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

While Donnie Darko is about as beloved as 21st-century sci-fi comes, Richard Kelly’s second feature, Southland Tales, shares none of its acclaim. A deeply divisive and equally misunderstood film, Southland Tales offers a cautionary glimpse into an alternate present (now past) that keeps getting more relevant by the day.

The year is 2008, the Republican Party is enjoying unprecedented success and control in the US, and citizens' rights and liberties have been corroded via the extension of the PATRIOT Act and the introduction of US-IDENT, an agency dedicated to monitoring the country’s citizens and streets 24/7, opposed primarily by a group of neo-Marxist revolutionaries. Dwayne Johnson finds himself at the centre of an almighty sh**storm as amnesiac right-wing action star and influencer Boxer Santaros, and his affair with porn star-turned-talk show host Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is only the tip of a conspiracy that runs from Hollywood to the White House.

Throw in a generator of inexhaustible energy that threatens the stability of Earth’s natural ocean currents, plus some holes in space and time, and you’ve got one of the most ambitious science fiction films of the last two and a half decades. Southland Tales is epic, it looks magnificent, the plot is as layered as one might expect from Kelly, and the 2021 recovered Cannes cut is distinct enough from the original that even those who hated it the first time around are guaranteed to find something interesting.