With a stark black-and-white palette that resembles manga art come to life, Tomasz Popakul’s Black tells a Twilight Zone-ish tale of two astronauts who can never return home. High above the Earth’s surface on an orbiting space station, they can see the mushroom clouds that are ripping the planet apart.
In 1977, NASA launched its Voyager probes—famously carrying gold-plated records filled with earthly information, just in case they encountered any intelligent life among the stars. Raphael Rogers’ short film Scavenger asks: What if the records actually fell into some curious alien hands?
Sprung from the cover of a comic book with the help of some old-school 3D glasses, the tiny hero at the center of Captain 3D knows what he has to do: save the shrieking damsel from the clutches of an octopus monster. Piece of cake, right?
There are a handful of scenes scattered throughout Lionsgate’s sci-fi thriller from directors Jonathan and Josh Baker that are direct callbacks to Bag Man, the twin directors’ 2014 short about a young boy hiding a dangerous secret from the world. In those moments, you can see how the Bakers have grown as filmmakers in…
Bag Man is the 2014 short film co-written and directed by brothers Jonathan and Josh Baker that’s the basis for their new feature film Kin. It stuck with me far longer than I thought, especially given its compact 15-minute runtime. Its dialogue is sparse, its visuals are familiar, and the larger story it hints at is…
James Kennedy’s CTRL Z introduces us to best friends Ed and Carrie, as well as Sarah, the object of Ed’s unrequited affections. Can his do-over device (“It’s not a time machine!”) help him win the girl of his dreams—and will Carrie ever forgive him for dragging her along on this weird-science mission?
We’ve featured the work of Brett Foxwell on this site before, but the filmmaker’s latest stop-motion masterpiece, Fabricated, is extra-special and we’re thrilled to debut it here on io9. It’s a labor of love that took him 10 years to complete, a gorgeous sci-fi tale about a mechanical world trying to figure out how to…
What happens when you take the plot of Rian Johnson’s directorial debut, high school noir Brick, and run it through the current state of Star Wars fandom? You get Star Wars: Revenge of the Incels, a clever short film that works as a parody, a statement, and a love letter.
The Cloverfield universe might have hit a major snag with the latest film, Cloverfield: Paradox, but a new fan film is (unofficially) continuing the saga in a way that makes me want to give J.J. Abrams a call and tell him: “Hey, J.J! It’s your cousin, Marvin Abrams. You know that new film you’ve been looking for? Well…
Sometimes, you’ve got the bandwidth for watching the extended cut of a superhero movie plus all its special features, or binge-watching an entire TV season. But other times, you only need a quick fix. We’re here to help with 10 of the best new sci-fi, fantasy, and horror shorts around.
We’ll have more on Castle Rock, Hulu’s Stephen King-inspired series, very soon—including a review of the eerie first episode. But first, here’s an early treat for fans of King, true crime, and spooky history, in the form of a Hulu-produced short documentary investigating how Maine itself has inspired the horror author…
For years, fans have wanted Nathan Fillion to take on the ludonarrative dissonance-championing adventures of Uncharted’s Nathan Drake in live-action. Now, they’re getting their wish...but it’s not as part of a major new movie, instead, we’re getting a fan film.
Hold up, what exactly is going on here? Filmmaker Ryan Connolly’s newest short film BALLiSTIC expands an ongoing scifi series that’s remained as beautiful as it is bewildering. But even if the saga’s mystery still doesn’t make a lot of sense yet, there’s still some amazing acting, camerawork, and special effects in…
Most zombie tales are set just as the outbreak is happening, as desperate people—often families, as seen in recent films like Cargo and Train to Busan, but going all the way back to Night of the Living Dead—try to protect their loved ones. This short puts a refreshingly different perspective on the familiar.
There’s a new docudrama coming out tomorrow about the life of Ulugh Beg, an obscure medieval astronomer who made Samarkand, now Uzbekistan, a thriving center of culture and science in the 15th century.
Monster movies, especially Japanese ones, have had a long love affair with practical effects work. But short film Kaiju Bunraku, which made its debut at Sundance last year (and is now finally online), takes that relationship and runs with it, in a beautifully stylized story told entirely with puppets.
At some point, you’ve probably found yourself mindlessly scrolling around Google Maps’ satellite view while bored at work. But artist Páraic McGloughlin saw Google Maps as more than just a distraction, and by painstakingly capturing very specific road layouts and agricultural features, he was able to create a series…
Camille Boyer and cinematographer Nik Mirus worked with a Montreal-based agency called Caravane to create a surreal short film called Club Palace. It looks like a computer animation student’s final-year project, but in reality it was all filmed using real-life miniatures and clever practical effects.
Individually, these random, frustrating occurrences of everyday life aren’t enough to ruin your day. But when compiled into a short film that’s aptly titled Life Is Pain, this collection of ‘first world problems’ will undoubtedly leave you feeling frustrated as you’re reminded of life’s endless little annoyances.
