50 Essential Sci-Fi Films of the 21st Century (So Far)

Alex Garland penned Sunshine for director Danny Boyle in 2007, further solidifying the pair’s credentials as a sci-fi/horror powerhouse team after their collaboration on 28 Days Later. But this time, the horror is universal.

A space-capade set within the confines of our own solar system, Sunshine finds us aboard the Icarus II, amongst Robert Capa’s (Cillian Murphy) team of scientist-astronauts, as we sail towards our dying sun, on a mission to reignite it with a stellar bomb and hopefully find out what happened to the Icarus I. After discovering a distress signal from the original mission’s ship, they climb aboard to find a thoroughly deceased and all-but cremated crew who have been sacrificed by their maniac captain Pinbacker (Mark Strong), whose got some variant of the ol’ space dementia and now worships a malevolent god.

While the film undeniably borrows from otherworldly contemporaries like Event Horizon, Sunshine manages to stay as close to reality as possible, pairing conceivable near-futuristic tech with a common concern about the death of our planet or solar system, wrenching these levers alternately to generate fear and tension. And Boyle and DP Alwin H. Küchler back this up by making the most of the contrast between our big, yellow celestial giant and the coldness of space, bathing scenes alternately in sterile white or blue light and glorious gold.