The 8 best sci-fi movies on Amazon Prime Video

From a vision made out of mashed potatoes to mysterious UFOs, Amazon Prime Video is ready to satisfy your sci-fi cravings.

Sci-fi can do it all: Whether you're looking for a piece of explosion-heavy escapism, an existential meditation on what it means to be human, or a genre-bending head-scratcher, there's a little something for everyone. But let's face it...there are plenty of other-worldly duds out there, too, and when it comes to streaming libraries, it can be difficult to find the diamonds in the rough. That's why EW sifted through Amazon Prime Video to bring you its very best sci-fi offerings, from classics like The War of the Worlds to recent favorites like Asteroid City.

Here are the best sci-fi movies on Amazon Prime Video, as of September 2024.

Asteroid City (2023)

Wes Anderson doubles down on style, artifice, and metatextual layers with this entertaining (yet profound) confection. The film simultaneously tracks a play about a group of young stargazers and their parents who converge for a convention in the desert town of Asteroid City, as well as the writing of that play by a famed playwright. Within the reality of the play, a UFO descends upon the junior stargazers, causing fascination (and panic) within the community.

While science fiction is more of a side dish than the whole meal here, Anderson's thematic ambitions with Asteroid City also relate quite well to storytelling within the genre. As EW's critic writes of Anderson's thesis, "To find the truth in art, you have to give yourself over to the artifice of the dream." —Kevin Jacobsen

Where to watch Asteroid City: Amazon Prime Video

EW grade: B (read the review)

Director: Wes Anderson

Cast: Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Liev Schreiber

Related: Here's what you need to know about Asteroid City, courtesy of Wes Anderson

Coherence (2013)

When old friends reunite for a dinner party in a movie, you know something is about to go terribly awry. In Coherence, that "something" is the arrival of a close-passing comet — and the discovery of a house full of doppelg?ngers having an identical dinner party down the street. The plot is full of quantum-related twists and turns, but the film is grounded by the talented cast, which includes Buffy's Nicholas Brendon in a fun self-referential role as a former TV star.

The production is just as quirky as the premise: Director James Ward Byrkit wanted to make a low-budget film that was so stripped down, it didn't even have a script. Instead, he invited a bunch of actor friends to his living room, gave them basic character motivations, and let them improvise through the entire thing. The result, while occasionally messy, is thoroughly original. —Janey Tracey

Where to watch Coherence: Amazon Prime Video

EW grade: B+ (read the review)

Director: James Ward Byrkit

Cast: Emily Foxler, Maury Sterling, Nicholas Brendon, Lorene Scafaria

Related: The 28 best sci-fi shows on Amazon Prime Video right now

The Dead Zone (1983)

What exactly would you do if you suddenly had the power of psychic visions? In this Stephen King adaptation, schoolteacher Johnny Smith (Christopher Walken) must face such deliberation when he awakens from a coma with the ability to know a person's past and future just by touching them. After foreseeing such harrowing events as a kid drowning and a man who would become president ordering a nuclear strike on the USSR, Johnny comes to realize that he may also have the power to alter the future.

The Dead Zone presents a world not unlike our own, where every action has consequences, in a gripping film enhanced by its sci-fi premise rather than being weighed down by it. —K.J. 

Where to watch The Dead Zone: Amazon Prime Video

Director: David Cronenberg

Cast: Christopher Walken, Brooke Adams, Tom Skerritt, Herbert Lom, Anthony Zerbe, Colleen Dewhurst, Martin Sheen

Related: The 10 essential David Cronenberg films

I Think We're Alone Now (2018)

In this low-budget indie drama, Peter Dinklage stars as a man who assumes he's alone in his small town after a sudden apocalyptic event in which a large portion of the population suddenly disappears. He eventually meets a fellow survivor (Elle Fanning), with whom he shares a reluctant bond, and later learns that they're not, in fact, alone.

