5 Great ’90s Sci-fi Movies That Nobody Talks About, Including a Perfect The Matrix Replacement

Science fiction has long been a powerhouse movie genre. Even from the earliest days of cinema, science fiction has given moviegoers some of the most expansive, interesting, and iconic stories to take in, making them question various elements of the human experience as well as pushing filmmaking itself ever forward with new techniques, effects, and more. However, as great decades for sci-fi goes, it’s hard to beat the 1990s. It’s a decade that gave movie fans some of the best sci-fi film offerings ever, with movies like The Matrix, Dark City, Gattaca, 12 Monkeys, and many, many more. Just about every kind of science fiction you can imagine graced the big screen in 1990s and many of those movies remain beloved to this day.

However, there are also some sci-fi movies from the 1990s that we don’t really talk about all that much anymore. These are movies that were great films in their time, though maybe they didn’t perform as well at the box office as others or had an unfortunate release date that saw it overshadowed by something else. These are films that are great watches even decades later and movies you shouldn’t miss — including one that might just be a perfect alternative to The Matrix.

5) The Arrival

Released in 1996, while both films are about aliens, don’t confuse The Arrival with 2016’s Arrival. The Arrival stars Charlie Sheen as Zan Zaminsky, a radio astronomer for SETI who discovers evidence of intelligent alien life 14 light years from Earth. However, Zane is fired soon after his discovery and ends up deciding to investigate on his own. As he does so, Zane finds himself smack in the middle of a conspiracy with global implications. The film underperformed at the box office, but earned some critical acclaim, particularly for how it offered an unexpected spin on alien invasion stories.

What is particularly great about The Arrival is that it is low budget, but surprisingly well executed. Sheen especially is a standout in the role of Zane, bringing a very human and grounded performance to a character that could very easily be written off as a crack pot. The movie is entertaining and suspenseful and while it’s certainly not overly serious, it is also not silly, either. It’s a great balance and very much a good watch.

4) The Thirteenth Floor

1999’s The Thirteenth Floor is a movie that, in a lot of ways, feels like a victim of its release date — it came out shortly after The Matrix and while the two movies are very different, some of their themes are the same. The Thirteenth Floor, which is both a loose adaptation of the 1964 novel Simulacron-3 and a remake of the 1973 miniseries World on a Wire, stars Craig Bierko, Gretchen Mol, Armin Mueller Stahl, Dennis Haysbert, and everyone’s favorite then-future Kingpin, Vincent D’Onofrio. The film follows Douglas Hall (Bierko), the heir to a deceased computer genius who is murdered just as he is on the verge of launching a new virtual reality system. As he is the prime suspect in the murder, Douglas goes on a weird, reality-warping and twisting mission to find out what really happened.

There are some very high concepts in The Thirteenth Floor. While virtual reality is the framework for things, you get a little bit of time travel (albeit via simulation) you also get something of a time travel element with different simulations taking place in different times. There’s also the wild twist that will leave you questioning reality entirety — including the ending of the movie itself. It’s really well done and deserves a lot more appreciation.

3) Existenz

Another late 1990s, entry, Existenz is a movie that was simply ahead of its time. Directed by David Cronenberg, Existenz stars Jennifer Jason Leigh as game designer Allegra Geller who ends up the target of assassins playing the virtual reality game she created. The film also stars Jude Law, Christopher Eccleston, Willem Dafoe, Sarah Polley, Ian Holm, and more. The film didn’t perform well at the box office but did very well with critics — though in retrospect some of the box office disappointment might be attributed to its place in the overall release schedule as it was released very close to The Matrix.

While Existenz was a great movie when it was released — though, keep in mind, this is also a horror movie so it has some pretty intense scenes — it is actually how well it’s aged that makes it something of an underappreciated gem. The film serves as something of an examination of the intersection of technology and reality through a (very twisted) gaming lens. It’s an uncomfortable, but fascinating watch.

2) Virtuosity

If you’ve never heard of Virtuosity, you’re not alone. Despite having a really solid cast, this is a movie that seems to have completely fallen off of everyone’s radar since its release in 1995, which is a shame because it’s actually not only really good but it has some major talent involved. The film stars Denzel Washington, Russell Crow, and Kelly Lynch and follows Parker Barnes (Washington), a disgraced Los Angeles police officer who ends up in prison after killing a terrorist who killed his family. While incarcerated, Barnes is testing a virtual reality training program for police. When the VR serial killer they’re tracking,, SID 6.7 (Crowe) who is an amalgam of the worst serial killers in history, escapes into the real world, Barnes has to hunt him down.

There are some weird elements about Virtuosity that maybe haven’t aged especially well — specifically SID ends up becoming a regenerating android at some point but hey, this is the 1990s — but the story is still really interesting and when you watch it from 2026 and think about the rise of AI, including recent headline-grabbing incidents where different AI escaped their training situations, yeah, Virtuosity is both very interesting and very terrifying.

1) Strange Days

I will genuinely never understand why more people aren’t into Strange Days. The Angela Bassett, Ralph Fiennes, and Juliette Lewis starring film (bonus, the film also features Vincent D’Onofrio) was directed by Kathryn Bigelow from a screenplay written by James Cameron and Jay Cocks and follows former cop Lenny Nero (Fiennes) who deals in black market illicit clips that let people experience other people’s memories — aka SQUID recordings. Lenny ends up being given a disc that contains a rape and murder through the eyes of the perpetrator, kicking off a thriller that sees Lenny drawn into a criminal conspiracy. The film didn’t do well at the box office, but garnered critical praise.

Strange Days is a fascinating film and was even when it was released, but when you look at the movie now, it is especially interesting. While we’re not exactly using SQUID recordings, our current technology including deepfakes and a social media obsession with livestreams and sharing every aspect of our lives feels like a natural extension of the world that Strange Days presented. In a sense, the film is starting to feel less and less like science fiction, which makes it all the more terrifying and interesting in equal measure.