With new releases ranging from gleeful throwbacks to the golden age of science fiction to dark,
dystopian, modern-day thrillers, it's a great time to be a sci-fi fan. But which films should
you be watching? Here are the best sci-fi movies of 2020 so far.
Extraterrestrial period piece The Vast of Night was made for a fraction of the budget
allocated to some of 2020's best science fiction movies, but you wouldn't necessarily know
it by watching it. The film follows switchboard operator Fay and radio DJ Everett, two young
adults in the 1950s who set out to investigate the source of a strange frequency they're
both picking up during a quiet night at work in a small town.
"We're calling… it's a strange, large object holding over my land like a… like a tornado."
Writer-director Andrew Patterson pulled out every trick in the indie film book to bring
his feature film debut to life, creating some beautiful and highly buzzed about tracking
shots with nothing more than a digital camera gimbal and a go-kart. The whole film was shot
in the small New Mexico town of Whitney, where the locals were more than willing to help.
In fact, Patterson borrowed the aforementioned go-kart from a local teen.
The Vast of Night made its festival debut in 2019 and was quickly snapped up by Amazon,
who released it on Prime in May 2020. In an interview with The Moveable Fest, Patterson
spoke of his first film and said:
"This is something I'm very proud of [...] Everyone that worked on this movie since it debuted
a year ago has been passionate about it and have found creative ways to make it relevant
[...] so this movie has done everything I could’ve imagined. Now I really hope it
can become the kind of thing that people watch for several decades."
The film has been reviewed enthusiastically, with critics calling it a smart, restrained,
and well-made take on the classic alien invasion story, easily reaching Certified Fresh status
on Rotten Tomatoes. If you're in the mood for a short and sweet movie that draws you
in with its atmosphere and craftsmanship instead of just trying to dazzle you with special
effects, The Vast of Night is definitely worth your time.
Parasite star Choi Woo-shik plays one of four desperate young men that pull off a daring
heist in the South Korean sci-fi action thriller Time to Hunt. The film premiered at the Berlin
International Film Festival in February 2020, becoming the first Korean picture to be shown
in the festival's special gala section. The premiere was followed up with a wide release
on Netflix a few months later.
Set in a future version of South Korea crippled by a financial crash, director Yoon Sung-hyun's
dystopian thriller follows the four protagonists as they try to disappear after sticking up
the patrons of an illegal gambling den. Things rapidly descend into violence when a merciless
assassin comes after the boys, hell-bent on retrieving the cash and CCTV hard drives they
stole.
Speaking to The Korea Times, Yoon revealed that the film's grim setting was actually
inspired by a trip to the Americas, saying:
"I remember being shocked by the hyperinflation in South America when buying a soft drink
at a store. I also got a glimpse of slums in the U.S., which allowed me to portray streets
full of graffiti in the film."
Despite all those real-life influences, the final product is distinctly South Korean,
however. Time to Hunt is sleek and well shot from start to finish, and the stylized action
never lets up, something the Hollywood trades appreciated. Variety said in its review of
the film:
"Once [the protagonist's] plan goes into action, it hardly ever decelerates."
And The Hollywood Reporter called Time to Hunt:
"A tour-de-force exercise in non-stop tension."
Irish director Lorcan Finnegan's sophomore feature film Vivarium plays on what research
suggests is a very real fear for millennial couples — settling down and having kids.
When Tom and his girlfriend Gemma decide to buy their first home, they visit a real estate
agent who tells them about Yonder, a new suburban development. The couple decides that living
among rows of identical houses isn't for them long before the creepy agent vanishes, but
when they try to leave, they discover that every road leads back to the house he showed
them.
"Number nine again. Did we just do some kind of loop?"
Things go from weird to weirder when a mysterious baby turns up on their doorstep along with
a note that says the couple won't be "released" from the bizarre home until after they've
raised the child.
Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots were both roundly praised for their performances in
the film, which debuted at Cannes and was released in March 2020. At the time, vast
swathes of people were isolating in their homes due the COVID-19 pandemic, and Finnegan
has admitted that there are definitely some, quote, "weird parallels" with his movie. He
told Vulture:
"Sometimes I think films are a bit like... they pop up as if there's a network between
all of humanity, like there's a subconscious thread that's connecting everything and films
are just the manifestation of these sort of anxieties that everybody has."
The critics couldn't help but take the timing of the release into account in their reviews,
with Vague Visages calling Vivarium, quote, "the ideal isolation horror."
A 2020 sci-fi film that took on new meaning during the pandemic, Neasa Hardiman's critically
acclaimed feature-length debut Sea Fever follows a marine biology student who buys her way
onto a fishing trawler so she can conduct research into faunal behavioral patterns.
Hermione Corfield's Siobhán doesn't fit in with the vessel's hardy crew, led by Dougray
Scott's Captain Gerard, but they turn to the knowledgeable redhead when mysterious holes
appear in the boat's hull. As she's the only one with diving gear, Siobhán goes below
to check the cause and discovers a gigantic organism with tendril-like appendages, though
it's the parasites the squid-like creature releases into the water supply that pose the
real threat.
"Straight through the steel."
Sea Fever is, essentially, Alien on the open water. Hardiman pays homage to that film's
director, Ridley Scott, with some squirm-inducing body horror, and she creates the same kind
of claustrophobic tension that made Alien so enthralling. If you've got a thing about
eyeballs, maybe swerve this one.
