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."
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more Looper videos about your favorite
movies and TV shows are coming soon. Subscribe
to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so
you don't miss a single one.
