Alex Garland is a highly skilled filmmaker and creative who first began as a novelist and screenwriter, often collaborating with director Danny Boyle on his stories. Ever since his directorial debut in 2014, Garland has quickly risen to become one of the most influential storytellers in cinema. His brilliant writing in the genres of sci-fi and psychological drama can affect you in ways no other films have.
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Garland’s movies are filled with deeper messages and criticisms about the current state of our society, and the way he crafts his films in the fictional space around those ideas is masterful. He’s also since branched into the war genre with A24’s Civil War and the 2025 film, Warfare, co-directed with Iraq war veteran Ray Mendoza. Here are all his exciting and mind-bending projects, ranked.
Before helming his own projects as a director, Alex Garland’s writing can be seen in the films 28 Days Later, 28 Years Later, Dredd, Sunshine, The Beach, Never Let Me Go, and The Tesseract. Garland also worked as a video game writer on Ninja Theory’s games Enslaved: Odyssey to the West and 2013’s DmC: Devil May Cry.
5
Civil War
“Would You Take My Picture If I Got Shot?”
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Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny, Wagner Moura, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Nick Offerman, Sonoya Mizuno, Jesse Plemons, Nelson Lee, Evan Lai, Jefferson White, and Alexa Mansour |
2024 |
81% |
7 |
HBO Max |
Civil War is Alex Garland’s most political movie, but it’s not hard to see why he felt like now was the right time to bring such a story to the big screen. The film imagines what would become of the US were a second modern civil war to take place under a president who’s a clear tyrant operating outside the Constitution. This premise presents a wildly far-fetched fantasy or alternate dystopian reality, and hopefully, it stays that way and doesn’t age as a documentary.
Garland purposely keeps the details of America’s new Civil War extremely vague, so as not to pinpoint one side as the direct cause of it, and you’re thrown right into the middle of the conflict. Instead of soldiers fighting on the battlefields across the US, the movie follows a team of reporters from various outlets who are traveling to Washington, D.C. The resistance forces are attempting to seize the White House and take back the government.
Therefore, the movie isn’t super suspenseful and the first two-thirds are mainly about observing journalists while on the road through a war-torn US. However, the finale ups the suspense with the breaching of the White House, the harrowing visual of a mass grave on US soil that is sure not to leave your mind anytime soon, and an ending moment that hauntingly calls back to a line of dialogue shared between Kirsten Dunst’s and Cailee Spaeny’s characters earlier in the movie.
4
Men
“No, No, No, No. Mustn’t Do That. Forbidden Fruit.”
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Jessie Buckley, Rory Kinnear, Paapa Essiedu, Gayle Rankin, Sarah Twomey, Sonoya Mizuno, and Zak Rothera-Oxley |
2022 |
69% |
6 |
VOD |
You’ll probably find Men to be the weirdest movie written and directed by Alex Garland, but it’s also one with a compelling message about toxic masculinity that’s told through the genre of folk horror and surreal psychological thriller. The movie also boasts some of the most incredible cinematography and visuals you’ve seen from Garland, as well as remarkably eerie and chilling performances from just the main duo of Jessie Buckley (also starring in The Dark Pictures Anthology) and Rory Kinnear.
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Jessie Buckley plays Harper Marlowe, who drives to a stunningly green retreat in the English countryside in the aftermath of her husband’s suicide. As she tries to enjoy her stay and not think too much about the tragic day she lost him, the village forcibly reminds her of the past, and you’ll discover more about their troubled relationship through flashbacks.
The oddest part about the village where Harper resides is that all the men there seem to be the same, resembling different clone-like versions of Rory Kinnear who stalk and intimidate her. This is precisely the message Garland tries to convey in the film, using the concept of the mythological Green Man, who then appears in the final part of the film to give you one of the most grotesque, disturbing, unforgettable, and symbolic ending sequences of any A24 film.
3
Annihilation
“Our Bodies And Our Minds Will Be Fragmented Into Their Smallest Parts Until Not One Part Remains… Annihilation.”
