There’s a reason that sci-fi movies are an absolute dime a dozen at this point, but that still doesn’t mean that even the biggest fan has necessarily seen them all, let alone kept up to speed on the latest big productions as well as the most enjoyable low-budget ones. Here are three sci-fi movies that are streaming for free this August on Amazon Freevee; none of them require a subscription, just that you accord yourself the opportunity to see an ad or two every once in a while. Because that’s how Freevee works: it provides ad-supported free-to-stream content.
One is a take on a character who has been adapted over and over again into television, film and other pop-cultural avenues. The other is a Canadian hidden gem that you probably never saw. The last is the cheapie that you absolutely need on your next watchlist.
Frankenstein (2015)
Frankenstein – Official Trailer 2016
The plot of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a well-trodden ground, yet rarely has it been told. At least, that’s the way it plays in 2015’s Frankenstein. The science-horror feature stars the actress Carrie-Anne Moss, The Acolyte’s Affini, as Elizabeth, wife to Victor Frankenstein (Danny Huston). Together, the scientists bring to life a creature they name Adam (Xavier Samuel), a specimen with the Adonis vibe and the intellect of an infant. Adam starts to develop malformations, and Victor and Elizabeth can’t drown and kill him as they intended, and he escapes.
Tale of a ‘monster’ that is more human than he’s ever been, and who is searching for his place in the world: this was Romanticism in blazing, hammer-swinging form, and a way of giving Frankenstein truer, fuller resonance beyond its pulp-fiction surface. ‘A dazzlingly smart and excruciatingly painful movie,’ said Gareth Jones at Dread Central. He soberly concluded that the film ‘is a reminder that – these supposedly enlightened times notwithstanding – we haven’t come all that far.
Stream Frankenstein on Amazon Freevee.
Radius (2017)
Radius – Official Teaser Trailer
This one is headlined by Diego Klattenhoff (Homeland, The Blacklist) and is a Canadian-made sci-fi thriller about a man who survives a car crash and apparently has no memory of his old life, or who he is, or quite where he is, if Homeland (2011-) and The Blacklist (2013-) told us anything. His name, Liam Hartwell, is in his wallet and thus conclusively his own. Yet everyone he questions about this matter suddenly keels over dead.
The trait she tells him he carries (which he denies) – a naturally occurring virus that kills anyone he touches – turns out to be true. And yet the woman he meets who shares his fate is less sure than him that he’s killed before. She saw him in the car with another woman who died before his eyes, and she says she can tell their stories to the people who lost them. Jane Doe (Charlotte alive, though she seems to be dying before him. That’s why Liam believes her.
The two of them set about trying to work out what is happening, all the while deploying as little violence as possible toward other humans, and causing as little carnage as possible. Critics have generally loved Radius, and audiences have been mixed; worth checking out, if it comes your way. Leigh Monson of Substream Magazine calls it one of ‘the most intriguing films no one saw this year’.
Stream Radius on Amazon Freevee.
Forbidden World (1982)
Forbidden World (1982) Trailer
Now fast forward to 1982, and Forbidden World (known at the time as Mutant) – a sci-fi horror movie with more than a whiff of Galaxy of Terror and a little left-over set dressing from the same starship – and nonetheless a movie with the typical appeal of low-budget B-movie horror, no matter the great disparity in quality between this and the rest.
For those who delight in violent, sex-crazed excess, and who prefer nudity, gore, sex, and artfully free-floating intestines (this is so 1980s!) to expensive CGI graphics, Forbidden World has a certain appealing camp. On the remote desert planet of the mildly imaginative distant future, scientists grow a living life form from a synthetic DNA strain that rapidly mutates and craves human flesh, blood… and reproductive organs, destroying all before it while the lab fizzes and boils. This is pure, cheap escapism – Forbidden World is, for better or worse (or better, because it’s fun to watch and wryly hilarious to those with ironic sensibilities), familiar. It could almost be a remake – Scott Weinberg of FEARnet recently described the movie as a ‘nastier, sillier, cheaper version of Alien’.
Stream Forbidden World on Amazon Freevee.
