The Best Sci-Fi or Fantasy Movie of 2025

Runner-Up: Predator: Badlands

Prey director Dan Trachtenberg returned to the Predator franchise twice this year, first with the animated anthology film Predator: Killer of Killers (more on that below) and again with Predator: Badlands, the first entry in the nearly 40-year-old franchise to make the titular alien its main protagonist instead of the villain.

The simplistic yet surprisingly emotional Predator: Badlands followed a similar rites of passage story as Prey did, this time following a young Yautja named Dek (played by Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) who seeks to prove himself on a planet where even the trees are deadly.

Badlands is a fun, action-packed romp that also further developed the culture of the Yautja and even offered a healthy dose of humor thanks to teaming a Predator with an Alien franchise synthetic named Thea (Elle Fanning).

Runner-Up: Companion

Drew Hancock’s directorial debut is a sci-fi thriller that offers a mix of humor and bursts of violence to tell the story of a woman who discovers she’s a robot companion caught up in a larger scheme.

Sophie Thatcher and Jack Quaid are both great as Iris and her owner/boyfriend Josh, with both actors nicely subverting any audience expectations based on their personas from past projects such as Yellowjackets or The Boys, respectively.

This clever and occasionally vicious film ratches up the anticipation as Iris endures one stunning revelation after another.

Runner-Up: Predator: Killer of Killers

Directed by Prey and Predator: Badlands filmmaker Dan Trachtenberg, this Hulu release is the first entry in the franchise to be animated, but that doesn’t mean it pulled back on the graphic bloodshed the series is known for. It’s also the franchise’s first anthology film, telling four different stories of Yautja hunting humans (specifically Vikings, samurai, World War II fighter pilots, and then one other tale which we won’t spoil here).

“Its journey through several time periods is the perfect way to give us multiple Predator stories that each have their own distinct flavor and action highlights,” Eric Goldman said in his Predator: Killer of Killers review for IGN, praising Trachtenberg for “understanding how to provide both Predators and human characters who can kick ass and creatively prove their mettle, no matter which side of the hunt they begin on.”

Runner-Up: Mickey 17

Bong Joon Ho followed up his IGN Best Movie of 2019 winner Parasite (oh, yeah, and Oscar winner, too) with what our critic Siddhant Adlakha called “a jet-black, mean-as-hell sci-fi comedy about a near future in which life itself has been corporatized and reduced in value by a foppish upper class that hides its totalitarian aims behind supposed religious values.”

Robert Pattinson plays multiple incarnations of an “Expendable” worker who is repeatedly killed and re-cloned in order to perform dangerous jobs for an all-powerful corporation. Mickeys 17 and 18 are a pair of oddball sad sacks, and yet they still improbably become the resistance to Mark Ruffalo’s Trump-coded leader in this nihilistic, politically charged film that can often be, to paraphrase Adlakha’s Mickey 17 reviewas depressing as it is farcical.

Winner: Frankenstein

Guillermo del Toro finally realized one of his lifelong dream projects with this sumptuously crafted adaptation of Mary Shelley’s pioneering sci-fi novel. As epic as his film is across the board, del Toro’s Frankenstein is, at its core, an intimate, thoughtful story about generational trauma and forgiveness.

While Oscar Isaac and Mia Goth both shine in their leading roles, it’s Jacob Elordi’s career-redefining performance as the Creature that stands out the most, giving the film a heart, soul and an elegance missing from so many past Frankenstein films. “This iteration of Frankenstein is, like its Creature, a beautiful, haunting thing through which classic themes are made to feel fresh and new,” IGN’s Scott Collura observed in his Frankenstein review.

With Frankenstein, Guillermo del Toro has made a movie that stands (reanimated) head and (mismatched) shoulders above the rest in this year’s Best Sci-Fi/Fantasy Movie category.

But what do you think? Was Frankenstein the greatest sci-fi/fantasy movie of 2025, or would you pick a different film? Let us know in the comments below, vote in our poll, and be sure to check out our various other best of awards for 2025 across film, TV, gaming, and comics. We’ll see you in 2026.