The 14 Best Sci-Fi Movies Streaming On Hulu Right Now
Hulu is the fifth most popular streaming service behind Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, and HBO Max. While some of the newer streaming services have pushed it from the winner's podium, there's actually a ton of great stuff on the service. Setting aside the countless NBC comedies, FX shows like Archer and What We Do in the Shadows, and even original series like Handmaid's Tale and Wu-Tang: An American Saga, there are just a ton of awesome movies on the service that make it worth checking out.
In terms of sci-fi movies, there's a surprisingly deep collection available. The service just recently debuted one of its best movies yet, Prey, a Predator prequel that pits a Comanche woman against a crash-landed predator in the year 1719, but that's just the start. There's a solid collection of new and classic science fiction, from Ghostbusters up to one of our recent favorites, Sorry to Bother You.
Once you've read this list below, you should check out our other streaming lists. We dug up the best science fiction on both Netflix and HBO Max, as well as looking more broadly at the best science fiction of the 1980s and of the 2010s. While most of these movies are well-known classics, we also mined deep into the lost memories of the 1980s to find television shows and cartoons that you've probably forgotten--or never heard of.
1. Prey (2022)
Common sense dictates that if you're going to make a sequel to an existing property, you put the name people know somewhere in the title. Prey, however, throws caution to the wind. This is a Predator movie with Predator nowhere in the name of the movie. After Predators and The Predator, maybe that was the smart play. But Prey manages to differentiate itself in other ways, too. Instead of just changing the setting, Prey rewinds the clock all the way back to the 18th century. Set in the North American plains in 1719, Prey introduces us to Naru (Amber Midthunder), a young woman in the Comanche tribe who wants to be a hunter rather than a caretaker, and ends up having to prove herself after the tribe runs afoul of a rookie Predator that crash-landed on Earth. This spartan movie has some awesome fights, and Midthunder's turn as Naru instantly makes her an actor to watch. Even though this is a Predator movie, even though it references lines from the original, Prey is a refreshing sci-fi movie that finds new life in an iconic movie character.
2. Predator (1987)
Speaking of iconic characters, this is the movie that started it all. It was, of course, one of the 1980s action movies that skyrocketed Arnold Schwarzenegger to superstardom, but it also brought the original Predator to life. Directed by John McTiernan, Predator is much more than it appears at first glance. We meet a team of elite soldiers led by Dutch (Schwarzenegger), who head into the Central American jungle on a rescue mission. Early in the movie, one of the soldiers kills a scorpion, saving his friend from a nasty sting. Despite the scorpion being equipped with a deadly weapon, the soldiers prove the bigger predator--and that's the theme of this movie. Dutch's team is armed to the teeth, but that doesn't even phase the unseen alien lurking in the trees. After it takes down Dutch's team, it has to face Dutch himself--and it learns the hard way that just because you have cooler tools, doesn't mean you automatically win. This could've been a simple Schwarzenegger vehicle--an easy, mindless action movie. Instead, we got a gender-bending action-horror film with a lot to say about technology, ingenuity, and masculinity.
3. Predator 2 (1990)
Predator 2 doesn't live up to Predator's high bar, but it has plenty going for it. The story moves from the jungle jungle to the urban jungle of a dystopian 1997 Los Angeles. Gang warfare is at an all-time high, a killer heatwave is ripping through the city, and Danny Glover's Lieutenant Mike Harrigan is waging a hopeless one-man battle against the gangs when he suddenly finds himself with a sort of guardian angel. After tearing apart two gangs, the Predator and Harrigan face off in a story that expands the Predator mythos. Decades before Tony Stark appeared in The Incredible Hulk, Lieutenant Harrigan sneaks into a Predator spacecraft and finds a Xenomorph skull among the hunters' trophies--a reference to the then-brand-new Aliens vs. Predator comics from Dark Horse. The comic gave birth to the now-eternal battle between Xenomorphs and Predators, but this Easter egg showed that it was possible to cross over in a movie. The makers of this movie couldn't have guessed what would happen when people spotted that skull in the background of their movie.
4. AVP: Aliens vs Predator (2004)
Indeed, what began as a comic in 1989 became a full-blown movie in 2004. After finding a massive heat spot in the arctic, a team of explorers arrives to find an ancient pyramid far under the ice. Earth, it turns out, has been the battleground between Xenomorph aliens and Predators for thousands of years. Of course, chaos ensues, alliances are formed, and technology swapped before a few survivors make it out. This is a movie from Paul W.S. Anderson, the director of an entire library of Resident Evil movies, the first Mortal Kombat, and Monster Hunter. That means that judging it by good and bad doesn't really work. Sets and VFX carry the film's nonsensical plot, and you can have a great time with it if you go in with the right expectations.
5. Ghostbusters (1984)
What can you say about Ghostbusters that hasn't been said? This movie was an accident; Dan Akyroyd wrote a dark and serious, dimension-hopping science fiction movie meant to star himself, Eddie Murphy, and John Belushi. After rewrites from Harold Ramis, they had a comedic supernatural film about the spiritual equivalent of exterminators trying to make their way in New York City. Even still, the movie used special effects unprecedented in comedies before that. And yet, for all its changes, they managed to make one of the truly unique movies of the '80s that still stands up as one of the best movies around.
