The Best Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror io9 Rewatched in 2021

Xena: The Warrior Princess was one of a few formative television series for me in the ‘90s—as I know it was for many others. From the moment Lucy Lawless showed up on Hercules, it was love at first sight. Though there was still the opportunity for reruns showing up pretty often back in those days, I hadn’t watched the series since it ended in 2001 (approximately 300 years ago). I finally decided this year was the time to revisit and I’m so very glad I did. There were still the heartfelt stories I remembered, the camp, the badass Amazons, and far too many Karls Urban. But with adult eyes I was able to appreciate just how much went into the fantasy series—most importantly, the queer subtext it included which, dear god, was really not that subtle after all! I really couldn’t believe how much I didn’t pick up on back then but, well, neither did the executives who normally would have made a stink about it, so thank goodness for that. I’m not quite done with my rewatch yet—it’s wild to see how much happened so early on in the series that I was certain took seasons to develop—but Xena and Gabrielle were exactly the kind of escape I needed this year and I’m excited I still have some of the really bizarre stuff from the later seasons to look forward to. - Jill Pantozzi

As I was rewatching Last Action Hero for the first time in decades, I couldn’t get over how perfect this was. Not just the movie, but everything around it. I’d been meaning to rewatch the meta-Arnold Schwarzenegger love letter to action films for a while now but it just never happened. Years and years had passed since I thought about it. Then I noticed it popped onto Netflix, giving me zero excuses, and I realized the wait was the best thing possible. If I’d watched Last Action Hero any other year maybe it wouldn’t have worked as well as it does now. It’s an absolutely masterful blend of genres and tones that feels way more at home today than it did when it was released. You can read my full write up here. - Germain Lussier

Scream 5, aka Scream, will be here any day now and that was reason enough to give Scream 4 another spin. The other reason though is that it celebrated its 10 year anniversary in 2021. When I first saw it upon its original release, I didn’t like it much, even though I love the first three movies. What happened? Turns out, I’m just an idiot and was completely wrong. Scream 4 freaking rules. It’s so funny and smart that, kind of like how I felt about Last Action Hero, I just don’t think it was fully appreciated in its time. We highly recommend you check it out again. Here’s a longer write up. - Germain Lussier

Gundam has been a constant background radiation to my time this year, whether it was flinging myself wholeheartedly into making model kits every other week or diving back into the series from the very beginning. While the original 1979 series will always be one of my favorites in the entire saga, returning to the early Universal Century this year and seeing Zeta Gundam, its unlikely successor series, for the first time in years reminded me how much I love it and the franchise at large, its compelling, complicating (and often frustrating) examination of a future doomed to failure and the people who fight in hope of ending its cycles anyway. Shout out to Quattro Bajeena, a man who’s never betrayed anyone in his life. - James Whitbrook

OK sure this isn’t exactly watching, but the arrival of Bioware’s long-awaited Mass Effect trilogy remaster this year finally got me to throw myself back into one of the formative sci-fi gaming experiences of my teens. I spent over a hundred hours this year recreating my Commander Shepard and, really, for the most part making the same choices I made all the times before I’d played these three games when I had much, much more free time as a kid. But Mass Effect this year meant more than just revisiting a story and characters I love, seeing myself react to it in the ways I have changed as a person in the years since I first guided Lucas Shepard to save the galaxy, it meant finally getting to connect to an aspect of it as a queer man I had been too frustrated or unable to explore it as all those years ago. It was a wonderful return to the Mass Effect galaxy, and I’ll greatly appreciate my time spent trying to make that return as gay as hell. - James Whitbrook

Once you dip into the world of Amicus Productions—a horror-centric British film company founded by a pair of Americans that was active in the 1960s and ‘70s—you can’t stop yourself from wanting more. Amicus’ specialty was anthology or “portmanteau” films, combining a series of shorter segments under the umbrella of a spooky setting that links them together: a haunted house, a hospital, a carnival sideshow, a train carriage, a curiosity shop. The stories are usually designed to teach their dreadfully unfortunate protagonists some kind of terrifying lesson, with a hefty assist from the supernatural. The casts are stuffed with legends like Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Burgess Meredith, Jack Palance, Joan Collins, and Tom Baker. Several of them were scripted by Psycho author Robert Bloch, or based on classic EC horror comics. Where to start? Tales From the Crypt, Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, Torture Garden, The House That Dripped Blood, Asylum, Vault of Horror, From Beyond the Grave… and, why not, then add in the Amicus-adjancent The Monster Club and Tales That Witness Madness as a bonus treat. Unlike the often doomed characters in these stories, you won’t be sorry. - Cheryl Eddy

In a year that saw NFTs suddenly become the talk of the town under the auspices of empowering artists within a system that typically doesn’t value them for their creative efforts, Dan Gilroy’s Velvet Buzzsaw’s message about similar ideas hits somewhat differently. As the lives of Morf Vandewalt and the rest of the art-obsessed people in his circle are increasingly destroyed by the presence of a cursed collection of paintings, none of them can accept how they’ve all played direct hands in their own downfalls. Horrific as Velvet Buzzsawi’s supernatural murders were, the film’s living, breathing humans were the monsters we were meant to understand as the toxic presences to be wary of, an ugly idea that feels even more necessary to be mindful of now than ever before. - Charles Pulliam-Moore

While even author George R.R. Martin thought Game of Thrones started going off the rails in season six, there’s one perfect example of something the show added that elevated it above the source material. I’m speaking of the fifth season episode “Hardhome,” which revealed the full threat of the White Walkers in a devastating way the books still haven’t come close to achieving. The wights’ attack on the Wilding village is a long, masterfully assembled scene that keeps elevating the tension and the horror with unforgettable scenes such as the flames that shrink from the White Walker’s presence, the undead children, and Jon Snow’s disbelieving terror at the Night King resurrecting all the fallen Wildings to join his army. I know I’ll be rewatching it in 2022, too. - Rob Bricken

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