Image credit: Elevation Pictures, Well Go USA Entertainment, Legion-Media, A24, Netflix, OTL Releasing, BH Tilt

Mutant piglets, time loops, and, of course, artificial intelligence.

Our ideas about the future, technology, and space are changing with us. The last two decades have seen a boom in sci-fi movies — big, auteur, ambitious, and even just overlooked.

You can find many of them on Netflix, and to help you navigate the sea of sci-fi projects, we selected only those with high Rotten Tomatoes scores.

1. Upgrade, 2018

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 88%

In the near future, various technologies are involved in all aspects of human life. But in this technological world, Grey is one of the few people who likes to work with his hands. He restores and repairs old cars.

One day, while returning from a client, Grey and his wife are involved in an accident and then fall into the hands of a gang of thugs, leaving the woman dead and Grey paralyzed from the neck down. A wealthy client offers the man an experimental STEM implant that can completely restore his mobility.

2. They Cloned Tyrone, 2023

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 95%

A sex worker, a pimp, and a drug dealer walk into a morgue, see themselves on the slabs, and uncover a government conspiracy. That’s about the best way to describe Juel Taylor’s sci-fi satire about human cloning and secret government experiments.

Dealer Tyrone Fontaine finds himself in a time loop after a shootout with his competitors. Pimp Charles Slick and his protégé Yo-Yo, the only witnesses to Tyrone’s death and mysterious resurrection, try to help him get out of this predicament.

3. Freaks, 2018

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 88%

At first glance, the main characters appear to be an ordinary father and daughter living a reclusive life in Los Angeles. But in fact, the girl has powerful abilities and is able to lift a heavy car into the air with a single glance, and her father always keeps a gun at the ready.

Every day he locks her in the house and does not allow her to do almost anything. The girl’s only fun is to peek behind the curtains at the ice cream truck. And one day, unable to resist, she breaks the ban and goes outside.

4. Looper, 2012

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%

In the near future, when time travel has become possible, a corporation eliminates unwanted people by sending them into the past in plastic bags. The recipient’s job is to put a bullet in the victim’s head and erase the unfortunate person from history. Everything goes smoothly until the protagonist Joe unpacks another package and finds himself from the future.

An intricate detective story, which is not only connected to Joe’s new assignment, but also to his own past, makes Looper a movie that will keep you glued to the screen until the finale.

5. Repo Man, 1984

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 98%

The plot centers on a young rebel, Otto, who gets a job as a repo man, repossessing cars whose owners have stopped paying their loans. Along with his partner, they are tasked with returning a car with evidence of alien life in the trunk.

Entertainment Weekly ranked it #7 on their list of 50 cult films, between The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Scarface. 25 years later, director Alex Cox made a sequel titled Repo Chick, even though he had no right to do so (he does not own the rights to the first movie), but it turned out to be a pale shadow of the original.

6. Everything Everywhere All at Once, 2022

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%

Everything Everywhere All at Once is an A24 smash hit that took home the top Oscar prizes. The surreal comedy about the adventures of a laundry worker was the studio’s biggest box office hit.

Everything Everywhere All at Once is a funny, crazy and sentimental movie at the same time. The directors successfully combined several genres: a unique movie about parallel universes, a thrilling action, a family drama and a romantic story. The synthesis of everything at once made the movie a resounding success, because everyone can find something for themselves in it.

7. Code 8, 2019

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 81%

Four percent of the population has superpowers. These special people live below the poverty line and will take any job. But not all of them are willing to work for pennies; some resort to criminal methods to make money using their superpowers. Earning money honestly, Connor can barely make ends meet, which forces him to take a criminal path.

In order to make the movie happen, its authors released a short film of the same name in 2016, and then launched a fundraising campaign on a crowdfunding platform. Counting on the amount of $200 thousand, the creators managed to raise $2.4 million.

8. I Am Mother, 2019

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 89%

A global cataclysm destroys all of humanity. But in a bunker hidden underground, an emergency program is automatically activated, and a humanoid robot named “Mother” creates life from a human embryo and begins to care for the last girl on the planet. She has never seen other people or the surface of the Earth, but one day a strange woman appears on the threshold of the bunker asking for help.

This technologically impeccable sci-fi thriller brings the topic of motherhood and parental duty to the genre of confrontation with artificial intelligence.

9. Okja, 2017

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 86%

For ten carefree years, little Mija has watched and cared for her pet Okja, a giant mutant piglet who lives in her home in the mountains of South Korea. But everything changes when the powerful Mirando Corporation kidnaps Okja and transports her to New York, where the head of the company, Lucy Mirando, has big plans for Mija’s best friend.

Determined to save the animal at all costs, Mija sets out on her mission. But the situation soon becomes complicated, as different groups of people stand in the girl’s way — capitalists, protesters and consumers, all trying to get their hands on Okja, while Mija just wants to bring her friend home.