The director told Quiet Earth that their boat was positioned, quote, "days away from shore"
during the shoot, creating a genuine sense of isolation among the cast. She explained:
"It's really disturbing being on the boat because it leads to a kind of collective agoraphobia
[...] There you are on the top of one of the least understood biospheres on planet Earth.
We know more about the surface of the moon than we do about the deep ocean."
Spanish sci-fi thriller The Platform takes place inside a so-called Vertical Self-Management
Center, a tower-like structure that houses hundreds of inmates. Every day, a platform
filled with enough food and drink for everyone descends from the top level, though many routinely
go hungry. See, the residents are allowed to consume as much as they like, meaning those
near the bottom get scraps if they're lucky. Debuting director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia told
The Guardian:
"It's an allegory about the distribution of wealth, which is a universal debate and a
debate that's been going on for as long as people have been around [...] The point of
The Platform is that it isn't about a war between those above and those below — we
all have someone above us and someone below us."
The film follows Goreng, who's duped into volunteering for a six-month stint in the
tower in exchange for a diploma. Being periodically moved from level to level, he sees the conditions
on the lower levels with his own eyes and decides to take matters into his own hands.
When Goreng is assigned to level six, he convinces his cellmate Baharat to ride the platform
down with him, distributing rationed portions of food as they go.
The Platform's ambiguous ending didn't turn off the critics, who overwhelmingly enjoyed
it. The New York Times raved:
"A gnarly mash-up of midnight movie and social commentary [with] genre jolts and broad messaging
in equal measure."
Back in 2017, The Mummy was supposed to be the first film in a new cinematic universe
based on the Universal Classic Monsters films of the mid-1920s through the 1950s, but the
so-called Dark Universe was called off when the Tom Cruise-led blockbuster flopped at
the box office. The original plan was to have Johnny Depp star in the second Dark Universe
film, though he was dropped from The Invisible Man when the studio decided to take a new
approach.
"Not sure I deserved that."
Saw's Leigh Whannell was brought in to direct, and he was given the freedom to make a film
that didn't have to include any links to future franchise installments. The result was a thrilling
standalone sci-fi horror flick that blew the critics away.
Whannell's remake stars Elisabeth Moss as Cecilia Kass, a woman who believes she's being
stalked by her controlling and violent ex, despite the fact that he killed himself after
she escaped from him.
"This is what he does. This is what he used to do when we were together. He wants you
to think that I did it, this is what he does."
Cecilia's paranoia leads her back to the huge house that she shared with loaded optics engineer
Adrian Griffin, where her mounting suspicions are confirmed when she discovers one of Adrian's
invisibility suits.
Before Cecilia can prove her story, however, her invisible tormentor gets incredibly violent,
forcing her to fight for her life. Moss delivers a typically committed performance, and she
helped out off-camera, too. Whannell told Gizmodo:
"Elisabeth Moss was my greatest asset and greatest ally [...] The amount of collaboration
that we had, she really became a co-writer in a sense."
Sonic the Hedgehog looked set to join the long list of terrible video game adaptations
when the first trailer dropped and fans reacted to the titular character's design with a mixture
of disappointment and horror. Sonic looked far too realistic, making him appear more
creepy than cheeky. Twitter took aim at the VFX team's bizarre choices, with Sonic's human-like
teeth being the biggest offender. But in an unexpected move that ultimately paid off,
Paramount agreed to a complete redesign of the eponymous blue hedgehog.
The end result was a charming and entertaining family film that imagines Sonic as an alien
who comes to Earth to hide from those seeking to exploit his super speed. It didn't do much
for the average critic, but it was a real hit among Sonic fans.
Director Jeff Fowler's movie wound up with a lukewarm rating on the Tomatometer, but
audience reviewers enjoyed watching Sonic and James Marsden's sheriff Tom Wachowski
take on Jim Carrey, in his element as the iconic Dr. Robotnik. One critic who did show
some love for the film was The Guardian's Keith Stuart, who argued that video game movies
aren't necessarily interested in critical acclaim, saying:
"[They] don't really function in the same way as other big commercial tie-ins. They
are multilayered in a semiotic rather than emotional or thematic sense; they are fan
service, but in a good way."
Nicolas Cage got back to his gonzo best in Color Out of Space, a superbly executed, pulp-heavy
sci-fi based on the H.P. Lovecraft short story "The Colour Out of Space." It was the author's
personal favorite, and it also means a lot to director Richard Stanley, whose mother
was a huge Lovecraft fan.
"I read it when I was 13 years old. My mum introduced me to Lovecraft — my mother's
favorite author."
So when the chance to direct a big screen adaptation came, Stanley decided to get back
in the game, and his return was a critical success.
Color Out of Space follows farmer Nathan Gardner and his family, who are thrown into a purple-tinged
nightmare after a meteorite that's harboring an extraterrestrial organism lands on their
property. A strange alien color spreads across their farmland, causing the animals to mutate
and turning the plants sentient. It's a mind-bending experience that only Stanley could've pulled
off, according to Cage, who told Slash Film:
"[O]f all the filmmakers I could imagine doing this and getting close to creating an alien
color, it would be Richard."
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