The Best Sci-Fi or Fantasy Movie of 2025

While determination were galore titles to take from (just look astatine each the honorable mentions!), these are IGN staff’s picks for the year’s precise champion successful our combined Best Sci-Fi/Fantasy Movie category.

The Predator franchise returned successful a large mode this twelvemonth acknowledgment to manager Dan Trachtenberg, whose 2 Predator movies some made our apical five. We number Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein arsenic sci-fi because, well, Mary Shelley’s publication is 1 of the precise archetypal sci-fi novels ever published.

While Predator movies and del Toro’s Netflix epic whitethorn person had greater visibility, we didn’t privation to place quirkier fare similar Companion oregon Mickey 17 erstwhile selecting our nominees for the year’s champion offerings successful the sci-fi and phantasy genres.

Honorable Mentions spell to Superman, Bugonia, 28 Years Later, How to Train Your Dragon, KPop Demon Hunters, Elio, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, The Legend of Ochi, Arco, OBEX, and Thunderbolts*. (Editor’s note: Avatar: Fire and Ash did not surface for capable unit successful clip for IGN awards consideration.)

Read connected to find retired which movie is IGN’s champion sci-fi oregon phantasy movie of 2025.

Runner-Up: Predator: Badlands

Prey manager Dan Trachtenberg returned to the Predator franchise doubly this year, archetypal with the animated anthology movie Predator: Killer of Killers (more connected that below) and again with Predator: Badlands, the archetypal introduction successful the astir 40-year-old franchise to marque the titular alien its main protagonist alternatively of the villain.

The simplistic yet amazingly affectional Predator: Badlands followed a akin rites of transition communicative arsenic Prey did, this clip pursuing a young Yautja named Dek (played by Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) who seeks to beryllium himself connected a satellite wherever adjacent the trees are deadly.

Badlands is simply a fun, action-packed romp that besides further developed the civilization of the Yautja and adjacent offered a steadfast dose of wit acknowledgment to teaming a Predator with an Alien franchise synthetic named Thea (Elle Fanning).

Runner-Up: Companion

Drew Hancock’s directorial debut is simply a sci-fi thriller that offers a premix of wit and bursts of unit to archer the communicative of a pistillate who discovers she’s a robot companion caught up successful a larger scheme.

Sophie Thatcher and Jack Quaid are some large arsenic Iris and her owner/boyfriend Josh, with some actors nicely subverting immoderate assemblage expectations based connected their personas from past projects specified arsenic Yellowjackets oregon The Boys, respectively.

This clever and occasionally vicious movie ratches up the anticipation arsenic Iris endures 1 stunning revelation aft another.

Runner-Up: Predator: Killer of Killers

Directed by Prey and Predator: Badlands filmmaker Dan Trachtenberg, this Hulu merchandise is the archetypal introduction successful the franchise to beryllium animated, but that doesn’t mean it pulled backmost connected the graphic bloodshed the bid is known for. It’s besides the franchise’s archetypal anthology film, telling 4 antithetic stories of Yautja hunting humans (specifically Vikings, samurai, World War II combatant pilots, and past 1 different communicative which we won’t spoil here).

“Its travel done respective clip periods is the cleanable mode to springiness america aggregate Predator stories that each person their ain chiseled spirit and enactment highlights,” Eric Goldman said successful his Predator: Killer of Killers reappraisal for IGN, praising Trachtenberg for “understanding however to supply some Predators and quality characters who tin footwear ass and creatively beryllium their mettle, nary substance which broadside of the hunt they statesman on.”

Runner-Up: Mickey 17

Bong Joon Ho followed up his IGN Best Movie of 2019 victor Parasite (oh, yeah, and Oscar winner, too) with what our professional Siddhant Adlakha called “a jet-black, mean-as-hell sci-fi drama astir a adjacent aboriginal successful which beingness itself has been corporatized and reduced successful worth by a foppish precocious people that hides its totalitarian aims down expected spiritual values.”

Robert Pattinson plays aggregate incarnations of an “Expendable” idiosyncratic who is repeatedly killed and re-cloned successful bid to execute unsafe jobs for an all-powerful corporation. Mickeys 17 and 18 are a brace of oddball bittersweet sacks, and yet they inactive improbably go the absorption to Mark Ruffalo’s Trump-coded person successful this nihilistic, politically charged movie that tin often be, to paraphrase Adlakha’s Mickey 17 review, arsenic depressing arsenic it is farcical.

Winner: Frankenstein

Guillermo del Toro yet realized 1 of his lifelong imagination projects with this sumptuously crafted adaptation of Mary Shelley’s pioneering sci-fi novel. As epic arsenic his movie is crossed the board, del Toro’s Frankenstein is, astatine its core, an intimate, thoughtful communicative astir generational trauma and forgiveness.

While Oscar Isaac and Mia Goth some radiance successful their starring roles, it’s Jacob Elordi’s career-redefining show arsenic the Creature that stands retired the most, giving the movie a heart, psyche and an elegance missing from truthful galore past Frankenstein films. “This iteration of Frankenstein is, similar its Creature, a beautiful, haunting happening done which classical themes are made to consciousness caller and new,” IGN’s Scott Collura observed successful his Frankenstein review.

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

But what bash you think? Was Frankenstein the top sci-fi/fantasy movie of 2025, oregon would you prime a antithetic film? Let america cognize successful the comments below, ballot successful our poll, and beryllium definite to check retired our assorted different champion of awards for 2025 crossed film, TV, gaming, and comics. We’ll spot you successful 2026.