15 Sci Fi Movies With Awful Reviews That Are Actually Worth Watching

The sci-fi movies on this list are not all great works of art. They're not all "secretly great," not all misunderstood masterpieces, and they're certainly not all even "good." Some are! Some are merely fun. Some are bad but instructively so, movies whose bad-ness is thought-provoking. Some are even so bad, they circle back around to being incredibly entertaining.

Is "bad-ness" a lack of competence, or one of taste? As C.S. Lewis once wrote, labeling something negatively is an easy way out. "The distinction [between highbrow and lowbrow] is certainly used to allow us the satisfaction of despising certain authors and readers without imposing on us the labour of showing that they are bad," he wrote. He was talking about books, but his point still stands.

I steadfastly believe that it's worthwhile to watch "bad" movies. I believe we can learn a lot from them about our taste, about what works and what doesn't, and about why we consider some things "good" and some things "bad." Plus, it can often simply be more fun to release a movie from the expectation that it has to be great. Sometimes, all a movie needs to be worthwhile is a handful of intriguing ideas, or a handful of memorable images, even if the puzzle pieces don't seem to fit together. The movies on this list all got awful reviews and were recommended by less than half of critics surveyed by Rotten Tomatoes, but they're all worth watching anyway.

The 2008 remake of "The Day The Earth Stood Still" is admittedly bad, not least of all because it's just kind of boring. It especially suffers in comparison to the 1951 original, which is a towering masterpiece of science fiction. Whereas that movie is a brilliant exercise in telling a massive-seeming story with a low budget, the 2008 film expands the scope (multiple UFOs!) and throws a bunch of dodgy CGI at the problem.

Still, for all its flaws, this version of "The Day The Earth Stood Still" contains several worthwhile ideas. First, Keanu Reeves makes for a solid alien; he's an actor with a curiously flat affect, which he puts to good use. Second, there's the new thematic underpinning. While the original movie was steeped in Cold War anxieties about mutually assured nuclear destruction, the updated version has to do with the oncoming climate emergency. "The tragedy is, they know what's going to become of them," James Hong's character Mr. Wu mourns. In 2008, it felt like we might still have time to change. I'm not sure we do anymore.

There's even one great idea in "The Day The Earth Stood Still." Reflecting the quasi-benevolent nature of the aliens, the film subverts traditional disaster movie sequence. When the ships first arrive, iconic landmarks like The Empire State Building are not obliterated but are instead bathed in a purifying, glowing light. It's a striking image that nearly justifies the entire endeavor.

The "Leprechaun" series was never particularly good, even if the first one did star Jennifer Aniston. Impressively, though, the franchise was able to sustain itself by reinventing the wheel each time. In the third one, the Leprechaun (Warwick Davis) goes to Las Vegas. In "Leprechaun 4," he's in space, and in later films, he'd infamously visit "the Hood." (He'd go "Back 2 Tha Hood" in Part 6.) His detour into space makes perhaps the least amount of sense — if any of these movies can be said to make sense — but it's also one of the most fun. There's a space princess (Rebecca Carlton), a mad scientist with half a body (Guy Siner), and a growth ray. What more do you need?

Would you believe me if I told you that "Leprechaun 4: In Space" is a queer text? How about if I told you the Leprechaun boards a spaceship by hiding out in a Marine's genitals, emerging only when he gets aroused? (It's as gross as you're imagining.) How about if I told you that he puppets a different Marine, and he decides to dress the guy in drag and have him dance for his fellow soldiers?

We'll leave it at that; this is either the kind of movie you vibe with, or you don't. It's supremely stupid, to be clear, and shamelessly so. Also, if this sounds like your thing, you should know that the Leprechaun has a lightsaber!

In "Species," a group of scientists create a human/alien hybrid by following mysterious instructions beamed down from space. They name her Sil (Natasha Henstridge), and she matures quickly. After escaping from the lab, she sets about trying to find a mate. In other words, "Species" is mostly an excuse to put a too-beautiful woman in a number of situations where she needs to get naked. One can easily imagine the excitement from the studio execs. Watching this movie feels like a glimpse into the unchecked id of the 90s, like "Species" was made at the last possible moment "Species" could have been made, before the culture evolved past movies like this.

That being said, there's something fascinating going on here. This is a movie about the abject horror of unchecked female sexuality, imagining a terrifying world where the woman is the sexually-forward one. What's more, she's not just a woman; she's a phallic woman in the Freudian sense, transforming into an alien that has worm-like protuberances used to penetrate the men she's involved with. Oh, the horror!

There's enough to genuinely recommend, too. The movie boasts a cast that includes Ben Kingsley, Michael Madsen, Forest Whitaker, and even a young, pre-"Dawson's Creek" Michelle Williams. Although the CGI is lacking, undercutting the effectiveness of the ending, Sil's alien form was designed by H. R. Giger of "Alien" fame. You could do a lot worse! (Like, say, any of the "Species" sequels.)

