5 Low-Budget Sci-Fi Flicks That Are Way Better Than Expensive Blockbusters
These movies don't need hundreds of millions of dollars, they have something more important – the burning desire of the creators to make something truly unique.
What used to be the exception is becoming the rule: big studio films barely make it at the box office and become victims of endless postponements, while modest indie projects become audience favorites.
Today, we look back at five sci-fi projects that, despite low budgets, managed to wow viewers with unique concepts, wild ideas, and a sincere desire to do something fresh and unusual.
1. Coherence, 2013
Coherence is a sci-fi movie that has a scientifically based idea about traveling to parallel realities. The plot focuses on a group of friends who find themselves under the influence of Miller's Comet, which is coming close to Earth.
Director James Ward Byrkit shot the film in his own home, invited his friends, who did not know each other at the time, to play the main roles, and forced them to improvise – the result is one of the greatest sci-fi movies of the 21st century, which is criminally little talked about.
2. Primer, 2004
If you thought Tenet was hard to follow, Shane Carruth's low-budget sci-fi thriller is here to change your mind.
The main characters are two scientists who accidentally invent a time machine. Like in Christopher Nolan 's movie, it doesn't send the user hundreds of years back or forward, but instead makes time go backward for a short period of time.
With the help of their invention, the characters start making money on the stock market – but very quickly their endless copies and different versions of them start getting mixed up with each other.
Stock up on pens and paper: this flick, made for pennies, will confuse you in a way that even the smartest blockbuster could never dream of.
3. Another Earth, 2011
Brit Marling's name has become synonymous with indie sci-fi: while fans beg for the return of The OA, we suggest remembering the film of Mike Cahill. His Another Earth, literally made for pennies, became a quiet masterpiece of the genre.
One day, a planet appears in the sky, like two peas in a pod to ours: with the same continents, oceans, and people. As the cosmic bodies approach each other, the people of Earth wonder what they would ask themselves and if there is a universe where it was possible to avoid the mistakes that cannot be corrected in this one.
4. Oxygen, 2021
The entire movie takes place in a cryogenic chamber where a young woman wakes up and tries to understand who she is and how she got here. A voice assistant becomes her guide in her search for the truth: all that remains is to learn how to ask the right questions and formulate search queries.
There is a catastrophic lack of time, as the oxygen is about to run out. Gradually, Oxygen changes its form – a claustrophobic thriller becomes a love story on the edge of sci-fi.
5. The Vast of Night, 2019
Andrew Patterson assembled his debut film piece by piece, paying for the production out of his own pocket, but the budget constraints didn't affect the careful stylization.
Although the film pretends to be an episode of a TV show like The Twilight Zone, it is more like a radio play: for most of the running time, the main characters do not leave the radio room and switchboard.
There, surrounded by four walls, the young people understand that an alien invasion is imminent, and the studio phone is interrupted by alarm calls.
