20 Best Mystery Sci-fi Movies You Need To Watch
In this article, we are bringing you some of the best mystery sci-fi movies of all time. Some of the movies are coming from deep space, while others are more grounded and take place on Earth.
Some of the movies from the list are well-known big blockbuster movies, while others are smaller, even indie mystery sci-fi movies and hopefully your new watch. So, without further ado, let’s get into the list.
The Prestige (2006)
It all begins in London at the turn of the century, a city that at that time was rapidly changing its appearance. At that time, when magicians are idols and stars of the highest order, two young magicians start their journey to fame. The easy-going, refined Robert Angier (Jackman) is the entertainer of the masses, and the rough-and-tumble purist Alfred Borden (Bale) is a creative genius who lacks the confidence to show off his magical ideas on stage.
The two start out as friends, full of mutual admiration, and partners. But when their biggest trick goes horribly wrong, they become lifelong enemies – each determined to outdo and defeat the other. Trick after trick, play after play, their bitter rivalry grows without bounds. They even use a fantastic new force, electricity, and the scientific genius of Nikola Tesla – while the lives of everyone around them hang in the balance. Full of sudden surprises and revelations, the film explores a world where the limits and darkest corners of faith, trust and possibilities are challenged.
Donnie Darko (2001)
Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) is plagued by visions of a giant anthropomorphic rabbit, Frank, who predicts the end of the world in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds and urges Donnie to dangerous and destructive mischief. One night, Frank walks Donnie out of the house, moments before a Boeing 747 engine crashes out of the sky into his bedroom, prompting Donnie to think that maybe Frank’s prophecies are not fiction.
The next day, Donnie meets a new student at school, Gretchen, and the same night he meets Frank again, who persuades him to cause a flood in the school. Soon, Frank gets Donnie interested in time travel, so Donnie borrows from the physics professor the book “The Philosophy of Time Travel”, by Roberta Sparrow, a weirdo who stands on the road all day checking to see if the mail has arrived.
Arrival (2016)
A total of twelve egg-shaped craft have landed in various locations around the world. The American army soon recruits linguist Louise Banks, whose task, with the help of physicist Ian Donnelly, is to find out whether our visitors have come in peace or whether they pose a threat to the entire humanity.
Ad Astra (2019)
Astronaut Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) goes on a dangerous mission through the unforgiving solar system to discover the truth about his missing father and his fateful expedition that now, 30 years later, threatens the survival of our planet. When a mysterious potentially deadly event hits Earth, astronaut Roy McBride (Pitt) embarks on a dangerous mission across the unforgiving solar system to uncover the truth about his missing father (Tommy Lee Jones) and his fateful expedition that now, 30 years later, threatens the entire universe. Brad Pitt gives a strong performance in this sci-fi mystery space thriller.
The Fountain (2006)
The search for the magic tree Or, more importantly, for its gift, haunts Tom (Hugh Jackman) for a thousand years. Told out of chronological order, The Fountain of Life follows Tom’s soul through three different incarnations, and during each of them, he desperately tries to save the life of his soulmate, Izza (Rachel Weisz) with the help of a tree.
We first meet Tomas, a conquistador in the 16th century who serves Queen Isabel. In order to save Spain from the Inquisition, he is tasked with finding a tree, and heads with fearless soldiers into the mysterious Mayan jungle.
In modern times, Dr. Tom Creo is involved in groundbreaking brain tumor research. He becomes obsessed with it when his wife Izzie also falls ill with a tumor, and she has only a few days to live. He is particularly interested in a tree that gives incredible results in the treatment of this dangerous disease… At least in monkeys.
With precious little time left, Tom must rush his research to show his sympathetic (but pragmatic) superiors and colleagues the riddle of the tree and save his wife.
Light years away, Tommy transports the tree to a mystical region of the galaxy. As he remembers Izzie and his past lives, he travels to a nebula that, once he arrives, promises both of them rebirth and departure into the world.
