20 best movies like Approaching the Unknown (2016)

When a group of close-knit friends assemble for the marriage of Skylar and Dan, they have no idea they will witness The Rapture and face a series of catastrophic events turning the celebration into a life-or-death struggle.

Already deep into a second Cold War, Britain’s Ministry of Defense seeks a game-changing weapon. Programmer Vincent McCarthy unwittingly provides an answer in The Machine, a super-strong human cyborg. When a programming bug causes the prototype to decimate his lab, McCarthy takes his obsessive efforts underground, far away from inquisitive eyes.

After NASA picks up a trio of mysterious signals from within our own solar system, astronaut Roger Nelson is dispatched on a multi-year solo mission aboard the Magellan spacecraft to investigate the sources.

The explorer craft USS Palomino is returning to Earth after a fruitless 18-month search for extra-terrestrial life when the crew comes upon a supposedly lost ship, the USS Cygnus, hovering near a black hole. The ship is controlled by Dr. Hans Reinhardt and his monstrous robot companion, but the initial wonderment and awe the Palomino crew feel for the ship and its resistance to the power of the black hole turn to horror as they uncover Reinhardt's plans.

After losing contact with Earth, Astronaut Lee Miller becomes stranded in orbit alone aboard the International Space Station. As time passes and life support systems dwindle, Lee battles to maintain his sanity - and simply stay alive. His world is a claustrophobic and lonely existence, until he makes a strange discovery aboard the ship.

In the year 2022, a ruthless prison warden has created the ultimate solution for his most troublesome and violent inmates: Absolom, a secret jungle island where prisoners are abandoned and left to die. But Marine Captain John Robbins, convicted of murdering a commanding officer, is determined to escape the island in order to reveal the truth behind his murderous actions and clear his name.

In the near future, 10 death row convicts are forced to compete in a virtual reality game that pits them against dinosaurs and each other.

After a massive earthquake destroys Los Angeles, a new order is formed. But disagreement among the ranks leads to more war and disruption, and The Last Patrol must bring order if there's to be any hope for the future.

When the Sun begins to expand in such a way that it will inevitably engulf and destroy the Earth in a hundred years, united mankind finds a way to avoid extinction by propelling the planet out of the Solar System using gigantic engines, moving it to a new home located four light years away, an epic journey that will last thousands of years.

A story from the life in the beginning of XX century based on the theater play by Maxim Gorky.

No meteorites hit Earth, no terrorists put the world in danger, no atomic war was started, but something did go wrong. Contact between most towns on Earth has been severed. A small ring-like area in Eastern Europe still has electricity, and maybe even life is being reported from the Space. What military forces find outside the Ring is shocking. There are dead corpses everywhere: in stores, in cars, on roads, in hospitals and railway stations. Who or what is destroying all life on Earth? How long will the last outpost of mankind survive?

In the future, Earth is overcrowded and the population relies on distant bases to be fed. In the Saturn 3 station, Major Adam and the scientist Alex, who is also his lover and has never been on Earth, have been researching hydroponics for three years in the base alone with their dog Sally. Meanwhile, the psychotic Captain Benson fails the mental test required to travel to Saturn 3 and kills his replacement, Captain James, taking his place in the mission of assembling and programming the Demi-God series robot Hector to replace one of the scientists in Saturn 3. On the arrival, the mentally disturbed Captain Benson becomes sexually obsessed for Alex. Then he uses an interface to link his brain to program Hector, but incapable to control his emotions, he transfers his homicidal tendency and insanity to Hector. Now Major Adam and Alex are trapped in the station with a dangerous psychopath robot.

Earth as we know it is gone. A virus has destroyed the planet and rendered all its women infertile, all but one. An elite team of soldiers are tasked with bringing the woman to safety on the newly habitable Earth Two. But when they are forced underground they find themselves fighting for survival from an bloodthirsty creature in a maze of ever shrinking tunnels. As the team's ranks start to dwindle, the tunnels shrink and the ammunition run out, the crawl for survival becomes more and more desperate.

An apocalyptic story set in the furthest reaches of our planet, in a stark desert landscape where humanity is broken, and most everyone is crazed fighting for the necessities of life. Within this world exist two rebels on the run who just might be able to restore order. There's Max, a man of action and a man of few words, who seeks peace of mind following the loss of his wife and child in the aftermath of the chaos. And Furiosa, a woman of action and a woman who believes her path to survival may be achieved if she can make it across the desert back to her childhood homeland.

ZOMBEX tells the story of a post-Katrina New Orleans as it deals with a new disaster, a zombie apocalypse. NOLA residents are no longer experiencing the depression and post-traumatic stress due to the trauma of the hurricane, thanks to the revolutionary ZOMBEX - a rogue, yet, "clinically-proven" anti-depressant pharmaceutical manufactured by a nefarious organization. For those who call the Big Easy their home, everything is just now turning around for them. Or, could it just be the drug, ZOMBEX, talking... Just as things are turning around for the city and its people, they once again must face a disaster of epic proportions. Only this time, they're dealing with the prospect of losing the people of New Orleans as they turn into the city's walking dead.