Ariana Greenblatt had a great 2023. In addition to starring in "Barbie" and "Ahsoka," she was in "65," a sorely underrated sci-fi action flick led by Adam Driver. He plays a man named Mills from the planet Somaris; on a space expedition, he crash-lands on a planet he doesn't know to be Earth. It's a prehistoric Earth, in fact, where dinosaurs still rule the jungle. Mills thinks he's the only person who survived the crash, but he soon realizes that a young girl named Koa (Greenblatt) made it, too. If they have any hope of being rescued, they need to traverse the dangerous terrain to reach an escape pod atop a mountain.

"65" is a simple film, featuring a very clear, linear narrative: Mills and Koa need to reach a spot on a map, but there are dangerous obstacles in their way. It feels derivative, admittedly, and a little safe.

Nevertheless, the movie is very well-executed for what it is. It's the kind of movie that knows what it's setting out to do, and it doesn't try to do anything more. The dinosaur sequences don't disappoint, thankfully, and neither do the film's two leads. Koa is mostly nonverbal, especially at first, and Greenblatt does an excellent job portraying her dawning horror at their situation without using words. Adam Driver is, of course, Adam Driver, always reliable, and "65" is a worthwhile watch for him, if nothing else.

Many of the movies on this list are, admittedly, "bad." They're all still worth watching, but I wouldn't necessarily call them all "secretly good." That's emphatically not the case with "Underwater," which is just a straight-up great movie.

Intriguingly, "Underwater" is a movie without a first act. We join mechanical engineer Norah Price (Kristen Stewart) in media res, slightly before an earthquake damages the deep-water research site where she's stationed. From that moment on, we're off to the races. Alongside a cast that includes Vincent Cassel, John Gallagher Jr., and Jessica Henwick, Stewart's character must cross the depths of the ocean floor to reach safety. That's especially dangerous because the underwater station isn't just coming apart at the seams thanks to an earthquake. This is a creature-feature, and there's something out there in the water.

What starts as a thriller eventually becomes something more akin to cosmic horror, and it's incredible to witness the way director William Eubank continuously dials up the suspense. This is not a movie for anyone who deals with claustrophobia; the darkness and pressure at the bottom of the ocean are suffocating thanks to numerous shots that take us inside Norah's helmet. It's all powered by a bravura performance from Stewart, who manages to convey the brawny physicality of her character as much as her utter terror. With many of the other films on this list, I can understand the complaints. With "Underwater," I'm confident stating that the critics got it wrong.

If "Replicas" is easily the worst movie on this list and "Underwater" the best, "Event Horizon" is somewhere near the top. Understandably, audiences sometimes feel tricked when a movie starts out one way and becomes something altogether different. If you go into "Event Horizon" expecting that transition, though, you may find yourself appreciating the film's atmospheric descent into madness.

The movie is about a group of astronauts sent to rendezvous with a ship they once thought lost. Instead, they find evidence that the crew of the Event Horizon went mad, perhaps driven to ruin by an evil entity that managed to make its way aboard the ship. This is basically a haunted house movie set in space. Is it an alien, or perhaps a demon? Did they travel through some kind of wormhole, or was it a portal to hell?  A talented cast that includes Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, Jason Isaacs, and Joely Richardson help sell the movie's slow slide from sci-fi to horror.

Sometimes, all a movie needs in order to justify its existence is an indelible, unforgettable image, and by the end, "Event Horizon" has several. A lot of the gory bits are downright brutal, making "Event Horizon" a must-see for a certain kind of horror fan who revels in bloody insanity like this. Thanks to a rushed production schedule, a quick edit, and missing footage, one even gets the sense that the movie itself is going insane alongside its characters.

Occasionally, through no fault of its own, a film receives bad reviews simply because of when it's released. That's the case with "Project Almanac," a found-footage movie that hit way too late in the found-footage cycle of the early 2010s to make much of an impact. Whereas the majority of found-footage movies are horror films, "Project Almanac" applies the filming style to a sci-fi story about a high school kid named Jonny (David Raskin) who discovers time machine blueprints among his scientist father's belongings. Found footage seemed played-out at the time, and "Project Almanac" got a critical drubbing as a result.

There's a lot to enjoy about the movie, however, especially for found-footage fans. (We exist!) The cast is all likable, including Amy Landecker and "Single Drunk Female" star Sofia Black-D'Elia. It's also interesting to watch a sci-fi found footage film try to answer the two most common questions that plague similar horror movies: why did they keep filming, and how did all of this footage end up in our hands? Those questions turn out to be the key to the whole timeline-twisting endeavor; for a time-travel movie, its internal logic is impressively consistent, and the found footage form is precisely what lets us track the temporal comings and goings. Though it may feel like it adds up to less than the sum of its parts, those individual parts still make this a time travel trip worth taking.