The most underrated space movie on Prime Video right now will blow your mind

If you’re looking for a great outer space show or movie to watch on Amazon Prime Video, your first port of call is always going to be The Expanse, a grounded six-season space opera and one of the few sci-fi shows on TV that can measure up to modern classics like Andor. Beyond that, the pickings for original space shows or movies on Prime Video are pretty slim, especially if you’re looking to discover something that isn’t already big.

However, if you open your mind a little bit, there’s some quality stuff out there, and one movie in particular that deserves far more fans than it has.

The Vast of Night is the most underrated space movie on Prime Video

Watch The Vast of Night on Prime Video

The Vast of Night is a sci-fi drama set in the 1950s, vaguely based on the real-world Kecksburg UFO incident of 1965. A pair of friends living in Cayuga, New Mexico—disc jockey Everett (Jake Horowitz) and switchboard operator Fay (Sierra McCormick)—are working at their jobs when they hear something weird over the airwaves. After some digging, they nudge into a conspiracy that involves a government cover-up, missing persons, and unidentified flying objects.

The Vast of Night didn’t make a big splash when it debuted in 2020, but it should have. The movie is creepy, stylish, perfectly paced, and hugely inventive. The Vast of Night was made for only $700,000, a minuscule budget compared to most sci-fi movies, but it manages to outdo many of them in scale and impact. It keeps you guessing the entire time; are the aliens real? Are the townsfolk panicking over nothing? And the ending will leave you with your hand over your mouth, wondering if you really just saw what you saw.

You may be thinking that The Vast of Night isn’t technically a “space movie” because it isn’t set in space. I respectfully disagree. The Vast of Night is all about the fear of what’s out there beyond the sky. Although it may not be overly optimistic about space travel, the film definitely makes space travel a central focus.

Get in on the ground floor of something exciting with The Vast of Night

Writer-director Andrew Patterson is going places

With its tiny budget, The Vast of Night couldn’t have actually set scenes in outer space if it wanted to, which works in the film’s favor. Sometimes, limited resources force filmmakers to get creative, which is definitely the case here. In one scene, a man calls into Everett’s radio show and details part of the conspiracy he was involved in for Everett’s listeners. The way it’s set up, shot, and paced turns what’s basically several straight minutes of listening to a guy talk into some of the tensest filmmaking you’ve ever seen.

This was writer-director Andrew Patterson’s first movie; he financed it himself. But after a debut like this, he obviously has a bright future. His next film is finally rounding the corner, an original crime drama called The Rivals of Amziah King. This one stars big names like Matthew McConaughey, Kurt Russell, and Cole Sprouse, so clearly some important people took notice of Patterson’s talent after The Vast of Night, even if not enough of the public did.

The Rivals of Amziah King doesn’t have a wide release date yet, but critics who have seen it early can’t stop raving about it. This guy is going places, so you might as well get on the bandwagon now and watch The Vast of Night.

Amazon’s biggest space movie is still ahead of it

Project Hail Mary will satisfy everyone’s sci-fi desires

I may have twisted the definition of “space movie” a bit to rope in The Vast of Night, but you’ll thank me when you see it. Another reason for this pick is that Amazon just doesn’t make many movies set in space, although that’s changing. Easily the biggest swing they’ve taken yet is Project Hail Mary, about a future where the Earth is under threat of destruction, and our only hope is to launch Ryan Gosling into space to figure out what’s going on.

Project Hail Mail is based on a book of the same name by Andy Weir, the guy who wrote The Martian, so you know it’s going to be detailed, engaging, and rooted in real-world science. The movie is scheduled to be released in theaters on March 20, 2026, and will then be available on Prime Video. Maybe the streaming service can become a sci-fi hub yet.

More sci-fi on Prime Video

If you can’t wait that long, you have other options on Prime Video. The Tomorrow War is a schlocky-but-fun sci-fi military drama starring Chris Pratt as a teacher drafted to fight aliens in the future, A Million Miles Away is a biopic about real-life astronaut José M. Hernández, and War Of The Worlds is a god-awful retelling of the classic alien invasion story that may one day join the ranks of cult classics that are so bad they’re good. And of course, there are great sci-fi movies you can watch on other streaming services.

But if you want to have your mind blown by something bracing and new, you need to watch The Vast of Night. You’re welcome.