30 Movies Like Arrival You Have To Watch Next

Brad Pitt stars in the 2019 film "Ad Astra," about an astronaut who ventures out amongst the stars and discovers not just new frontiers, but new insights into himself. Exploring themes of family, faith, and legacy, it tells the story of Roy McBride, a SpaceCom commander who goes on a journey to find his long lost father, who may also be the cause of problems back on Earth. 

In a bleak future at the tail end of the 21st century, we learn that humankind's determination to reach beyond its grasp may be leading to its undoing, and the film earnestly examines how our world today — and our attempt to control the future — could ultimately doom us. Full of strong, understated performances, "Ad Astra" was given a four-star review by The Chicago Sun Times, which called it "thematically dense and visually sumptuous," while favorably comparing it to the likes of "The Martian" and "Gravity." 

Like "Arrival," the Christopher Nolan film "Interstellar" is both an exciting science fiction story and tender family drama. It opens in the not-too-distant future, as the Earth is slowly dying and humanity is looking to find other planets to colonize. Discovering a singularity that leads to far-off planets that may be habitable, astronaut Joseph Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) embarks on a daring and risky mission through the wormhole to reconnoiter the worlds they find there. 

A film praised by noted astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson for its scientific accuracy, "Interstellar" delivers a strong family drama with themes of love and loss. Like "Arrival," it also uses time as a narrative device to explore the bond between a parent and child. Highly rated for its emotional impact as much as for its adventure, it should be the first one up on your queue if you haven't seen it.

Rated as one of the best science fiction movies of all time (via Empire), if not the very best, it's at the very least essential viewing for fans of hard sci-fi. Inspired by a short story from Arthur C. Clarke that would be expanded into a groundbreaking novelization, the film pioneered new special effects techniques and proved that science fiction could be taken as seriously as any adult drama, with a more realistic depiction of outer space than audiences had ever seen.

In the film astronauts David Bowman and Frank Poole are sent on a clandestine mission to Jupiter that is put in peril when their ship's artificial intelligence, a computer system dubbed HAL 9000, seemingly turns against them. In a life or death battle with their own ship, they may have to abandon their mission to stay alive. Directed by visionary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick ("The Shining"), the film has been analyzed for decades as — like "Arrival" — it includes themes that go much further than the adventure on screen.

Directed by Steven Spielberg, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" ushered in a new subgenre of science fiction movies when it was released in 1977, the same year as the landmark "Star Wars." Instead of heroic astronauts and highly educated scientists making first contact with aliens, it is blue collar everyman Roy Neary who becomes the point person when UFOs are discovered and alien life makes first contact with humanity. Movies like "E.T.," "Starman," and "Cocoon" would follow this trend.

While "Arrival" featured a highly trained expert as its lead, the story of Amy Adams' Louise Banks parallels Richard Dreyfuss' Roy Neary in many ways. In "Close Encounters," Neary finds his personal life thrown upside down when he makes contact, while the encounter helps him learn new truths about himself and his place in the world in the process.

Some 20 years before "Interstellar," Matthew McConaughey appeared alongside "The Silence of the Lambs" star Jodie Foster in the sci-fi drama "Contact," about an ambitious government project to make first contact with a race of advanced extraterrestrials. Foster plays Dr. Eleanor "Ellie" Arroway, a SETI researcher who went into the field after being inspired by her late father's love of ham radio. 

When the first evidence of life outside our solar system reaches her via a transmission from deep space, Arroway realizes it includes instructions on constructing a transport device that will send her to their star system more than 26 lightyears from Earth. As Arroway's mission takes her toward her goal of first contact, it also takes her on a journey of self-discovery, putting her face to face with her family legacy, her relationship with faith and her understanding of humankind's place among the stars.

Though it doesn't share much in the way of story or characters with "Arrival," the 2017 cyberpunk sequel "Blade Runner 2049" is highly recommended for fans of the film. With both movies sharing the same director, viewers will no doubt find a lot in common tonally between the two films, with the Ryan Gosling-led crime noir epic being an evocative and stylish drama. 

