The best sci-fi and fantasy movies to watch on Netflix right now

Netflix titles come, go, and come back again, so it’s important not to wait too long to stream a title that you like because it won’t be there indefinitely. The elder streaming service has a generous selection of science fiction and fantasy movies, including the new family-friendly title Chupa, about a lonely young boy who befriends a mythical creature known as a chupacabra while visiting family in Mexico.

2011’s The Thing, a prequel to John Carpenter’s 1982 classic The Thing, didn’t get much love when it premiered in theaters but is now trending on Netflix. Other notable titles include the hilarious sci-fi comedy Galaxy Quest, the Oscar-winning Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, Brad Pitt in the apocalyptic zombie flick World War Z, Christopher Nolan’s Inception, J.A. Bayona’s A Monster Calls, and many more. Read on for Netflix’s best sci-fi and fantasy movies and The A.V. Club’s thoughts on each.

Bird Box

starts promisingly enough, in an extended sequence where Sandra Bullock and Sarah Paulson, cleverly cast as sisters, volley barbed dialogue back and forth on the way to an OB-GYN appointment for the former’s heavily pregnant character, Malorie. Then the mysterious environmental disaster that’s been hovering in the background is suddenly, alarmingly foregrounded, and their drive home becomes a life-or-death obstacle course as random motorists and pedestrians start committing suicide en masse all around them. Apparently, the disaster is being caused by an unnamed, unknowable thing that makes (some) human beings immediately go insane and take their own lives upon seeing it—but not before their eyes (sometimes) turn a spooky shade of CGI purple. []