Fantastic fantasy movies offer greater satisfaction than anything.
Netflix may have a limited and declining variety of fantasy films. Still, we found 16 deserving ones, ranging from fantasy/comedy to fantasy/horror, from lavish animation to live-action adventure. Wild imagination, which explores the impossibly difficult to shed light on the everyday problems we all encounter, is the common thread.
The streaming juggernaut is working on a sequel to its first original fantasy feature, The Old Guard. It has recently invested significantly in original fantasy unaired episodes like Shadow & Bone and Sweet Tooth.
With a carefully chosen collection of fantasy movies from around the globe, we have you covered whether you’re looking for something frightful, family-friendly, mind-bending, sad, or pulse-pounding.
Let’s hope that this represents a renewed interest in producing fantasy movies in the future. Enjoy the top 16 fantasy films on Netflix in the interim.
Stardust
Charlie Cox and Claire Danes are the lead actors in this fantastical boy-meets-girl story.
He is a bold young man seeking a legendary treasure to win the most attractive young lady in his tiny English hamlet.
Therefore, they must travel across a mysterious region home to murderous princes, cloud-sailing pirates, and evil witches.
A crazy trip filled with exhilarating action, sly comedy, and passionate romance results from all of this.
Errementari: The Blacksmith and the Devil
This fantasy period movie, which thrusts a brave young girl into a universe of war-torn men and cunning beasts, will appeal to fans of Pan’s Labyrinth.
Errementari: The Blacksmith and the Devil, co-written and created by Paul Urkijo Alijo, takes place in 1835 when Spain’s Basque Country was torn apart by the First Carlist War.
In that place, a blacksmith strikes a bargain with the devil that will have a terrible effect on his community and the life of a brave young girl looking for information about her dearly gone mother.
This captivating movie brings viewers to hell and back by fusing mythology and religious dread with a cheeky sense of humor and a darker adventure thread. Literally!
Okja
If you have ever fantasized about becoming best friends with a mythical creature, you will enjoy every second of this companion adventure from Bong Joon Ho.
This beautiful pair will encounter fervent animal rights activists, a frighteningly vivacious TV personality, and a sophisticated businesswoman whose noble intentions are as hollow as her smiles.
Okja is a crazy trip that transforms fiction into reality as it speeds past lush rainforests, packed shops, and the booming metropolis of New York City.
Night books
A frightening tale that will delight on the family night comes from Brightburn filmmaker David Yarovesky.
Night books, based on J. A. White’s horror-fantasy novel of the same name, is about a Brooklyn bookworm who an evil witch abducts. In exchange for his safety, he is imprisoned in her enchanted apartment and must tell her a brand-new terrifying tale every night. Fortunately, he is not alone.
He receives assistance from a tough fellow prisoner who teaches him how to escape the dangers of this unstable jail and reveals the codes that might free them both!
Night books are a roaring fun time for kids (and adults) who enjoy a good bump in the evening. It is laced with PG-level scares and loads of flair (we’d die for Ritter’s witch costume).
Over the Moon
Do you long for a great song-filled dream journey? Following that, you’ll enjoy the animation musical Over The Moon.
After spending decades working in Disney animation, Glen Keane directed his debut film based on the Chinese mythology of Change, the moon goddess. A 13-year-old girl (Cathy Ang) who chooses to build her rocket to take her to their heavenly deity and a better life finds that bliss is closer than she could have ever imagined.
This Netflix Original features a voice cast that includes Sandra Oh, Kimiko Glenn, Phillipa Soo, John Cho, Margaret Cho, and Ken Jeong, along with pop songs and a tonne of endearing characters, including one with a star-bright pangolin.
Vampires vs. the Bronx
Want to see an action-packed comedy with a biting message about the perils of gentrification that is also a family-friendly fantasy adventure? After that, devour Vampires vs. the Bronx.
The main characters in Oz Perkins’ PG-13 horror-comedy are Afro-Latino kids who understand that the neighborhood is in trouble when there are many missing person posters and wealthy white people showing up with tote bags.
To defeat the bloodsuckers and save their neighborhood, they band together in the style of the Monster Squad. Vampires vs. the Bronx is an enjoyable, quick (only 85 minutes!) flick with a quick wit, a kind heart, a rich sense of ambiance, and an equal admiration for the Blade films and ’80s Amblin.
A Monster Calls
Do you want to read wild and tragic fantasy? If so, you’ll value this touching adaption of Patrick Ness’s well-known book.
Spanish filmmaker J. A. Bayona has established a reputation for creating gripping mother-son stories with the ghost story The Orphanage and the disaster drama The Impossible. In this passage, he carves out the moving tale of a youngster accepting his mother’s terminal sickness.
The youngster makes a connection with a gigantic tree beast that communicates with the comfortingly recognizable snarl of Liam Neeson because he needs a companion and a place to express his grief and wrath.
The titular creature is grounded in reality through photo-realistic computer graphics. Then, fierce stories portrayed in watercolor splashes and ink spills offer a boost of energy and awe.
The end product is a stunning and moving depiction of grief that has left audiences and reviewers in awe.
