pace and precision, and Nolan mainstay wally Pfister’s stunning, world-spanning on-location photography suggests a nearly obsession with attention to detail. The movie concludes and unfolds like a well-oiled machine, with each new detail coming together to build a massive whole. The goal of both Nolan’s filmmaking and Inception’s dream exploration is to provide us with a simulation that challenges our perceptions of reality. Inception works wonderfully both that and as a piece of summer popcorn-flick entertainment, leaving behind images and memories that pull at our senses and dare us to wonder if we’ve fully processed everything or if we’re only partially remembering a waking dream.

Andrei Tarkovsky, a director, released a book on his approach to making movies called Sculpting in Time; Christopher Nolan, however, doesn’t sculpt; he deconstructs. He dissects time via filmmaking so that he can reconstruct it as he pleases. Tarkovsky, a spiritual man, expressed poetic transcendence through his films. He wants to cheat time and death for Nolan, an idealist. Even if they represent death, his movies frequently shy away from it. The importance of time and how fleeting and fragile our grasp on existence is are two themes that Nolan is better able to portray. A ticking clock is a common theme in Nolan’s movies; longtime partner Hans Zimmer audibly literalized this motif in the music for Interstellar and Dunkirk. Nolan rebels against temporal reality, and the paradox staircases or mirror-upon-mirror of Inception are his weapon and tool. He creates and designs filmic structures that highlight the urgency of time while simultaneously offering a way out. In Inception, the dream world is divided into layers, and as one delves deeper into the subconscious, their perception of time becomes increasingly stretched out. One could virtually live an endless amount of time in their own bottomless pit of the mind if they could only sink far enough. The closest Nolan has ever come to experiencing an afterlife was in his poem “To Sleep, Perchance to Dream.” —Chad Betz and Michael Saba

John Dies at the End

Year: 2012
Don Coscarelli is the director.
Stars include Paul Giamatti, Doug Jones, Glynn Turman, Clancy Brown, Rob Mayes, and Daniel Roebuck.
Grade: R
Duration: one hour
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Your capacity to endure John Dies at the End’s absurdity will mostly depend on your tolerance for nonlinear plots and characters that, when combined, stretch the boundaries of your imagination. You won’t fully understand the movie until you’ve watched it, which occasionally combines horror, drug culture, and philosophical sci-fi in a crude and ludicrous manner. The “soy sauce” substance used in Central causes users to experience realities that exist simultaneously in all points in time, much like the aliens in Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. Other characters include phantom limbs, the “Shitload” extraterrestrial intelligence, a brave dog, Paul Giamatti, and an evil interdimensional supercomputer. John Dies at the End will make you feel as though you’ve already searched your medical cabinet without the use of any medicines. James Vorel

Little Joe

Year: 2020
Jessica Hausner is the director.
Stars: Kerry Fox, Kit Connor, Ben Whishaw, Emily Beecham, and David Wilmot
No rating
Duration: one hour
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Little Joe by Jessica Hausner may not be as overtly campy as Little Shop of Horrors by Frank Oz, as squirmy as The Ruins by Carter Smith, or as pants-on-head stupid as The Happening by M. Night Shyamalan, but it is in some ways just as bizarre as each. Each of these films tries to make up for the inherent impossibility of its idea. Little Joe is a purposefully paced, equally sly and terrifying piece of Marxist criticism. Botanist Alice (Emily Beecham) has refined her attempts to create a genetically modified plant that would release a perfume that will cause everyone who inhales its bouquet to feel intense happiness. Because taking sex organs away from sentient beings created in a lab is never a bad idea, Alice has denied her creation the ability to reproduce. In Little Joe, this is how it plays out as each of Alice’s coworkers gradually succumbs to the crimson plant’s influence and discreetly dedicates themselves to its growth, acting as friendly, low-key pod people. Depending on where they are seated, viewers will either find Little Joe to be frightening or weird. It is quite evident that Hausner and co-writer Géraldine Bajard did not intend for the picture to be a viscerally terrifying experience. There is an emotional barrier that maintains a distance between the characters and the audience, which in turn, maintains this emotional distance between the characters and the audience. It makes sense that Alice would design a home plant to produce chemical happiness since Little Joe rarely experiences joy. The happier a character is, the more probable it is that they have fallen victim to Little Joe’s alluring aura, and honestly: Is that really so bad? This is a clever little twist on the formula for the botanical horror genre. — Andy Crump