Coherence (2013)
Eight friends meet again for dinner after a long time. The fact that a comet flies close to Earth on the same evening receives only marginal attention at first. But when the mobile phones suddenly went haywire and the electricity went out in the entire district, the first doubts arose as to whether this was actually just a harmless celestial phenomenon. But an emergency power generator provides.
Source Code (2011)
In an assignment he’s never faced before, veteran soldier Colter Stevens realizes he’s part of a government experiment called “Source Code.” It is the program that allows him to change into the identity of another person in the last 8 minutes of his life. As another attack threatens to cause millions of casualties, Colter will relive the incident to gather as much information and clues as possible, until he discovers who is behind the bombing and prevents the next tragedy.
Minority Report (2002)
In the year 2054, humanity has reached such a level of technological development that it can recreate people’s dreams using computers and monitors that turn them into holograms. After John Anderton (Tom Cruise) loses his son, in order to prevent others from experiencing the same pain, he joins a special police team which catches criminals before they commit murder. Three mediums with special mental abilities are able to see future murders, and what they see, with the help of modern technical aids, can also be seen by the members of Anderton’s unit, who analyze the data, identify the victim and the perpetrator, and try to prevent the murder.
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One day, however, John’s life is turned upside down when the media has a vision of him killing a man he doesn’t even know. On the run from his own colleagues, Anderton must prove his innocence and find out if this murder really is one of the rare cases where one medium sees things differently from the other two – known as a special report.
Cloud Atlas (2012)
Everything in the world is connected: a diary of a trip across the Pacific from 1849; the composer’s letters to his friend; a thriller about a murder in a nuclear plant; a farce about a publisher in a home for the infirm; a wild clone in a futuristic Korea and the story of a tribe that inhabits a post-apocalyptic Hawaii, far in the future.
Interstellar (2014)
Caring father Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a trained pilot and engineer, has devoted himself to a peaceful life as a farmer on the farm where he lives with his children. When a group of scientists discovers a hole in the universe that could allow the human species to travel interstellar, they will turn to him to start a journey from which there may be no return. The stakes are as high as the responsibility that Cooper carries on his back…
An epic story of a heroic interstellar journey beyond the limits of scientific knowledge. The film explores the premise of the existence of a man who was born on Earth, but who is not destined to die on Earth.
Pi (1998)
Max Cohen is an IT genius with a great talent for mathematics through which he views and interprets all of life and events. He lives alone, moreover, he is extremely antisocial and hardly socializes with anyone except his self-made computer, which has unimagined capabilities to analyze and predict movements on the stock exchange.
Max tries to find the numerological principle by which the value of stocks moves and which would allow him to accurately predict the rise or fall of stocks. As it approaches the solution, ie. to a magical number that will reveal many secrets and even religious ones, Max’s headaches and apparitions, from which he normally suffers, are getting stronger and stronger.
12 Monkeys (1995)
Philadelphia, 2035. After an unknown infectious disease ravaged humanity in the mid-nineties, killing five billion people, the rest of the human race survives deep beneath the Earth’s crust. The surface is ravaged and ruled by wild animals. In order to save the remaining people, the authorities send the prisoner James Cole (B. Willis) to the past to isolate a dangerous virus and thus make it possible to create a vaccine in the future. Cole mistakenly ends up in 1990, not 1996 when the pandemic happened, where he is immediately locked up and assigned to Dr. Kathryn Railly’s (M. Stowe) doctors.
Dr. Railly thinks that he has a schizophrenic raving in front of him. Therefore, he places him in a psychiatric hospital, where the distraught James meets the paranoid Jeffrey Goines (B. Pitt), the son of a famous virologist (C. Plummer) and the leader of the so-called The army of the twelve monkeys, which in the future took responsibility for the spread of the virus.
Signs (2002)
Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Reverend Graham Hess (M. Gibson) left the priesthood after the tragic death of his wife Colleen (P. Kalember) in a car accident. Unable to come to terms with the loss, Graham drifted away from God, devoting himself to his children Morgan (R. Culkin) and Bo (A. Breslin), with whom he lives on an isolated farm together with his younger brother Merrill (J. Phoenix).
