The Most Underrated Sci-Fi Movies Of The 2010s

While many of the decade's most prominent sci-fi offerings feature massive ensemble casts and emphasize pyrotechnic spectacle, Alex Garland's Ex Machina goes in the opposite direction. The entire film is basically three characters - plus one live-in assistant - and one location. There's very little "action" to speak of, as Garland is more interested in philosophical ruminations about the nature of intelligent life - and its evolution, be it through natural or technologically advanced means of creation - than in more traditional good-vs-evil resolution.

The film revolves around a brilliant young programmer who gets the chance to spend time at the secluded compound of a genius tech tycoon (played by Oscar Isaac) for a mysterious purpose. As it turns out, the job is to perform a more elaborate equivalent of a Turing test. Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) is tasked with having one-on-one sessions with an advanced android, Ava (Alicia Vikander) - his boss's prized creation - to help the founder smooth out any flaws that make her seem less than fully human. Initially, the programmer is quick to find mistakes, but after a while, he's not so sure.

The film is ostensibly a bunch of conversations about what makes us human - conversations that slowly turn darker and darker, with stranger and more sinister implications.

In 2019, South Korean director Bong Joon-ho became the toast of the cinema world thanks to his film Parasite, but it's his 2013 English-language debut Snowpiercer - an extended allegory on class and class warfare - that probably should have marked his major crossover to American audiences.

After a global climate catastrophe, what's left of humankind is huddled together on an endlessly running train that remains the only thing standing between humanity and the frozen world outside. While the rich people live in the front of the train in relative luxury, the poor are relegated to the cars in the back of the train, where they're forced to eat bugs and - sometimes - each other. Led, among others, by a man named Curtis (Chris Evans), a revolt is afoot among the lower classes. Collectively, they've decided they've eaten one bug too many.

Their revolution comes at the expense of many, many limbs, and we learn there's more to the train and its passengers than meets the eye. Snowpiercer has some sickening carnage, but it's all in the service of a well-made critique of socioeconomic inequality. And there's an awesome hatchet fight worth the price of admission alone.

Sure, it may seem unfair to claim any movie from the Marvel Cinematic Universe is "underrated" - and surely none of them have struggled to find a sizable audience. But when Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 was released, many critics and fans insisted it didn't replicate the magic of the original, and in the pantheon of the greatest Marvel films, it's often ignored. But it shouldn't be.

With Vol. 2, writer/director James Gunn handles a large-scale ensemble cast as impressively as any major film in recent memory. Every single Guardian has a signifcant and rewarding character arc, from Rocket learning to be kinder, to Quill reconciling his relationship to his father, to Gamora and Nebula learning to become sisters again. In many ways, it does a better job handling a large cast of characters than even Infinity War or Endgame. It's remarkable that Gunn could pull it all off, continuing to excel as a comic filmmaker while delivering one of the MCU's finest villains. Despite the sequel frequently being treated as an inferior follow-up, Gunn's efforts are worthy of renewed affection.

There is perhaps no weirder or more inexplicable plot in recent sci-fi memory than that of Predestination, based on the short story All You Zombies by famed sci-fi author Robert Heinlein. The setup is simple enough, as sci-fi conceits go: A "temporal agent" (played by Ethan Hawke) travels through time to attempt to disarm an incendiary device back in 1975. He fails, but survives the detonation - though he still requires facial reconstructive surgery. What follows is a series of wild coincidences (or are they?) that seem too bizarre to be possible, relayed in part by a mysterious stranger at a bar who has quite a surprising personal tale to tell.

The film plays with the very notion of time as a linear construct and what things are or aren't predetermined. In the end, it seems to suggest that all of time is coexisting equally - which helps explain how in the world Predestination's paradoxical narrative, once it's all been unraveled, could ever have come to pass.

Monsters was only made with a $500,000 budget, but you wouldn't know it from the movie itself. Director Gareth Edwards reportedly built all the film's CGI effects on his personal laptop, and yet they're wholly believable and, most importantly, terrifying.

The story follows a young couple attempting to cross into the US from the Mexico side of the border after their passports are taken. The only problem? They must pass through the "Infected Zone" where freaky, tentacled aliens live. There's a massive wall between the two countries, and it becomes apparent that the creatures are unwilling to be contained - and they're ready to take out everything in their path.

The movie kicked off Edwards's career in a huge way, paving the way for him to direct 2014's Godzilla and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Pretty good for a dude who was just making tentacled monsters on his computer.

What would you do if you read a classified ad that read:

Wanted: Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. P.O. Box 91 Ocean View, WA 99393. You'll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. I have only done this once before. SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED.

Well, if you're Jeff Schwensen or Darius Britt in Safety Not Guaranteed, you'd try and meet that guy and write a story about him. Jeff's attempt fails, but Darius manages to meet the man behind the ad - and gain his trust. He decides to "train" her so that they can be prepared for whatever they might encounter in the past. It's not entirely clear if he's built an actual time machine or is just insane, but either way, Darius (played by the always hilarious and offbeat Aubrey Plaza) is more than a little intrigued.

Despite its goofy premise, Safety Not Guaranteed is ultimately a poignant movie about loss and dealing with grief. Whether the time travel actually works or not is something new viewers will have to find out for themselves.