40 years after the events of the original film, new Blade Runner and Nexus-9 replicant Agent K hunts and kills a rogue replicant, but finds evidence that another such replicant has given birth biologically. Assigned to track and kill the child to destroy evidence that replicants are evolving, his investigation will reveal new information about his own kind and the people behind their creation. It will also bring him into contact with infamous former agent Rick Deckard, who lies at the center of the conspiracy.

More of a space odyssey than "Arrival," Danny Boyle's 2007 film "Sunshine" nevertheless will scratch the itch of any fan looking for a dark sci-fi thriller. With an all-star cast that includes Cillian Murphy, Rose Byrne, Michelle Yeoh, Chris Evans, and Benedict Wong among its ensemble, it chronicles a critical mission aboard a starship called Icarus II, sent to reignite the sun following a previous mission that had failed under mysterious circumstances. 

With the suddenly dying star creating havoc on Earth, the crew of Icarus II contends with unusual, escalating problems, with the fate of humanity hanging in the balance. What they find when they reach their destination will shock audiences as much as it does the crew, as the grounded sci-fi film quickly becomes an astonishing thriller in the second half when secrets about the previous mission are revealed.

"Ex Machina" is a more intimate film focused on just three principal characters largely in one location. Directed and written by Alex Garland, the film stars Oscar Isaac as brilliant tech mogul Nathan Bateman, who is working on a revolutionary artificial intelligence. To test his new creation, an android woman called Eva, he recruits a young programmer at his company named Caleb (Domnhall Gleeson) and brings him to his remote estate to take part in a series of tests. Alicia Vikander gives a revelatory performance as the life-like Eva, and as the film unfolds, the experiment becomes as much a test for Caleb as it does for her.  

"Ex Machina" ponders the nature of identity, and what it means to be human, in an intimate psychological thriller. As cerebral as "Arrival" with entirely different subject matter, it's a thought-provoking analysis of artificial intelligence sure to make you give the latest advances from Google and Amazon a sideways glance. 

While in some ways a typical science fiction B-movie of its era, 1951's "The Day The Earth Stood Still" is a more thoughtful take on the story of man's first contact with a being from the stars, and a clear allegory for Cold War fears of nuclear proliferation. Like "Arrival," much of the film involves government scientists grappling with the issue of an alien arrival, struggling to determine what he really wants and how to respond.

It all begins when a flying saucer lands ominously in the center of Washington D.C. Along with an eight-foot-tall robot capable of mass destruction, a man calling himself Klaatu emerges and claims to have a dire message for the people of Earth. While Klaatu's motives remain suspicious to the authorities, he forms a friendship with a young widow who is certain he is not the threat that the government thinks he is.

From Alex Garland, director of "Ex Machina," comes another hard science fiction tale, with a cast led by Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson, and Oscar Isaac. Portman plays Lena, a scientist whose husband Kane (Isaac) was lost on a military mission into an unusual region called "The Shimmer." But when he resurfaces a year later without explanation, Lena must go back to The Shimmer and lead a new team inside to figure out what happened to him — even as the zone and its bizarre properties begin to expand.

Though not an action movie, and not quite a horror movie, "Annihilation" lies somewhere in between, as an introspective character drama with impressive performances from its notable cast of big names. Unsuccessful at the box office, it did well with critics, with Variety's review calling it "a visually stunning, imagination-tickling sci-fi thriller."

Based on the novel by Michael Crichton (creator of "Jurassic Park" and "Westworld"), "Sphere" boasts a star-studded cast that includes Dustin Hoffman, Samuel L. Jackson, Sharon Stone, and Liev Schreiber. Released in 1998, the sci-fi drama starts with the discovery of an ancient craft buried under the Pacific Ocean, believed to be of extraterrestrial origin. A group of specialists led by a marine biologist (Stone), a mathematician (Jackson), an astrophysicist (Schreiber), and a psychologist (Hoffman) venture down into the depths to find and explore the vessel.

