10 Great Recent Sci-Fi Movies You Probably Haven't Seen

Z For Zachariah had a budget of $7.5 million, yet only grossed $120 thousand. Not a typo.

It was clearly a movie the studio had zero faith in, resulting in almost no marketing, and a home video release the same day it released in cinemas. Given the movie’s quality though, you have to wonder why.

There’s only three people in the whole movie, but when those three are Chiwetel Ejiofor, Chris Pine and Margot Robbie, you’d think that would be a selling point. Presumably a good chunk of the budget went towards persuading them too.

It centres around apocalypse survivor Ann (Robbie), whose peaceful yet lonely life is interrupted by sickly survivor John (Ejiofor). The narrative involves Ann nursing John back to health, and then John trying to improve her way of life.

All the while, Ann’s brother Caleb (Pine) is stranded in the wilderness, leaving Ann & John to figure out how to find him. It’s a slow burn of a drama, one fixated on character development, but it does everything it tries to do extremely well.

It’s a story of conversations and journeys much more than it is events, but if you’re ready for that from the jump, it’s worth your time.