6. Chronicles of Riddick (2004)
Like AVP, Chronicles of Riddick isn't a good movie, but it is a fun movie. Chronicles acts as a sequel to the 2000 film Pitch Black and picks up with Riddick evading capture before putting himself in the sights of a military force called the Necromongers sweeping across the galaxy. The cast is stacked for a movie that performed so poorly; aside from Vin Diesel as Riddick, the cast also features Karl Urban (Dredd, The Boys), Dame Judi Dench (Skyfall), and Thandiwe Newton (Westworld). It's Pitch Black meets Warhammer 40K meets H.R. Giger's take on the Roman Empire. It's not a good movie, but it's the only movie where you can hear Vin Diesel say the line "It's been a long time since I smelled beautiful," while referring to someone other than himself.
7. Independence Day (1996)
If Men in Black is peak Will Smith, then Independence Day is just below it. Directed by VFX blockbuster maestro Roland Emmerich (Day After Tomorrow, Moonfall), ID4--as it was called in marketing--imagines what would happen if some of our favorite conspiracy theories of the time were true. Area 51, Roswell, New Mexico, the gray aliens, all of it. And then imagines what would happen if we uploaded a virus from a Macbook to one of their ships. Watch it for Jeff Goldblum if nothing else.
8. Akira (1988)
There's enough anime out there that you can never watch all of it, but among them very few are truly timeless. 1988's Akira is one of those. Despite condensing thousands of pages of manga into one film, Akira manages to bring together some of the best animation and music with an engaging story about two friends on either side of a conflict. Akira looks incredible almost 35 years later and is worth watching even if you put it on mute--it looks that good.
9. Sorry to Bother You (2018)
Have you ordered from Amazon lately? Me too. Sorry to Bother You is an anti-capitalism science fiction movie in which LaKeith Stanfield's Cassius Green becomes a telemarketer in a world increasingly dominated by one internet store. He finds his "White Guy Voice"--it's David Cross--and becomes a legendary telemarketer before meeting the CEO of that company, who has a plan to make his workforce more reliable than ever.
10. Children of Men (2006)
In the year 2027, the world is on the brink of a societal collapse. Humanity has been infertile for eighteen years, meaning there are no children left. Refugees swarm England from strife elsewhere in the world, and Theo (Clive Owen) has to escort Kee (Claire Hope-Ashitey) to freedom and learns along the way that she's pregnant. Despite the themes of hope and renewal, Children of Men can be a bummer to watch. It's remarkable though, for several incredibly complex single-shot sequences throughout the movie, each impressive in its own right.
11. Prometheus (2012)
Prometheus brings Ridley Scott back to the Aliens franchise, and all of the series' favorite themes along for the ride. Motherhood and pregnancy, body horror, human fallibility, dangerous artificial intelligence--it's all here. Where classic Alien movies tend to be tight and claustrophobic, this one is grandiose, with huge vistas and imaginative sets. If you're squeamish, skip this one. Really.
12. Looper (2012)
Time travel is almost always a headache in storytelling. Except in rare cases, it ends up used to create drama rather than do anything interesting, and it always contains plot holes. That's where Looper comes in--one of the few time travel stories that seems to understand how much trouble the concept can create. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis play the present and future versions of Joe, a hitman for the mafia whose job is to assassinate marks sent from the future, back to the past. Director and writer Rian Johnson (Knives Out, The Last Jedi) tells a smart story that uses the puzzle pieces of time travel to examine cyclical violence.
13. Source Code (2011)
Computer simulation has become a favorite for filmmakers, especially in the last 25 years. Reaching back as far as Tron and even as recently as Free Guy, we like to imagine what kind of reality could exist within the silicon powering our computers. In reality, we can hardly simulate Grand Theft Auto V without witnessing a car stuck halfway in the pavement or getting launched to the moon because you hit a fire hydrant, but the fantasy remains. Sometimes filmmakers use it to ask questions about life and intelligence. Source Code keeps it simple with a classic action thriller, Jake Gyllenhaal plays Air Force Captain Colter Stevens, only he wakes up on a train in someone else's body and then dies eight minutes later. Stevens has been tasked with moving through the simulation to find the identity of a domestic terrorist before the eight-minute simulation ends. As he tries to find the bomber and end the time loop, Stevens is going to find out a lot more about himself--and the Source Code, the machine he's in--than he could've ever expected.
14. District B13 (2004)
Not District 9--that's another movie. If you've heard of District B13, you probably know it as "the French parkour movie." Like Predator 2 and Children of Men, District B13 depicts a near-future world where class disparity is worse than ever. When a neutron bomb is ticking down in the district, an undercover cop and ex-criminal have to work together to disarm it. This French action movie isn't remarkable for its plot, but for the parkour-heavy stunts, which were done without wires or CGI. Co-star David Belle is considered one of the main founders of the parkour movement, and this movie highlights the excitement of the art perfectly.
15. Monsters (2010)
The same way that Looper helped put Rian Johnson on the map and on the path to directing Star Wars, Monsters helped raise the profile of director Gareth Edwards, who would go on to direct 2016's Godzilla, followed by Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. That alone makes it worth watching--what was so special about it that the producers behind one of the biggest franchises in the world wanted to give the helm to this guy? This is a Kaiju movie before they came back into style. After a crash-landed exploration satellite brings alien life with it, the Northern section of Mexico is made a quarantine zone, with American and Mexican soldiers alike working to keep the alien life contained. Meanwhile, a photojournalist is tasked with finding his employer's daughter, but circumstances force them to travel through the quarantine zone together. Despite being a monster movie, Monsters uses sparse visual effects to match its minuscule $500,000 budget and instead puts the focus on its two main characters as they travel, survive, and bond through the quarantine zone.
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