Directed and shot by Reed Morano (an Emmy winner for directing the pilot of The Handmaid's Tale), I Think We're Alone Now focuses on the human response to cataclysmic events more so than the event itself. "I like the postapocalyptic genre, but it's been done a million times, and I was looking for something a little bit weird, or just a little bit different tonally," Morano told EW in 2018. "I saw this opportunity to tell a postapocalyptic story that breaks a lot of the conventions of storytelling in that genre." —K.J.

Where to watch I Think We're Alone Now: Amazon Prime Video

Director: Reed Morano

Cast: Peter Dinklage, Elle Fanning, Paul Giamatti, Charlotte Gainsbourg

Related: Reed Morano first woman to win for directing a drama at Emmys in 22 years

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

While the '70s adaptation starring Donald Sutherland may be more well-known now, this '50s classic still hits today. The sci-fi thriller, based on Jack Finney's novel The Body Snatchers, tells of a California town in which alien pods capable of replicating humans have suddenly popped up, sucking all life out of their earthling subjects and effectively replacing them. Dr. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) tries to find a way to stop the incoming invasion in its tracks, but finds this is far easier said than done. "Watching McCarthy turn from a rational man of science into a raving lunatic while those around him become husks of their former selves is a scary, over-the-top treat," writes EW's critic. "The power of the film is primal." —K.J.

Where to watch Invasion of the Body Snatchers: Amazon Prime Video

EW grade: A+ (read the review)

Director: Don Siegel

Cast: Kevin McCarthy, Dana Wynter, Larry Gates, King Donovan, Carolyn Jones, Jean Willes, Ralph Dumke

Related: The 40 best alien movies of all time

Looper (2012)

This futuristic sci-fi thriller from writer-director Rian Johnson is a mind-bender in the best of ways. Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is an assassin working for an innovative crime syndicate that uses time travel to avoid detection by sending their targets into the past (Joe's present) to be killed. When killers such as Joe outlive their usefulness, the company sends their future selves back into the present to be killed by their younger selves. Such is the predicament for Joe, when his older self (Bruce Willis) tries to avoid this fate. It's a heady concept, but Johnson develops the film's world and its unique set of rules in such a detailed, entertaining fashion that you won't be left frustrated. —K.J.

Where to watch Looper: Amazon Prime Video

EW grade: B+ (read the review)

Director: Rian Johnson

Cast: Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt, Paul Dano, Noah Segan, Piper Perabo, Jeff Daniels

Related: The 23 best time travel movies of all time

The Vast of Night (2020)

This underrated sci-fi indie centers on a pair of teenage friends living in 1950s New Mexico who investigate a cryptic audio signal that suddenly interrupts a radio program. Putting the pieces together, they unravel a conspiracy that may suggest proof of alien life. With a budget of just $700,000, director Andrew Patterson pulls off a number of stunning shots, transporting us to a specific time and place. As EW wrote following the film's success, "Just the setting and veneer of the film — it's framed as an episode of a Twilight Zone-esque anthology TV series — should be enough for you to guess more or less where it's headed." —K.J.

Where to watch The Vast of Night: Amazon Prime Video

Director: Andrew Patterson

Cast: Sierra McCormick, Jake Horowitz

Related: Best of 2020 (Behind the Scenes): How The Vast of Night pulled off its stunning tracking shot

The War of the Worlds (1953)

H.G. Wells' 1898 novel The War of the Worlds was one of the first-ever alien invasion tales, and Orson Welles' 1938 CBS radio adaptation famously caused a panic when listeners believed a Martian attack was actually taking place. But when it comes to films based on Wells' work, the 1953 version still reigns supreme. The story, which follows an atomic scientist instead of a 19th-century writer, is updated to tap into Cold War anxieties, but in the end, just as in the novel, the invasion is presented as a natural disaster largely outside of human control.

Although the special effects are no longer as groundbreaking as they were in the '50s, they're still incredibly entertaining, especially the manta ray-shaped alien war machines. —J.T.

Where to watch The War of the Worlds: Amazon Prime Video

Director: Byron Haskin

Cast: Gene Barry, Ann Robinson

Related: Listen to Orson Welles' 'The War of the Worlds' radio broadcast

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.