Marjorie Prime

Year: 2017
Michael Almereyda, director
Jon Hamm, Geena Davis, Lois Smith, and Tim Robbins are the stars.
No rating
98 minutes total
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The movie Marjorie Prime is hard to find. Although it could be described as thick, the character of the movie is better described as nimble or even plain tricky. A different director might have felt compelled to present Marjorie Prime as a mystery box, a puzzle to be solved rather than a movie to be enjoyed, and would have sprinkled its story with hints to compete for our attention and entice us to figure out the box’s secrets before its creator reveals themselves. Michawl Almereyda could care less if he outwits his audience or if they outwit him. Whether you like him or not, you can’t ignore how wonderfully he has evolved as a filmmaker over the course of his lengthy career. Therefore, it is appropriate that this film is about ageing and all of the depressing baggage and boredom that comes with it. Almereyda presents a story of generational grief based on Jordan Harrison’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated play of the same name, in which elderly Marjorie (Lois Smith, reprising her role from the original play) is kept company in her contemporary seaside home by a hologram modelled after her deceased husband, Walter (Jon Hamm). Tess (Geena Davis), the daughter of Marjorie, and Jon (Tim Robbins), the son-in-law, refer to Walter, who is coolly referred to as “Walter Prime,” as appearing and sounding just like a man in his 40s thanks to technological wonder. Tess finds the entire situation strange. Although Jon was the one who first bought Walter for Marjorie, he still struggles with the Walter dynamic on his own. From then, Almereyda creates an extremely difficult production that necessitates numerous viewings over many years, all in the hopes of convincing the movie to give up its meaning. How does the proverb go? that the truth is created when a falsehood is repeated enough? Marjorie Prime is constructed of the same things we all tell ourselves to get through grieving and the passing of time. — Andy Crump

Monsters

Year: 2010
Gareth Edwards is the director.
stars Whitney Able and Scott McNairy
Grade: R
94 minutes total
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The movie Monsters introduced the world to director Gareth Edwards, who used the popularity of the low-budget film (which cost less than $500,000) to land the chance to helm blockbusters like Godzilla and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which marked a remarkable rise in notoriety in the film industry. While Monsters, a movie about a journalist charged with escorting a visitor across a hazardous, quarantined region of Central America that has turned into the home of extraterrestrial lifeforms, is almost like a sci-fi romantic drama. Edwards expertly makes the most of the on-location filming and the few FX available to convey how the aliens are significantly altering the planet and how their entrance altered everything for humanity. However, rather than any type of spectacle, you watch this movie for the performances and the quiet banter between its characters. If you go in expecting a terrifying film or an action adventure, you’ll be let down. You must accept it for what it is: A realistic tale about what it would be like for two regular people who are put in a difficult situation and have deep emotional histories. Whatever you do, avoid watching Monsters: Dark Continent, the 2014 sequel that only exists in name. James Vorel

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Possessor

Year: 2020
Brandon Cronenberg is the filmmaker.
Tuppence Middleton, Christopher Abbott, and Andrea Riseborough
Grade: R
104 minutes total
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A well-known viewpoint is reflected in Brandon Cronenberg’s Possessor’s desolate, lonesome, and modest metropolitan environments. As you probably already know or have previously surmised, Brandon is David’s son. Like his father, he is fascinated by corporeal grotesquery, the idea that physical change can mirror mental change, and viruses in general. Though not (yet) with the same incisiveness as his father, Brandon cuts with a clinical precision that only heightens the oneiric oddness running intractably through Possessor.

This unsettling horror/thriller follows Tasya (Andrea Riseborough), an assassin working for a dubious organisation that executes its hits via remote brain link between assassin and unaware host—in this case, Colin—in order to carry out its hits (Christopher Abbott). From mind to mind, Cronenberg plots a terrifying journey that is predictably conveyed via physical paths but is represented by brain connections. It turns into an arterial voyage, where the smaller vessels carry the elements of life and death in a bigger body. The movie has the sensation of a great sci-fi spectacle whittled down to a dark, dingy miniature; its crude effectiveness betrays the depth of Cronenberg’s reflections on the theme of an alien invader corrupting a wayward soul in a toxic civilization. Patrick Mulholland