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Natalie Portman, Oscar Isaac, Tessa Thompson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Sonoya Mizuno, Benedict Wong, David Gyasi, Gina Rodriguez, Tuva Novotny, Sammy Hayman, and Josh Danford |
2018 |
88% |
6.8 |
Paramount+ |
Annihilation is a Lovecraftian story adapted from the sci-fi novel written by Jeff VanderMeer as part of his Southern Reach series. The film is a sci-fi horror that can be described as a mix of Lovecraft’s Color Out of Space, Tarkovsky’s Stalker, and The Last of Us, featuring a mysterious area known as the Shimmer where the Earth’s ecology has mutated and become dangerous.
Heading into the Shimmer is a team of female scientists assembled by Jennifer Jason Leigh’s Dr. Ventress. One of the scientists on the team, Lena, played by Natalie Portman, had a husband, Kane, who went missing in the Shimmer and arrived shortly before their expedition in a bad state. One of the film’s central mysteries revolves around what happened to Kane while he was missing in the zone.
Once inside the Shimmer, Ventress and her team encounter deadly mutated creatures, such as albino alligators and bears, and also come across weird fungal growths all over the environment. The alien species inhabiting the Shimmer are almost reminiscent of those seen in Under the Skin and something more Lynchian, leading to a shocking twist and an ending that perfectly satisfies the story.
2
Devs
“The Universe Is Deterministic. It’s Godless And Neutral And Defined Only By Physical Laws.”
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Sonoya Mizuno, Karl Glusman, Nick Offerman, Alison Pill, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Jin Ha, Zach Grenier, Amaya Mizuno-André, Jefferson Hall, Georgia King, Linnea Berthelsen, Aimee Mullins, Alejandro De Mesa, Akshay Kumar, and Janet Mock |
2020 |
82% |
7.6 |
Hulu, Dinsey+ |
Devs was Alex Garland’s first foray into television, and the story is structured as an eight-episode miniseries. It’s a detailed and complex sci-fi show about a very shady tech company called Amaya operating on the gorgeous campus of what is actually the University of California, Santa Cruz. The themes are very philosophical and thought-provoking, posing questions about free will and determinism, and there is a very menacing and tragic narrative at the heart of it.
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Devs starts as a tale of corporate espionage and sci-fi mystery but grows into something much deeper and more profound. The plot mainly focuses on one woman’s quest to uncover the sinister secrets behind the algorithm the company developed while investigating the suspicious death of her boyfriend, a fellow dev within the company. And if you’re an alumnus of UC Santa Cruz, this show will be like you never left campus. Many locations are utilized throughout, including the McHenry Library.
Nick Offerman plays a convincing and intimidating villain in his character Forest, his tragic past largely shaping his pursuits with his tech. You also have Garland’s frequent collaborator Sonoya Mizuno in the lead role of engineer Lily Chan. The supporting cast of notable stars is fantastic as well, and the set design is impeccable, completely mesmerizing, and immerses you in the setting of a quantum computing tech lab.
1
Ex Machina
“Isn’t It Strange, To Create Something That Hates You?”
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Rotten Tomatoes Score |
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Alicia Vikander, Domhnall Gleeson, Oscar Isaac, and Sonoya Mizuno |
2014 |
92% |
7.7 |
Paramount+ |
Garland’s directorial debut is still the best film he’s ever conceived. Ex Machina is one of the most exceptional movies to explore the dangers of AI, and also one that pretty much feels like where our own future is headed. With a minimal cast and some very effective writing, cinematography, and Oscar-winning VFX, Garland has achieved a sci-fi movie masterpiece, easily the best of the 2010s.
Ex Machina feels like a longer and more elevated episode of Black Mirror, primarily focusing on three characters – Nathan, Caleb, and Ava. Nathan is a reclusive engineer who developed a lifelike humanoid robot he calls Ava, and Caleb is a programmer and a test subject for Nathan to study Ava’s interactions with him. Eventually, Caleb and Ava develop a bond that puts the whole experiment in jeopardy.
There are many memorable scenes, and Ex Machina delivers one of the best character performances for actor Oscar Isaac as Nathan, even more so than his turn as Kane in Garland’s Annihilation. As always with Garland, you’re in for some shocking twists along the way, with an ending that parallels that of HBO’s Westworld, making you eagerly want to see more of Ava’s journey.
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