It’s the 21st century, and our lives are busy. We have to worry about work, connect with family and friends, tend to our health, follow the news, and somehow squeeze in some entertainment to make sure we stay sane. Who has time to sit down for the 3-hour-plus Avatar movies (which aren’t that great anyway)? Where are the sci-fi movies that keep our busy schedules in mind?
These seven sci-fi movies are worth your time, even if you don’t have much to spare.
Source Code (2011): 89 minutes
Action-packed, star-studded, and done before bedtime
Let’s start with something pretty straightforward: in Source Code, Jake Gyllenhaal plays a soldier (kind of, it’s complicated) who wakes up on a train in the body of another man. That train soon blows up, only for him to find himself on it again. He eventually learns that he’s in a simulation (again, kind of) of a train explosion that actually happened, and his mission is to find and identify the bomber before he strikes again. There are other twists beyond that, but to say anything more would ruin the surprise.
Source Code is an approachable sci-fi flick with a big star in Jake Gyllenhaal, plenty of action, and a well-paced script that keeps you hooked the whole way through. You’ll have fun watching this one, even if it doesn’t blow your mind.
- Release Date
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April 1, 2011
- Runtime
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93 Minutes
- Director
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Duncan Jones
Primer (2004)
Set brains to scrambled
Now, this one will blow your mind. Primer is a cult classic made for only $7,000 with an irresistible premise: a pair of engineers who tinker around in a garage in their spare time accidentally create what they think might be a time machine. They test it by going back in time by just a few hours, and are very careful to sequester themselves beforehand so they don’t run into themselves and create a paradox. Over the course of a few days, they notice their bodies starting to respond badly to the process, and pretty soon, things start spinning out of control.
Primer doesn’t have a big budget, so it has to hold our attention in other ways. The dialogue is scientifically literate to the point where it’ll probably repel some people and fascinate others. The moral, philosophical, and even financial implications of what the engineers have created are explored in detail, resulting in a movie that punches well above its weight. Add it to the list of sci-fi movies from the 2000s that have aged really well.
- Release Date
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October 8, 2004
- Runtime
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77 minutes
- Director
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Shane Carruth
- Writers
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Shane Carruth
Safety Not Guaranteed (2012): 85 minutes
Time travel, but make it funny
There’s just something about time travel that’s always fascinated sci-fi fans. While Primer takes the subject very seriously, Safety Not Guaranteed has a much looser feel.
A few people working for a magazine, one of them played by Aubrey Plaza, set out to investigate a classified ad placed by a man looking for someone to go back in time with him, “safety not guaranteed.” They’re looking for a fun angle on the story, assuming that the man, Kenneth (Mark Duplass), is a crank. And the movie does milk the premise for some low-key laughs. But what if he’s more serious than he looks?
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Safety Not Guaranteed and Primer would make an interesting double feature you could watch in the time it would take you to watch one long normal movie.
- Release Date
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June 15, 2012
- Runtime
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86 Minutes
- Director
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Colin Trevorrow
- Writers
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Derek Connolly
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956): 80 minutes
Back to the classics
Any movie you’ve ever seen about aliens or monsters taking over a person’s body owes something to this classic. Seventy years on, it’s probably not a spoiler to say that Invasion of the Body Snatchers is about an extraterrestrial invasion where normal human beings are replaced with “pod people.” The original movie reflected Cold War anxieties that people in the United States had about the Soviet Union, but the metaphor is flexible enough to be read in lots of different ways, which is why this movie has endured, not to mention gotten remade at least three times.
The chilling original is still the best, though, and the shortest.
- Release Date
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February 5, 1956
- Runtime
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80 Minutes
- Director
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Don Siegel
- Writers
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Daniel Mainwaring, Jack Finney, Richard Collins
Ghost in the Shell (1995): 85 minutes
Back to the modern classics
Ghost in the Shell is a bit newer, but still a hugely influential classic. In 1995, this movie was saying things about AI, trans-humanism, and the limitless possibilities of the internet that most people hadn’t even begun to consider. And if all that high-minded stuff doesn’t interest you, it’s about a cyborg police officer who at one point fights a giant robot tank. Ghost in the Shell delivers on all fronts.
With its slick look, Ghost in the Shell was also very influential on the aesthetics of the cyberpunk genre. Like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, this movie has been remade and iterated on several times; the TV show Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is worth watching, the 2017 live-action remake with Scarlett Johansson is less so. Unsurprisingly, the original remains the best.
- Release Date
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December 8, 1995
- Runtime
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83 Minutes
- Director
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Mizuho Nishikubo, Mamoru Oshii
The Iron Giant (1999): 87 minutes
No, you’ve got something in YOUR eye
The Iron Giant may not be the deepest sci-fi movie ever made, but it could be the most emotionally devastating. It’s about a giant alien robot that crash-lands near a small Maine town in the 1950s. It connects with a local boy named Hogarth, who then defends his new best friend when the U.S. government comes calling, eager to take the Iron Giant apart and study it. This movie is tightly written and deeply felt, with characters you’ll quickly fall in love with. It’s a short sci-fi movie the whole family can enjoy!
Starring Vin Diesel as the Iron Giant, for some reason.
- Release Date
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August 6, 1999
- Runtime
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86 minutes
- Director
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Brad Bird
Cloverfield (2008): 85 minutes
The little kaiju blockbuster that could
Cloverfield gives us a worm’s eye view of a Godzilla movie; instead of hanging out with the top military minds trying to fight the rampaging monster, we spend time with the people on the ground who are just trying to survive. It’s a thrilling experiment in sci-fi and horror that paid huge dividends; Cloverfield was made for a relatively paltry sum of $25 million, but ended up being so successful that it spawned two sequels, the first of which is even good!
- Release Date
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January 15, 2008
- Runtime
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85 minutes
- Director
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Matt Reeves
Short but sweet
There is absolutely no reason that a sci-fi film—or any film, really—needs to be long to be good. These seven prove that great things can come in small packages.
And if you enjoyed any or all of these movies, you can always move on up to watching longer films, or even dive into some of the many fantastic sci-fi TV shows out there.