One day, Graham is startled by strange signs in a nearby field, the origin of which is being investigated by police officer Paski (C. Jones). And while similar phenomena have been recorded around the world, it is increasingly clear that the Earth has been visited by extraterrestrials. Not knowing whether it was a friendly or hostile act, Graham noticed one of the intruders on his property.
Contact (1997)
Ever since she was a child, Eleanor (Jodie Foster) was interested in communicating with beings from outer space. The main person who encouraged her to do this was her father. After his death, Eleanor continues her studies and graduates under the mentorship of Dr. David Drumlin (Tom Skerritt), and is given the opportunity to work as an expert, studying space communication in Puerto Rico.
There she meets Kent (William Fichtner), a blind researcher, who helps her listen to various signals, and Palmer (Matthew McConaughey), a student of Christian theology, who is writing a book about the effects of science on the Third World. Eleanor and Palmer begin a romantic relationship, which ends when Dr. Drumlin decides to shut down the project.
Eleanor is then forced to find the means to continue studying the sounds she hears. After finding a new financier and starting research in New Mexico again, Dr. Drumlin decides to close the program again, but then Eleanor hears a signal from a star and believes that she is on the trail of a great discovery. Despite the disdain of her colleagues, Dr. Eleanor persistently listens to the universe.
One morning she hears a mysterious signal. While the world’s scientists fight to decipher the message, Eleanor must fight to become the only emissary of the Earth on the journey, which has no basis in either practice or theory, and her discovery intrigues the National Security Agency, led by Michael Kitz (James Woods). Looking for support, she turns to her only ally, former lover, religious scholar and important government adviser Palmer. Separated by different beliefs, they unite in their passion for knowledge and truth.
Sphere (1998)
A team of scientists, consisting of psychologist Norman Goodman (Dustin Hoffman), biochemist Beth Halperin (Sharon Stone) and mathematician Harry Adams (Samuel L. Jackson), descends into the murky depths of the ocean to investigate an ancient spacecraft at the bottom of the Pacific.
At the bottom of the sea, they discover her mysterious cargo. They will come into contact with a killer alien and their expedition will turn deadly. Connections to the surface are severed and the death toll rises, and the desperate survivors must now face the shocking truth.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Astronaut David Bowmann (K. Dullea) is invited to the headquarters of space research to take on, together with his group, a new and very unusual task. The order is to figure out the mysterious, mysterious function of the geometrically regular black monolith from the crater of the Moon. Flight control is entrusted to the newest computer model – HAL 9000. However, the computer fails and David remains in space having experienced a complete transformation.
Super 8 (2011)
In 1979, US forces closed down Area 51. All materials from that place were to be transported by train to fully protected facilities. The freight train was destroyed in a spectacular accident under cover of the night just before reaching its destination. The cargo and its fate remained shrouded in secrecy. The film Super 8 follows a group of teenagers and the adventure they embark on after these dramatic events.
Cube (1997)
Six strangers find themselves torn from their everyday lives, trapped in a surreal prison, in a seemingly endless maze of interconnected cubic rooms equipped with deadly explosive traps.
Police officer. Professional thief. Student. Psychologist. Autistic. The selection of people seems random. None of them know why or how they are imprisoned, but it soon becomes clear that each of them has a skill that could help them escape.
There are many unanswered questions: who created this diabolical labyrinth and why? Personal conflicts and power struggles emerge as tensions rise. But one thing is crystal clear: unless they can learn to work together to unravel the secret of this deadly trap, none of them will live.
Inception (2010)
Leonardo DiCaprio is Dom Cobb, a man who possesses the ability to manipulate dreams. Thanks to this fantastic ability, Cobb has become extremely sought after by powerful corporations who use his unique skills to outwit the competition and obtain valuable information. However, his latest assignment is unlike anything he’s done before
Predestination (2014)
We follow the life of a Time Agent (Ethan Hawke) who embarks on a series of intricate journeys through time to stop future killers from committing their crimes. On his last mission, the Agent has to stop a criminal who keeps escaping through time. He must stop it before it causes a devastating attack in which thousands of lives will be lost.