The Old Guard
Confirm this thrilling action film from critically acclaimed filmmaker Gina Prince-Bythewood for fantasy with a superhero flair.
Andy, the boss of a clandestine group of nearly immortal mercenaries, is portrayed by Charlize Theron. Together, they have worked for generations to prevent the extinction of humanity. This old guard, though, encounters a menace that might rip them to pieces permanently as a new team member is brought on—based on the same-named comic novel by Greg Rucka.
The shiny, bloodless superhero standard gets an R-rating and a harsh edge from The Old Guard.
The massive and gory battle sequences are intense, but the outstanding cast also features Matthias Schoenaerts, Marwan Kenzari, Luca Marinelli, and Chiwetel Ejiofor, which is even more powerful. Together, they convey a subtle sadness that contrasts with the audience known for their colorful capes.
Bleach
There are few things as magical and enjoyable as a live-action manga. Bleach, a manga adaptation of the well-known Japanese comic book series by Tite Kubo, centers on Ichigo Kurosaki, a melancholy adolescent who transforms into a Soul Reaper through a noble sacrifice and a face-twist.
He must deal with all the drama that comes with high school throughout the day.
By night, he must assist good ghosts on their journey to a happy afterlife and fend off evil spirits with his persistent mentor Rukia Kuchiki.
Shinsuke Sato, the director, imbues the movie with an anime-like vitality through snappy visuals, a piece of bouncing music, a lighthearted tone, a bombardment of spooky adversaries, and kicking martial arts action. Stars Sôta Fukushi and Hana Sugisaki provide presentations that are bursting with charm.
Last Action Hero
We suggest this PG-13 Arnold Schwarzenegger romp for a throwback that packs a punch. It’s our dream come true, so Die Hard director John McTiernan has created an adventure to excite children who grew up on action flicks.
Imagine being snatched from your everyday existence and transported into one of your favorite action heroes’ movies. Down-on-his-luck Danny Madigan relishes that thrilling situation and the Terminator icon is the one who portrays his cigar-chomping, quip-spouting hero.
Together, they act out the buddy-cop fantasy that, nearly 30 years later, still makes us laugh with its ridiculous premise, snappy dialogue, and outrageous action.
Also, keep a close watch outside for Ian McKellen as Death from before The Lord of the Rings!
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
It stinks that the popularity of the Holy Grail has diminished part of its brilliance. Nowadays, our earliest memories of hearing words like “flesh wound,” “ni!” or “vast swaths of territory” are frequently of having dumb, obsessed geeks repeat entire sequences to us.
Or, in my case, seems like a naive, obsessed nerd reciting entire passages to strangers.
However, if you attempt to put the oversaturation problem aside, watch the movie again a few years later.
You’ll find new gags that are just as funny and outrageous as the ones we’re all familiar with. The most jam-packed comedy in the entire Python canon is Holy Grail.
Given its notoriety, it’s astonishing how quickly we forget how many gags are in this film.
If you’ve had it with this movie and are completely and irrevocably burned out, watch it once more with commentary to obtain a second level of gratitude for the creativity that went into it.
It’s amusing to learn which jokes, like the one with the coconut halves, were developed in response to the necessity for low-cost solutions because the movie unquestionably doesn’t seem like a $400 million film.
It was the first time that on-screen performer Terry Jones, who had only occasionally directed since the breakup of Python, and the lone American Terry Gilliam worked together to co-direct a film.
Terry Gilliam effectively adapted Python’s cinematic style to create his distinctive brand of nightmare fantasy.
Mirai
The majority, if not all, of Mamoru Hosoda’s original movies over the previous ten years served as autobiographical exercises in one way or another.
Summer War told the much-repeated tale of Hosoda seeing his wife’s family for the first time, aside from a plot that was mostly lifted from his 2000 directorial debut Digimon Exploration: The War Game!
The loss of Hosoda’s mother served as the impetus for Wolf Children (2012), which was also partially fueled by his upcoming motherhood and related fears and hopes.
The Boy and the Beast, a 2015 film that Hosoda produced in response to his concerns about the proper role a father should play in his son’s upbringing, was finished shortly after the birth of Hosoda’s first kid.
The eighth movie by the filmmaker Mirai is not based on Hosoda’s personal experiences but rather on those of his first-born son, who is seeing his younger brother for the first time.
Mirai is a stunning excursion fantasy drama that tells the story from the viewpoint of Kun, a young child who experiences displacement and insecurity after the birth of his sister Mirai.
The film takes the audience through Kun’s entire family tree on a fascinating odyssey. It ends with a touching epilogue highlighting the elegance of what it implies to love and be loved.
The most accomplished picture by Hosoda, Mirai, was the first Academy Award nomination for something like an anime film that Studio Ghibli didn’t make, and it’s an experience that’s both enlightening and delightful to see.
The Sea Beast
Cartographers used to warn of animals like lions, elephants, and walruses when they let their instincts of imagination and consciousness fill the uncharted areas of their maps.
Creatures beyond human comprehension, with dangerous-looking fangs, trunks, and tusks.
However, we generally recall that there are dragons whenever you sail to the edge of knowledge that has faded.
