158 Best Sci-Fi & Fantasy Movies to Watch (Page 10)

Renegade Nell is an upbeat historical fantasy series boasting great chemistry from the main cast. It's anchored by our fiery lead actress Nell (Louisa Harland), whose colorful bloodlust and banter always bring a lot of energy to the show. Her fun, easy dynamic with her siblings and allies on the run is reason enough to make this a light, comforting watch. Plus, with a plot revolving around murder, revenge, and accusations, it is easy to be invested, with all its moving parts leaving you curious and wanting more. Episodes can feel a bit stuffed, but if you stay beyond the second episode, you're probably staying for the whole thing.

Genre: Action & Adventure, Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Actor: Adrian Lester, Alice Kremelberg, Bo Bragason, Craig Parkinson, Enyi Okoronkwo, Florence Keen, Frank Dillane, Jake Dunn, Joely Richardson, Louisa Harland, Nick Mohammed, Pip Torrens

Rating: TV-14

Starting off as the 24th(!) overall season of this long-running TV franchise at the time of its release, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon understandably treads very familiar ground: general paranoia and distrust, humanity divided into survivalist factions, a search for a cure. In its early episodes, though, this series gets a boost from its uniquely historical setting—which creates a feeling of these characters stuck in a previous century—as well as a strong focus on religious faith in the time of the apocalypse. Still, this spin-off continues to go through the same action-horror motions, sticking to what's expected at the expense of any suspense or meaningful development for its stoic title character.

Genre: Action & Adventure, Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Actor: Adam Nagaitis, Anne Charrier, Clémence Poésy, Laïka Blanc-Francard, Louis Puech Scigliuzzi, Norman Reedus, Romain Levi

Rating: TV-MA

Returning to your hometown can be an eerie thing, mostly because of the way plenty of things would feel familiar, but they’ve either stayed in stasis all these years, or they’ve changed so much. Tierra Incognita takes that eeriness and uses it to craft a mysterious vibe in the small town of Cabo Qwert, a town now best known in the series for its titular abandoned amusement park. It relies a tad bit on jump scares and family melodrama, and the theme park itself seems much more pristine than an abandoned park would look like, but Tierra Incognita would be an okay series for kids to enjoy.

Genre: Family, Mystery, Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Rating: TV-14

Sengoku Youko isn’t bad. With a historical setting, fantastic powers, decent action, and teenagers out to save the world despite societal differences, the anime has teen-friendly entertainment that anyone can enjoy. So far, the show is a better adaptation than mangaka Satoshi Mizukami’s other work Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer, so fans of the artist would appreciate the dedication in adapting this story. However, with early 2024’s slate of boundary-pushing fantasy anime, the show doesn’t really stand out with its dated 2010s tropes and slightly derivative character designs. For viewers seeking for more fantasy, Sengoku Youko isn’t a bad watch, but there’s far better series currently available right now.

Genre: Action & Adventure, Animation, Drama, Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Actor: Aina Suzuki, Aki Toyosaki, Ayahi Takagaki, Hiroki Nanami, Hiroki Touchi, Kazuki Miyagi, Kenji Nomura, Kenjiro Tsuda, Maaya Uchida, Ryohei Kimura, Soma Saito, Tetsu Inada, Tomoyo Kurosawa, Yuuki Takada

The best thing about a Cinderella story is knowing she'll get a Prince Charming™ by the end (with or without the rats and pumpkins). The first episode of My Happy Marriage sets up the fairytale expectations to a T. Mistreated by her step-mother and step-sister - and a tragic mom-is-dead backstory - this anime hits expected beats which means it'll either be a comfortable watch or a predictable skip. The silver lining comes when Miyo's step-sister marries her long-time crush while she is sent away to marry a difficult man known to repel his suitors. A swoon-worthy, slow-burn romance is surely on the horizon, enveloped in a strikingly beautiful, dreamy animation. 

Genre: Animation, Drama, Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Actor: Akira Ishida, Ayane Sakura, Hiro Shimono, Houko Kuwashima, Kaito Ishikawa, Koutaro Nishiyama, Reina Ueda, Ryohei Kimura

If you don’t like cheesy Koreanovelas to begin with, there’s no real reason to seek this out. You’re getting an over the top telenovela from the performances, to the wishing on a star and playful coincidences and all the forced meet-cutes. Lee Mi-jin (Jung Eun-ji) is sympathetic in her unenviable position receiving conditional kindness from her parents. And of course, the premise itself is just ridiculous enough to maybe stick around for. But what should be a simple story gets out of hand quickly, with an absolutely wack 60+ minute runtime per episode. While it can be a decent comfort show for the giggles, there’s no cheese you can get here that you can’t get anywhere else for better if you kept looking.

