The Best Low-Budget Sci-Fi Movies

Key Takeaways

• Cube
  was filmed in 2 rooms, cost $249k, grossed $9m, inspired sequels, and reflected ethical dilemmas.
• They Live
  features iconic moments, cost $3.4m, with a unique narrative and minimal set designs.
• Primer’s
  $7k budget, realistic plot, and ethical ramifications of time travel make it a standout science fiction film.

Science fiction is a genre that often comes with a hefty price tag because of the extensive special effects involved. Even before the rise of CGI, which is still expensive, the labor and cost involved in the creation and use of practical effects were also daunting.

However, there are plenty of great science fiction movies that were made on a shoestring budget. Some of these cheap titles ended up being critically acclaimed, cult classics, or popular enough to start a whole franchise.

7 Cube

Production Cost: $249,420

• Director: Vincenzo Natali
• Producer: Cube Libre
• Starring: Nicole de Boer, Nicky Guadagni, David Hewlett, Andrew Miller
• Release Date: September 11, 1998

Cube looks like it was filmed in two rooms because that’s literally how director Vincenzo Natali filmed it. It was a way to keep the cost of the film low, and after the cast was filled with mostly unknown Canadian actors, the total bill barely came out to roughly $250,000, but the movie made $9 million and inspired sequels, remakes, and reboots. One of the most recent examples is the Japanese remake with the same title that was released in 2021.

The concept of the film was inspired by the Hitchcock movie Lifeboat — which includes the same moral dilemma about the good of the many versus the good of the one — and Natali’s need to save money by using minimalist sets. The characters eventually discover that the Cube is one part of a maze made up of many cubes that form an elaborate prison, and escape might be possible once its puzzles are solved.

6 They Live

Production Cost: $3.4 million

• Director: John Carpenter
• Producers: Alive Films, Larry Franco Productions
• Starring: Roddy Piper, Keith David, Meg Foster
• Release Date: November 4, 1988

An iconic movie with a cult following that endures to this day, They Live features all kinds of pop culture lore Easter Eggs. Examples include one of the longest and most brutal fist fights in movie history, some of the most memorable badass quips, and a real WWF star — Rowdy Roddy Piper — as the everyman Nada, who is also the main character. Most of the money in the budget went to the cast, which also included Keith David and Meg Foster.

The sets are simple, featuring alleyways and living rooms, and the aliens’ sophisticated technology is kept from human eyes by clever use of subliminal messaging. The aliens are actively taking over Earth by using the promise of wealth to bribe some of humanity and exploit the rest, and Nada comes across this secret when he steals a box of special sunglasses from a small community church.

5 Primer

Production Cost: $7,000

• Director: Shane Carruth
• Distributor: THINKFilm
• Starring: Shane Carruth, David Sullivan
• Release Date: October 8, 2004

Primer is the first choice for science fiction fans looking for more realistic stories that use hard science as opposed to fantastic or mysterious plotlines. Writer, director, and producer Shane Carruth, who also stars in the film, has a degree in math and worked as an engineer, so the scientific terms and jargon that are part of the film’s dialogue are completely authentic.

The story is about how two engineers, Aaron and Abe, accidentally discover time travel. This leads to several chilling and dangerous implications for the timeline, which they discover after using their experiment to make some money on same-day stock trades. By the end of the movie, Abe has decided the time travel device has to be destroyed, but Aaron has other plans.

4 Mad Max

Production Cost: $260,000

• Director: George Miller
• Producer: Kennedy Miller Productions
• Starring: Mel Gibson, Joanne Samuel, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Steve Bisley
• Release Date: April 12, 1979

The original Mad Max is a movie that launched one of the biggest entertainment franchises of all time. Even when the films were on hiatus for almost 30 years, there was plenty of media in the way of video games and merch for anyone who loved The Wasteland. The resurgence of the Mad Max movies came with Fury Road in 2016, which was also noted for its relatively low budget. In the original film, Max Rockatansky was played by Mel Gibson, long before he was a big name in Hollywood, so his salary didn’t make a dent in the budget.

Chronologically, this is the first movie in the timeline, so it’s about a time before society has broken down completely and civil order is barely hanging on. Max is an idealistic cop who goes from trying to uphold some basic law and order to protecting his young family, and unfortunately, he fails at both.

3 Moon

Production Cost: $5 million

• Director: Duncan Jones
• Producer: Stage 6 Films, Liberty Films, Xingu Films, Limelight
• Starring: Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey, Dominique McElligott, Kaya Scodelario
• Release Date: June 2, 2009

The limited budget of Moon is partly due to the simple sets and limited cast. Although several famous names appear in this movie, most of the focus is on Sam Rockwell, who plays not only the main character Sam Bell, but also his various clones.

Moon takes place in the future when an oil supply crisis makes helium-3, a resource that can be mined on the moon, one of the most valuable substances known to humankind. Lunar Industries invests in building the Sarang station to extract it, and staffs the almost fully-automated station with a single person who thinks they’re just a regular human employee on a long-term work contract. Sam gets into an accident with his lunar rover and discovers that he’s a clone in a long line of clones created to work on the station indefinitely.

2 Coherence

Production Cost: $50,000

• Director: James Ward Byrkit
• Producer: Bellanova Films, Ugly Duckling Films
• Starring: Hugo Armstrong, Nicholas Brendon, Emily Foxler, Elizabeth Gracen
• Release Date: June 20, 2014

This movie was shot without a script or a crew in the writer-director’s own house, so the cost of sets and staff was minimal. The science fiction angle is a philosophical and metaphysical one instead of something that includes flashy technology, which is also why this film was so cheap to make.

What happens in this plot involves the close passing of a comet, multiple timelines, and theoretical concepts like quantum decoherence. Strange events take place during a house party involving a love triangle, a ring, and a drama fueled by the forces of resentment and jealousy.

1 District 9

Production Cost: $30 million

• Director: Neill Blomkamp
• Producer: QED International, WingNut Films, TriStar Pictures
• Starring: Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope, David James, Vanessa Haywood
• Release Date: August 14, 2009

The grassroots marketing campaign that started at 2008’s San Diego Comic-Con was part of the reason District 9 had a smaller budget than other movies with the same level of special effects. Almost every scene includes CGI along with practical effects like costumes and makeup, with money saved by using simple, generic sets and unknown actors.

It’s not just a coincidence that the movie takes place in South Africa. The plot is iterating on real events that took place in Cape Town’s District Six during the years of Apartheid. In the firm’s timeline, the aliens that have arrived on Earth are seen as refugees and the section of town built specifically as a home for them is named District 9.