A new month means new streaming options and with it being November, that can get a little tricky. We’re past Halloween which means that the prevalence of horror and thriller offerings across the free and paid streaming platforms is behind us (though there are still plenty of both categories if you’re looking for them,) but we’re also entering the Christmas holiday season. That means just about every streamer has started to add movies celebrating the most wonderful time of the year. Don’t get us wrong — we love a good holiday movie. There’s nothing quite like putting on a Christmas classic and enjoying a movie tradition with family and friends, but sometimes you want something else, especially if you are a sci-fi or fantasy fan.
Fortunately, even with the holidays right around the corner, all of the streamers still have some great sci-fi and fantasy offerings for November. That includes some underrated gems, both in terms of television series and movies. Here are seven options you can choose from that are arriving on the different platforms this month, just in case you don’t want to get into the Christmas spirit just yet.
With Dune: Part Three headed to theaters on December 18th, a great sci-fi/fantasy choice to stream this month would be the 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s iconic story. The 1984 Dune is a movie that may have disappointed when it was released originally, but in the decades since has found its place with audiences who are willing to overlook its weaknesses — which include deviations from the source material and pacing — to celebrate what it did well.
David Lynch’s Dune told the story of Paul Atreides’ rise in one complete arc, which was really nice. The film’s cast was outstanding with some solid performances (which yes, includes Kyle MacLachlan’s Paul and the late Sir Patrick Stewart’s Gurney Halleck. The score is also incredible and remains pretty great to this day. You definitely should give this one a watch. It is streaming on HBO Max this month.
I will die on this hill: iZombie is not only a great comics adaptation, but it’s just a great television series in general. Starring Rose McIver, iZombie debuted on The CW in 2015 and ran for five seasons. The series follows Olivia “Liv” Moore (McIver), a Seattle PD medical examiner who gets turned into a zombie at a party and ends up using her newfound zombie powers to help solve murders after eating victim’s brains. The story gets much larger than that over time — the story eventually includes more zombies, a government coverup, the smuggling of people who want to become zombies, you name it.
The show is a lot of fun, but has some really serious moments, too. It makes for an interesting counterpoint to most other zombie media, however, which is what I think makes this show so good. Most zombie shows are things like The Walking Dead or The Last of Us where they’re threats or much darker with a turn towards horror. This treats zombies as something completely different and it’s refreshing. And funny, too. You can stream all five seasons on Prime Video this month.
While Project Hail Mary had moviegoers locked in and appreciating hard sci-fi — and for good reason, it’s an excellent film — Moon is a movie that is every bit a masterpiece but doesn’t get nearly enough attention. Released in 2009, the film stars Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell, a man who is stationed alone at a facility based on the moon. He’s there for a three-year solitary work contract, but as his contract starts to come to an end, he discovers he was never actually meant to leave as well as a much darker, harder truth about everything.
The movie is very well done and Rockwell’s performance in particular is fantastic. This isn’t a cheerful movie, but it is very good, particularly if you are a fan of space-bases sci-fi stories. If you haven’t already seen this one, you definitely should check this one out and it’s free to stream on Pluto TV this month.
Deja Vu lands on this list because I don’t think a lot of people immediately clock it as sci-fi. Most people classify it as an action film and there is absolutely plenty of that, but it is definitely sci-fi and a good one at that. Released in 2006, the film stars Denzel Washington, Paula Patton, Jim Caviezel, Val Kilmer, Adam Goldberg, and Bruce Greenwood, and follows an ATF agent (Washington) who travels back in time as he tries to stop the bombing of a ferry in New Orleans in an effort to save a woman he’s fallen in love with.
It’s an instance where time travel is a significant component of the movie, but the action still seems to overshadow it, which makes for a cool balance of elements. It doesn’t work perfectly, but it’s still a fun watch and a lot of fun and since it’s streaming for free on Tubi this month, now is a perfect time to check it out.
Remember when we all thought that the world might end in 2012 because of the Mayan calendar? Well, we’re still here and the world didn’t actually end, but we did get an underrated disaster film out of it. In 2008 we got the aptly titled 2012. Directed by Roland Emmerich, the film stars John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Thandiwe Newton, Danny Glover, and Woody Harrelson and follows various characters — though primarily Cusack’s novelist Jackson Curtis and Ejiofor’s geologist Adrian Helmsley — as they fight to survive an absolutely wild sequence of natural disasters that include but are not limited to volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and megatsunamis.
The movie is fairly predictable — you have a doomsday scenario where the rich and the governments have been planning ahead with some sort of safety plan (in this case arks) leaving everyone else to fight for survival, but the film has some interesting personal and human stories as well as some pretty cool disaster scenes. While this movie is usually considered more of an action or disaster film, it’s also a little sci-fi in how some of these disasters play out. This month, you can stream it on Peacock.
Okay, I admit it. Underrated might be debatable when it comes to Yellowjackets and its inclusion on this list. The series started off strong with massive critical acclaim for its first season, but it’s also suffered from diminishing returns across seasons two and three as things got more and more complicated and, at times, very weird. But the series returns for its fourth and final season on November 20th on Paramount+ and the hope is that we will finally get answers and a satisfying conclusion.
The series is split between two timelines. One is in the 1990s and follows a high school girls’ soccer team as they survive in the wilderness following a plane crash while the other is 25 years later and centers around the survivors as they deal with life in the aftermath. Throw in some weird happenings in the wilderness, while the show might not call itself sci-fi, it definitely has a sci-fi horror fantasy vibe to it and we’re still really confused about everything that’s going on. That’s why we’re looking forward to this final season. We want answers as much as anyone else. The Season 4 premiere drops November 20th on Paramount+ Premium.
There are a lot of disaster movies on this list, but if we’re being honest, there are some great disaster movies in the sci-fi/fantasy category that are available to stream this month and we’ve saved one of the best ones ever made for the top spot on this list: The Day After Tomorrow. Released in 2004 and, interestingly, also a Roland Emmerich film, the movie stars Dennis Quaid and Jack Gyllenhaal and follows a paleoclimatologist (Quaid), who makes his way from Washington to New York to save his son (Gyllenhaal) after a new ice age is triggered by the disruption of the North Atlantic Ocean circulation.
The film is full of scientific inaccuracies and is very over dramatic at more than a few points, but it’s also really well done. The global climatological disasters are stunning, the threats feel real, the performances are fantastic, and the questions it raises about climate change still resonate more than 20 years later. If anything, they might feel more timely now. It’s a solid watch and this month, you can find it on Netflix.
What will you be streaming in November? Let us know in the comments.