The Sea Beast skillfully shapes this ingrained human fear into the tip of a spear that pierces ignorance.
Kids’ appetite for piracy, Godzilla movies, and thrilling animation are sure to be whetted by this pirate adventure that travels across a sea full of enormous creatures.
The Sea Beast is, to borrow a term from Jared Harris’ Ahab-like Captain Crow, the first film from Chris Williams, a stalwart of Disney stories which left the Mouse House for Netflix.
Its distance from the sanitized juggernaut may be seen in the fact that the movie even makes a passing reference to the phrase and drops a few additional mildly salted phrases you could anticipate from some experienced sea dogs.
It doesn’t hesitate to follow through on its threats and confronts violence in the face.
Quite rightly so. It wouldn’t be right to tell a tall narrative about hunters—mercenary teams paid by a colonialist crown to kill the kaiju that lived in the seas.
Upon our entry into the world, the young Maisie has personal knowledge of its dangerous realities: She was one of several hunter orphans left behind when her parents perished in a ship disaster.
However, this hasn’t prevented her from exalting her murdered family—something the monarchy encouraged—and from pursuing her fame.
She and the skilled Jacob are forced to face the illustrious goals they have created for themselves while putting away on Crow’s ship, the Unavoidable.
Williams and co-author Nell Benjamin confidently assert that the time is now for the Inevitable to hunt down Crow’s toothy and horned Red Whale, known as the Red Bluster before it strikes again.
The hunting scenes entangle each other like the capture of the day as our ears struggle to follow the painstakingly precise helmsmanship and our eyes roll and pitch over the amazingly realistic seas.
We are aware of the crew members’ organizational structure, the hunters’ code of honor, and the strategies required to defeat formidable creatures that resemble Pokémon created by Toho.
It is intelligent and courteous writing that Williams’ deft touch has rendered intelligible. It assumes that its environment and subject matter are intrinsically cool and that its audience would eagerly follow along.
By the time the monsters are dying—or are they?—the lances are flying, the cannons are roaring, and you’re as engrossed as any parent watching Master and Commander.
The Sea Beast, a charming new-school deconstructing of an old-school Romantic adventure, surges to the front of Netflix’s animated selections like a high wave without ever sacrificing the lushness of scenery, color, and passion inherent in the latter.
The Old Guard
Gina Prince-Bythewood accomplishes in towing, and afterward gently defying, the genre line when given a budget more than deserving of the finest DTV action movie anybody could dream to making it to a permanent Netflix browser.
She demonstrates that she can direct a significant at-level blockbuster while putting together a film that seems like one that “they” don’t produce anymore.
There are many delights to behold in The Old Guard. Still, perhaps the most exciting is the transformation of Kiki Layne, who was most recently seen as the excitable personae #1 in If Beale Street Could Talk, into an incredibly promising action star.
In The Old Guard, Layne pulls off a one-handed pistol cocking so assured and largely unnoticed that it immediately enters cinematic canon.
The final villain is eliminated with so much lack of consideration for the human body that one can’t help and even applaud Prince-Bythewood for having gotten it because he knew that the key to good action movie-making is treating patients like piles of wet meat.
Anything other than that, button editing stands in the way of itself too often, commendable set-pieces more often than not chopped to shit, plenty of violence squashing, and tendon-splitting abounds.
Lu Over the Wall
Lu Over the Wall, marketed as “family-friendly” by distributor GKids, is a harmless diversion from the usual computer-animated fare commonly seen in contemporary multiplexes.
But there are many types of “strange,” and before director Masaaki Yuasa finishes the opening titles, Lu Over the Wall goes far beyond the former and onto the latter.
There are very few times when we get even close to making contact with reality; even perhaps the most human beats, some of these priceless cues of relatability that foster our empathy are lengthened, warped, and nearly lost to recognition by exaggeration.
The fact that Lu Over the Wall doesn’t take itself too seriously is a quality that the ordinary moviegoer should embrace.
The narrative is straightforward and complex: Teenager Kai, dubbed in the English version by Michael Sinterniklaas, recently moved from Tokyo to the sleepy fishing hamlet of Higashi. He spends his days acting how most teenage males do: glumly holed up in his chamber and shutting off the world.
Kai becomes friends with Lu, a smaller version of a manic pixie dream mermaid, as he battles his identity seclusion.
What does a lonely emo boy do in a story that has xenophobic overtones and is literally and figuratively about being a fish out of water?
In Lu Over the Wall, there are too many joyful musical interludes to count, along with joy, political allegory, vivid color schemes, narrative magic, and some real magic.
Simply calling the movie “innovative” feels like an insult to its insanity.
Let Me In
Let Me In was not just an Americanized version of a foreign film that’s not even a waste of time and effort, but it’s also better than the film it’s based on. It’s potentially more paranormal a monster than its starring monster.
Through precise planning and captivating visuals, Matt Reeves’ remake of the Swedish classic Let the Right One In teases a startling amount of suspense and mystery.
Although the movie takes place in Los Alamos, New Mexico, rather than Stockholm, the location’s selection at first appears unusual; nonetheless, it turns out that the uneasiness is not caused by the frigid Swedish night.