After finding a bizarre sphere at the heart of the ship, strange occurrences strike the explorers, and it becomes clear that more is afoot than a simple alien craft. As the mystery deepens, the team begins to question the nature of their situation and the true purpose of the sphere. 

Foreign sci-fi gems are not to be overlooked, as the 2021 French film "Oxygen" proves. The Netflix-distributed movie opens with an unnamed woman awakening from a cryogenic chamber with no memory of who she is or why she was placed into stasis. Finding herself stuck in the claustrophobic chamber with nothing but an artificial intelligence called MILO to keep her company, she accesses the pod's onboard computer system and begins slowly piecing together information about her past and her mission.

While the woman is able to make calls to emergency authorities and even her apparent husband, nobody seems willing to give her answers or get her help. A tense one-woman drama, "Oxygen" will appeal to fans of "Arrival" and comes complete with a similarly surprising twist ending you won't see coming.

A science fiction horror film starring Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche, French director Claire Denis' "High Life" is told in a unique non-linear narrative that will recall the structure of "Arrival" and its clever use of time as a plot device. When the film begins, Pattinson is all alone aboard a deep space vessel with a small child in tow. We don't want to give too much away about the plot, as it's full of major twists that are revealed through flashbacks and flash forwards. But it's enough to say that "High Life" is a bleak drama, drawing on themes of trauma and redemption as the once larger crew are forced into experiments aboard the ship. 

Acclaimed by critics upon its release in 2018, "High Life" didn't receive the attention it deserved. But despite not being a big success at the box office, it helped prove that a post-"Twilight" Robert Pattinson was more than just a pretty face, as he delivered a perfectly intense performance that garnered him rave reviews.

Brandon Routh ("Superman Returns") stars in "400 Days," a psychological science fiction drama about a government experiment to test the effects of long-term space travel on a group of astronauts. Sealed off from the outside world for over a year inside a simulation of a spacecraft, the group of four participants begin to experience adverse effects, including heightened paranoia. But when a strange man appears in the ship, they decide to leave the simulation, only to find the world has been ravaged by disaster.

As the crew looks for answers, it becomes unclear what is real and what is not, and the crew is unsure if the world's apparent destruction is just another part of the simulation. But some are not so certain and begin to fear for their lives when two of them disappear. With a mind-bending puzzle at its center, "400 Days" is another sci-fi tale that will have you questioning everything.

Based on a book by former amateur author and blogger Andy Weir, the Matt Damon film "The Martian" proved every bit as popular with audiences as the sensational story had been after it was made available on Amazon as a 99-cent digital download (via Business Insider). Directed by Ridley Scott ("Blade Runner"), the survivalist adventure has been praised for its grounded realism, as astronaut Mark Watney is left alone on Mars after a fateful mission goes wrong and his crew abandons him on the surface of the Red Planet.

While the team back on Earth fight to help him stay alive so that a second mission can retrieve him, the lone space traveler must use his knowledge of botany and biology to persevere. Full of hard science and harder-hitting drama, "The Martian" will appeal to fans of "Arrival" for its realistic depiction of a trip to another planet and Watney's life-or-death struggle.

If you want to see what an alternate take on the same premise as "Arrival" might look like if it had been produced in the same era as "Independence Day," check out the 1996 film "The Arrival." Far from the slower-paced, somber Amy Adams film, "The Arrival" is a fast-paced drama that, while eschewing the bigger budget spectacle of the Roland Emmerich blockbuster, manages to make an alien first contact story more of an action movie than a heartfelt family drama. 

Starring Charlie Sheen at the peak of his career, "The Arrival" has Zane, a SETI researcher, stumbling across proof of extra-terrestrials on Earth. But instead of attempting to make contact, he finds himself trying to thwart an alien invasion. Though certainly no all-time classic, it's nevertheless a fun sci-fi action drama whose lack of budget actually elevates the film from what could have been a silly alien invasion movie into an allegory for fear and paranoia.