Summer continues, with warmer and hotter new releases are getting closer. Deadpool and Wolverine will be released next week, followed by Border areas early next month and Fede Álvarez’s Alien: Romulus isn’t far behind. But in the meantime, if you’re looking for the best sci-fi movies to stream on Netflix from the comfort of your own home this July, our picks for this month are the ones to watch.
We have an underrated sci-fi horror film starring Ryan Reynolds And Jake Gyllenhaal, a film barely known to most people upon its initial release, an unfairly criticized sequel to a series based on one of the best survival horror game franchises of all time, and a cyberpunk classic that changed the face of Hollywood action films forever.
Let’s see what this month has to offer!
Editor’s Choice: Life
Image: Columbia Pictures/Sony Pictures releases
Director: Daniel Espinosa
Form: Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, Ryan Reynolds, Hiroyuki Sanada
Wrongly assumed by Reddit fanatics to be a secret trailer Clover field-style prequel of Venom (only one franchise could have astronauts fighting alien stuff!!! obviously!!!), the 2017 sci-fi thriller turns out To live didn’t have to connect to any comic book IP to enjoy. Written by pro genre blenders Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (Death Pole, Zombieland), it is a part Alienpart Gravityand a constant stream of chaos. From space station disasters to violent encounters with an ET, Daniel Espinosa’s controlled direction is genuinely shocking, with a first hour that had me screaming out loud a few times.
To live begins with an action beat: a team of astronauts prepares to “capture” an unmanned probe flying back from Mars before it collides with the International Space Station. To prevent disaster, they bring the probe aboard, only to discover that one of the soil samples contains a dormant single-celled organism. A shock from the ISS’s resident exobiologist ignites the growth process, and soon the ship has an adorable new alien pet they name “Calvin.” Unfortunately, Calvin evolves—in strength, in consciousness, and in a desire to kill everyone on board.
For such an all-star cast, To live is all about deglamorizing familiar faces through claustrophobic horror. Reynolds screams in terror. Gyllenhaal sweats a gallon. Ferguson gasps for breath as she does everything she can to stop the alien from reaching Earth. And they all play second fiddle to Calvin, who, like a baby Starro, breaks limbs and uses the ship’s electricity to accelerate its growth. The back half is familiar territory, but Espinosa keeps our blood pumping through the solid vessel, while Reese and Wernick provide a few much-needed twists. To live is a polished yet dirty B-movie that’s perfect for summer. —Matt Patches
Resident Evil: Retribution
Image: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Director: Paul WS Anderson
Form: Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez, Kevin Durand
I feel like I have to give this disclaimer every time I recommend these movies, but they get an unfairly bad rap. No, I have no affiliation with the video game franchise. Yes, I understand that the movies aren’t perfect adaptations of the games. But I don’t care, and neither should you, because this franchise regulation. Let go of the expectations of the games and enjoy them Retaliation as a formally audacious, gleefully ridiculous sci-fi action blockbuster that just happens to be set in an exaggerated version of the Resident Evil universe.
Retaliationperhaps the best installment in the series, is a remix of the franchise itself and many other influences – Start, WestworldEast and South Asian martial arts films – all while staying true to their video game roots. It has a particularly fun sci-fi concept that makes it a good choice for this list. Alice (Milla Jovovich) must traverse a series of elaborate video game-like simulations of different versions of the zombie apocalypse, while other clones of Alice are trapped inside said simulations. This gives the film a structurally video game feel as she moves from level to level battling various monsters, and even the dialogue replicates the eerily disjointed cadence of video game speech. These films may not quite get the Resident Evil games, but they definitely get video games.
Both this film and 2002’s Resident Evil are leaving Netflix at the end of the month, so now’s your chance to watch them before they’re gone. And after opening with a fun action sequence that plays in reverse order, Retaliation starts with a quick summary so you don’t have to worry about watching the previous films first — although most of them are good! —Pete Volk
The Matrix
Image: Warner Home Video
Director: The Wachowskis
Form: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss
I don’t have to tell you to watch The Matrix. If you read Polygon regularly, you undoubtedly already know what the Wachowskis’ magnum opus is all about, how it revolutionized Hollywood action films in the late ‘90s and forever etched itself into the living canon of our popular culture. You’ve heard the phrase “There is no spoon,” “I know kung-fu,” or the term “red-pilled” before. The Matrixalong with its 2003 sequels, are pillars of modern science fiction cinema and its subsequent sequel, The Matrix Resurrectionsis one of the most divisive films of the 2020s so far.
With all that said, why the hell am I still recommend The Matrix for you? The reason is simple: it’s really That damn good, even more than two decades after it first broke. Trends come and go. The mirrored hoods and black leather trench coats of the late ’90s have taken on a whole new meaning in the fragmented cultural landscape of 2024. Rob Zombie’s “Dragula” no longer blares from the speakers of underground nightclubs, and computers are no longer blocky, clamshell-colored windows into a digital world of unbridled freedom and possibility.
Like all art, the most enduring films are those that not only speak to their particular era, but whose meaning and significance continue to mix, change, and endure long after their original reception. By that definition, The Matrix is still one of the best sci-fi films of its generation, and one of the best available to stream on Netflix. But not for long: The Matrix, The Matrix ReloadedAnd The Matrix Revolutions are all leaving the platform at the end of the month. If you haven’t seen the Matrix trilogy in a while, now would be a good time to revisit them. And if you’ve somehow never seen them and only know about them through cultural osmosis, I promise it’s worth going down the rabbit hole yourself to find out why. —Toussaint Egan