Genre: Comedy, Mystery, Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Actor: Baek Seo Hoo, Choi Jin-hyuk, Jeong Seok-yong, Jung Eun-ji, Jung Young-ju, Kim Ah-young, Lee Jung-eun, Yoon Byung-hee

Director: Lee Hyung-min

Adapting Avatar: The Last Airbender for live action was always going to be a tall order, especially after the critically panned Shyamalan film. With the greater respect towards the cultures that inspired the original, Netflix’s adaptation is already slightly better than the first live-action attempt, but at least there are more reasons to appreciate this version. The cute furballs are still cute here (and not terrifying), and there’s slightly more successful attempts at humor. But this show suffers from the same mindset plenty of live action adaptations have– it prioritizes realism over story, and real-looking production design over characters.

Genre: Action & Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Actor: Dallas Liu, Daniel Dae Kim, Gordon Cormier, Ian Ousley, Kiawentiio

Rating: TV-14

When live-action and animation meet, it can lead to interesting results. With each medium as a separate world, this choice can lead to awesome, mind-bending, genre-breaking stuff, but not all films or shows that mix media achieve this. One such show is Dragons of Wonderhatch, which at its core, has an interesting idea of two worlds, one mundane, one fantastical, colliding, but there’s just something off with the way the show just drops the audience in the land of Upananta. Rather than take the time to introduce Nagi to us first, and then let Tyme introduce himself in the real world, the show just shifts to the other world, which might cause some confusion for new viewers. As far as the plot goes, it’s not terrible, but there was more that could have helped Dragons of Wonderhatch in taking flight.

Genre: Action & Adventure, Animation, Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Actor: Daiken Okudaira, Go Morita, Mackenyu, Sena Nakajima, Sumire

Rating: TV-14

There's a strong moral focus to Dee & Friends in Oz that helps keep it from being just a distraction for young children. The series logically continues the theme of outsiders learning to overcome their insecurities and courses this lesson through "Dorothy" herself—with much less peril and wicked witches involved, of course. But the show also finds itself stuck in the ways it expresses itself; the world of Oz here is both colorful and too ordinary, and its storytelling is both sincere and too rigid in its structure. For example, when Dee comes back home to the real world at the end of each episode, it's meant to feel as if she's applying the moral lessons to her daily life, but the connection is just too flimsy and makes these scenes feel more like unrelated epilogues.

Genre: Animation, Kids, Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Actor: Judah Edwards, Layla Capers, Sevien Desuyo, Sid Kamat

Rating: TV-Y

If you’re familiar with the classic supernatural romance Ghost (1990), Why Didn’t I Tell You A Million Times? will remind you of it. It doesn’t have the comedic banter of Whoopi Goldberg, but it does have a back-and-forth dynamic between the ghost and the detective that sees him. It doesn’t have the leading lady’s potential murder, but it does have a murder to investigate. It also has more food porn, as the main couple is bound by Japanese hamburg steak and salty custard puddings. There’s something here about love transcending the physical realm and troubled pasts lead to a lifetime of service or a lifetime of crime. However, the series can’t decide on one perspective to start from and relies too much on flashbacks to tell its story. Why Didn’t I Tell You A Million Times? had the potential to be a moving supernatural romance, but it’s let down by lackluster execution.

Genre: Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Actor: Kami Hiraiwa, Kenichi Matsuyama, Mao Inoue, Shim Eun-kyung, Takeru Satoh

While it certainly has a gorgeous world to show off, with lots of colorful art direction and varied landscapes to explore, Unicorn Academy can't help but buckle under its own weight. Its first couple of episodes (starting with a feature-length premiere) want to establish fun relationships between its characters; set up an epic, world-ending conflict; reflect on its protagonist's grief; and sell merchandise all at once. But the show is both too aimless with its writing and too sluggish in its pacing to allow these disparate parts to cohere under a unified tone. It constantly feels like it's having trouble deciding what to be—which isn't helped by the fact that the first episode has two, awkwardly-placed musical numbers, and the second episode features no singing whatsoever.

Genre: Adventure, Animation, Family, Fantasy, Kids, Music, Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Actor: Kamaia Fairburn, Kolton Stewart, Sara Garcia