The best sci-fi movies of 2025 you might have missed
Science fiction in 2025 has stretched well beyond giant franchises and familiar space battles. Some of the year’s most rewarding films have arrived through streaming services, limited cinema runs or unusual release strategies, making them easy to overlook amid louder blockbusters.
For Australian viewers, availability can be especially fragmented. A film may screen briefly in Sydney or Melbourne before appearing on a subscription platform, while regional audiences often discover it through digital rental. These under-the-radar science-fiction films deserve attention for their ideas, atmosphere and willingness to take strange new directions.
Mickey 17 turns identity into a workplace problem
Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17 is the most obvious overlooked gem of the year, even though it carries the profile of a major studio release. Robert Pattinson plays Mickey Barnes, an expendable worker sent to colonise an icy planet. Whenever he dies, a new version of his body is printed with his memories intact.
The premise becomes a sharp satire of corporate power, disposable labour and political vanity. Pattinson gives each incarnation subtle differences, while the film’s grotesque comedy recalls the class tensions of Parasite and Snowpiercer. It is an especially good choice for audiences tired of clean, heroic space adventures.
Companion makes artificial intelligence deeply personal
Drew Hancock’s Companion works as a clever blend of science fiction, psychological thriller and dark comedy. Sophie Thatcher plays Iris, a seemingly affectionate companion whose relationship with Josh, played by Jack Quaid, begins to reveal unsettling questions about programming, consent and emotional dependence.
Its strongest ideas arrive through small domestic details rather than elaborate visual effects. The film understands that the most disturbing AI scenario may not involve a machine taking over a city, but a person treating a synthetic partner as property. Viewers comparing the film’s automated home life with real consumer technology can also browse these smart home devices for a reminder of how quickly convenience becomes embedded in everyday routines.
The Assessment imagines parenthood as state permission
The Assessment offers a colder, more controlled vision of the future. Alicia Vikander and Elizabeth Olsen lead a cast navigating a society where couples must undergo an intense evaluation before being allowed to have a child. The assessment transforms an intimate decision into a test administered by an increasingly intrusive system.
The film’s restrained production design makes its world feel plausible rather than fantastical. Its concerns about citizenship, family and official rituals also benefit from a wider French historical context, particularly the way national ideals can coexist with strict institutional control. For Australian viewers, the premise may resonate with debates around housing pressure, ageing populations and the cost of raising children.
The Gorge combines romance with monster science fiction
Scott Derrickson’s The Gorge is a brisk, visually impressive genre hybrid built around two elite operatives, played by Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy. Stationed in towers on opposite sides of a massive chasm, they are ordered to prevent whatever lives below from escaping.
The film shifts between military suspense, creature feature and romantic drama without losing momentum. Its central mystery is familiar, yet the scale of the gorge gives the story a compelling sense of isolation. As the characters depend on fragile communications technology, the scenario also echoes modern anxieties about lost devices and digital vulnerability; Australia’s lost-phone portal provides a far less dramatic version of that everyday problem.
Ash and The Electric State explore broken realities
Flying Lotus’s Ash is a moody, disorienting science-fiction horror film set on a distant planet. Eiza González plays Riya, who awakens to find her crew dead and her memories unreliable. Aaron Paul’s arrival offers possible answers, although the film keeps uncertainty at the centre of its atmosphere.
Its production design and electronic score make it feel closer to an art-house nightmare than a conventional alien thriller. The story rewards viewers willing to sit with ambiguity, making it a strong pick for fans of Annihilation or Under the Skin rather than action-driven space opera.
Netflix’s The Electric State takes a very different route, using an alternate 1990s America filled with giant robots, retro technology and post-conflict unease. Millie Bobby Brown leads a road journey through a damaged landscape, while Chris Pratt adds a more comic presence. The film is uneven, but its visual world and ideas about automation, nostalgia and technological dependence linger after the credits.
The Shrouds and Predator: Badlands widen the genre
David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds is one of the year’s most distinctive science-fiction dramas. Vincent Cassel plays a widower who develops technology allowing people to observe decomposing bodies in specially designed burial chambers. The concept turns grief into a technological service and asks whether surveillance can ever provide emotional closure.
The film is deliberately austere, with its unsettling ideas unfolding through conversation rather than spectacle. Australian audiences accustomed to choosing between Event Cinemas, Hoyts and streaming releases may find it through a limited run or digital rental, where unusual adult science fiction often has a better chance of finding its audience.
Predator: Badlands takes the franchise in a more unexpected direction by placing the Predator itself closer to the centre of the story. Directed by Dan Trachtenberg, the film explores survival, honour and alien society rather than presenting its central hunter as a simple villain. Its broader appeal comes from giving a familiar monster a new cultural and moral context, rounding out a 2025 science-fiction slate that has been far more inventive than its biggest marketing campaigns suggest.