Prey

Dan Trachtenberg is the director.
Amber Midthunder, Dakota Beavers, Dane DiLiegro, Stormee Kipp, Michelle Thrush, and Julian Black Antelope are the film’s stars.
Grade: R
Duration: one hour
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Prey, a Predator prequel by director Dan Trachtenberg, succeeds by daring to embrace simplicity where earlier sequels did not. The core elements of a Predator movie are rivalry and skull prizes, but the excitement of an unbroken hunt comes first. Author Patrick Aison adapts hunter-gatherer dichotomies in Native American societies to Predator norms with ruthless ease. Prey acknowledges with ominous consideration that nothing is more terrifying than the laws of natural hierarchies on display in their most basic forms. Trachtenberg executes without compassion since he is aware of what Predator fans want. Prey pits a Predator facing any species’ alphas—wolves, bears, people—against a Comanche tribe in the Northern Great Plains of 1719. While his sister Naru (Amber Midthunder) secretly develops her most lethal techniques, Taabe (Dakota Beavers) takes other boys on hunts. Most people ignore her because of her gender, but Taabe doesn’t. When a Predator’s alien technology causes a distraction from a distance—which no one believes—opportunity Naru’s to defeat a lion and win her warrior’s rite of passage is lost (thanks to Taabe). Since no one will pay attention, only Naru can defend her family and fellow tribe members from the unidentified Yautja menace. This will be the warrior-greatest aspiring’s challenge. The best Predator movie since the original is without a doubt Prey. The movie does so many things well, like introducing authentically culturally strong Indigenous representation and paying homage to John McTiernan’s 1987 masterpiece with references to cigars and direct statements that will have fans cheering. The secret ingredient lies in Trachtenberg and Aison’s commitment to simplicity. The action scenes are absurdly gory, the performances are tough as nails, and the energy is streamlined like a high-speed arrow. Prey, a leaner, meaner Predator prequel with all the spine-ripping, one-liner-spouting gladiatorial triumph that fans crave, whether computer-generated or not, eliminates pounds of franchise dead weight by going back to the basics. Matthew Donato

Save Yourselves!

Year: 2020
Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson in the lead roles
Stars include Jo Firestone, John Early, John Paul Reynolds, and Sunita Mani.
Grade: R
93 minutes total
VIEW ON HULU

Save Yourselves! is an unassuming blend of sci-fi alien invasion and low-fi relationship comedy. It has the air of one of those indie films put together over the course of a long weekend by close friends who just enjoy being around each other and wanted a chance to work together. A moderately annoying modern millennial couple from Brooklyn, played by Sunita Mani and John Paul Reynolds, decides to embrace the newest “wellness” craze by “unplugging” for a weekend in the woods. They have no idea that while on their trip to strengthen their relationships, the Earth will be attacked by a cute species of extraterrestrial “poofs,” living balls of Tribble-style fur who eat ethanol and destroy anything organic in their path. Save Yourselves! is a very light science fiction film that mostly gets by on its endearing performances and quirky characters. There’s something about Mani singing to herself as she fills up tiny travel shampoo bottles (“the big soap goes into the little soap!”) that felt immediately and presciently accurate to my own relationships. Save Yourselves! only truly requires that perspective on contemporary relationships for a lighthearted 90 minutes. James Vorel

Sputnik

Year: 2020
Egor Abramenko is the director.
Stars include Anton Vassiliev, Fyodor Bondarchuk, Oksana Akinshina, and Pyotr Fyodorov.
No rating
113 minutes total
VIEW ON HULU

The good news is that at least one of Alien’s offspring has realised that learning from its ancestor makes a lot more sense than carelessly aping Scott three years later, which helps to explain why Egor Abramenko’s Sputnik works so well: It’s Alien-like because it’s impossible to avoid evoking Alien in a movie about governments and companies exploiting innocent bystanders as storage facilities for extraterrestrial monsters in order to either weaponize or profit from them. Abramenko exudes that vitality. The style of Sputnik is roughly equal parts unsettling and unflappable: Instead of flinching, the film makes a sincere, calculated effort to make the audience flinch by pitting expensive monster effects against a low-tech background. Sputnik’s set design makes it seem like a lost artefact from the 1980s until the alien first emerges from the lips of the lying Konstantin. However, the design of the creature, a crawling, semi-diaphanous monstrosity covered with layers of sputum that are both audible and visual, firmly roots the movie in the year 2020. Let it be the next dividing line in pop culture. — Andy Crump

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Year: 2005
Garth Jennings is the director.
Stars include Mos Def, Alan Rickman, Bill Nighy, Sam Rockwell, Martin Freeman, and Zooey Deschanel.
Grade: PG
109 minutes total
VIEW ON HULU

Before 2005, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was the kind of cult, absurdist book that one might have been tempted to declare unfilmable, not only for its peculiar characters and plot but also primarily for the ephemeral challenge of transferring Douglas Adams’ utterly distinct sense of humour to the screen. Although it wasn’t entirely successful, director Garth Jennings gave Hitchhiker’s Guide a really affectionate and colourful shot, which was about the best anyone could have done given the circumstances. Thankfully, Adams himself contributed to the screenplay before his untimely death in 2001. Several scenes precisely recreate famous scenes from the book, like the transformation of a pair of missiles into a dish of petunias and a bewildered sperm whale. To put it simply, while the outcome is still somewhat ambiguous to many viewers, the excellent casting of Martin Freeman and Sam Rockwell in particular (combined with Alan Rickman’s morose voice) ultimately results in a decent adaptation of one of the most cherished comic novels ever. James Vorel

Divesh Solanki

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Being a binge-watcher himself, finding Content to write about comes naturally to Divesh. From Anime to Trending Netflix Series and Celebrity News, he covers every detail and always find the right sources for his research.