When a group of elite online gamers each receive a mysterious invitation to trial a state-of-the-art virtual reality video game, it’s a dream come true and impossible to resist. Arriving at the test site, the group step into hi-tech gear and prepare for a revolutionary, next-level gaming experience that brings modern warfare to life with frightening realism. At first it’s a unique and exhilarating experience. But what starts out like a dream encounter with cutting edge technology quickly takes a turn for the sinister. Once the group are attacked by enemy combatants, they soon realize this is no game after all. Make a mistake here and you pay with your life. Now these masters of the shoot ‘em up will have to fight for survival within a game gone bad, but this time it’s for real.

A scientist readies a boat after his warnings of an Earth-destroying flood are ignored. However, after the disasters reach a peak level of destruction those who maligned the scientist now turn to him in desperation, as he and other refugees look to save the world and stop the disaster using the two Supercolliders on opposite sides of the Atlantic.

Officially, Apollo 17 was the last manned mission to the moon. But a year later in 1973, three American astronauts were sent on a secret mission to the moon funded by the US Department of Defense. What you are about to see is the actual footage which the astronauts captured on that mission. While NASA denies it's authenticity, others say it's the real reason we've never gone back to the moon.

A group of friends uncover an otherworldly object in a rural field, which they soon discover holds greater secrets than they could imagine.

When a crisis threatens to destroy their high school, four teens hatch a daring plan to raise $10 million. Step one? Breaking into the U.S. Mint.

Fifty years into the future, the sun is dying, and Earth is threatened by arctic temperatures. A team of astronauts is sent to revive the Sun — but the mission fails. Seven years later, a new team is sent to finish the mission as mankind’s last hope.

Set in a near-future, militarized world marked by closed borders, virtual labor and a global digital network that joins minds and experiences, three strangers risk their lives to connect with each other and break the barriers of technology.

Set in the aftermath of an oppressive class war, a pregnant officer aboard an escape pod must struggle to survive with her remaining crew when a mysterious and vicious life form attacks, determined to become the dominant species.

Interstellar chronicles the adventures of a group of explorers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage.

When an energy experiment goes haywire, a rash of massive hurricanes rips across North America. A high school science teacher must get his family to safety before the hurricanes merge, creating a "hypercane" with the power to wipe the US off the map.

A father and son go on the run after the dad learns his child possesses special powers.

A psychiatrist is compelled by his patient, an obsessive mathematician, to consider the existence of a secret integer between three and four.

Robert Neville, a doctor, due to an experimental vaccine, is the only survivor of an apocalyptic war waged with biological weapons. The plague caused by the war has killed everyone else except for a few hundred deformed, nocturnal people calling themselves "The Family". The plague has caused them to become sensitive to light, as well as homicidally psychotic.

Cobb, a skilled thief who commits corporate espionage by infiltrating the subconscious of his targets is offered a chance to regain his old life as payment for a task considered to be impossible: "inception", the implantation of another person's idea into a target's subconscious.

Set in the 22nd century, when a battered salvage ship sends out a distress signal, the seasoned crew of the rescue hospital ship Nova-17 responds. What they find is a black hole--that threatens to destroy both ships--and a mysterious survivor whose body quickly mutates into a monstrous and deadly form.

The world watches in awe as the Roebling Clipper is launched into space. Using state-of-the-art scalar engines to fly around the Moon and back in just hours, the maiden voyage of the first-ever trans-lunar passenger ship is about to make history. Among those on board: First Lady Simone Mathany, space-exploration entrepreneur Steve Roebling, Dr. Denise Balaban, pilot Fiona Henslaw, and a very lucky lottery winner. But while en route, a massive solar flare sparks a cosmic-ray burst that accelerates Aurora’s engine and blows the ship away from Earth’s orbit. Now out of control, it’s hurtling straight for the sun.

A spacecraft traveling to a distant colony planet and transporting thousands of people has a malfunction in its sleep chambers. As a result, two passengers are awakened 90 years early.

Dr. Ryan Stone, a brilliant medical engineer on her first Shuttle mission, with veteran astronaut Matt Kowalsky in command of his last flight before retiring. But on a seemingly routine spacewalk, disaster strikes. The Shuttle is destroyed, leaving Stone and Kowalsky completely alone-tethered to nothing but each other and spiraling out into the blackness of space. The deafening silence tells them they have lost any link to Earth and any chance for rescue. As fear turns to panic, every gulp of air eats away at what little oxygen is left. But the only way home may be to go further out into the terrifying expanse of space.

A three-person crew on a mission to Mars faces an impossible choice when an unplanned passenger jeopardizes the lives of everyone on board.

An astronaut travels to the outer edges of the solar system to find his father and unravel a mystery that threatens the survival of our planet. He uncovers secrets which challenge the nature of human existence and our place in the cosmos.

Astronauts search for solutions to save a dying Earth by searching on Mars, only to have the mission go terribly awry.

When contact is lost with the crew of the first Mars expedition, a rescue mission is launched to discover their fate.

Survivors of a nuclear attack are grouped together for days in the basement of their apartment building, where fear and dwindling supplies wear away at their dynamic.

After spending several months in an orbiting lab, three astronauts prepare to return to Earth only to find their de-orbit thrusters won't activate. After initially thinking they might have to abandon them in orbit, NASA decides to launch a daring rescue. Their plans are complicated by a Hurricane headed towards the launch site—and a shrinking air supply in the astronauts' capsule.

When a deep space fishing vessel is robbed by a gang of pirates, the Captain makes a daring decision to go after a rare and nearly extinct species. His obsession propels them further into space as the crew spins toward mutiny and betrayal.