6 Best Fantasy Movies Released Since 2010

Image via Searchlight Pictures Published Aug 11, 2026, 5:55 PM EDT Sign in to your Collider account Fantasy films used to mean armies and prophecies to me, castles and chosen ones, the something that needed a map in the front of the book just to keep track of everyone. Somewhere in the last decade, though, the best fantasy movies have started touching upon human emotions like grief, memory, a father trying to say goodbye to his own life's work, etc. None of these six movies have a villain in the traditional sense that most fantasy movies do, and only one of them even has a real quest. However, they share a willingness to use impossible things like ghosts, monsters, a woman built from scratch, to let the audience go through multiple emotions all at once. 6 ‘The Tale of the Princess Kaguya’ (2013) Image via Studio Ghibli This movie took eight years to make and looks, on purpose, like it was sketched in pencil and never fully colored in. Isao Takahata wanted the animation to feel like a memory, and it does. Plus, the softness of the lines fits a story about a girl who starts out laughing freely as a child and slowly gets folded into a life of silk robes and blackened teeth she never asked for. There's a sequence partway through where Kaguya (voiced by Aki Asakura) runs away from her own coming-of-age ceremony, and the drawings turn rough and frantic right along with her, thick charcoal scratches instead of clean lines. I've watched a lot of animated movies but I've never seen anger drawn quite like that. Takahata died five years after finishing this, and it's hard not to watch it now as a kind of goodbye. 5 ‘The Shape of Water’ (2017) Image via Searchlight Pictures Guillermo del Toro built this whole movie around a love story between a mute woman and a captive amphibian creature, and the fact that it never once plays as a joke is the real achievement here. Sally Hawkins plays Elisa entirely without a single spoken word, and her face alone carries scenes most actors would need real dialogues for. Doug Jones spent hours in a full silicone suit to play the creature, moving with an underwater grace no CGI version of the character could manage half as convincingly. Del Toro has said in interviews that he wanted to make the monster movie he loved as a kid, except this time letting the monster actually get the girl. He built an entire teal-and-gold world around that one idea, and the film went on to win Best Picture, a rare thing for a story with a fish-man love scene in it. 4 ‘The Green Knight’ (2021) Image via A24 The Green Knight is directed by David Lowery who has shot this film like a painting that occasionally moves. Andrew Droz Palermo works as the cinematographer and his work in the film is commendable. You can see that the film moves with a consistent pace, and is in no hurry to get anywhere, which is unusual for a story technically about a knight racing toward his own beheading. Dev Patel plays Gawain with a nervous, unfinished kind of bravery, a young man clearly not ready for the quest he's agreed to, and a talking fox who may or may not be entirely real keeps him company for most of the journey. The film is a rare fantasy movie that trusts silence and mood to carry as much weight as dialogue. Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best PictureIs Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one. 🪜Parasite 🌀Everything Everywhere ☢️Oppenheimer 🐦Birdman 🪙No Country for Old Men FIND YOUR FILM → 01 What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don't just entertain — they leave something behind. ASomething that pulls the rug out — that makes me think I'm watching one kind of film and then reveals I'm watching another entirely. BSomething overwhelming — funny, sad, absurd, and genuinely moving, all at once. CSomething grand and weighty — a film that makes me feel the full scale of what I'm watching. DSomething formally daring — a film that pushes what cinema can even do. ESomething lean and relentless — pure tension with no wasted frame. NEXT QUESTION → 02 Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What's yours? AClass, inequality, and what people are willing to do when desperation meets opportunity. BIdentity, family, and the chaos of trying to hold your life together when everything is falling apart. CGenius, moral responsibility, and the catastrophic weight of a decision you can never take back. DEgo, legacy, and the terror of becoming irrelevant while you're still alive to watch it happen. EEvil, chance, and whether moral order actually exists or if we just tell ourselves it does. NEXT QUESTION → 03 How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means. AGenre-twisting — I want it to start in one lane and migrate into something completely different. BMaximalist and genre-blending — comedy, action, drama, sci-fi, all in one ride. CEpic and non-linear — cutting between timelines, building a mosaic of cause and consequence. DA single unbroken flow — I want to feel like I'm living it in real time, no cuts to safety. ESpare and precise — every scene doing exactly what it needs to do and nothing more. NEXT QUESTION → 04 What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you? AA system — invisible, structural, and almost impossible to fight because it has no single face. BThe self — the ways we sabotage, abandon, and fail the people we love most. CHistory — the unstoppable momentum of events that no single person can stop or redirect. DThe industry — the machinery of culture that chews up talent and spits out irrelevance. EPure, implacable evil — a force so certain of itself it becomes almost philosophical. NEXT QUESTION → 05 What do you want from a film's ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like? AShock and inevitability — a conclusion that recontextualises everything that came before it. BEarned emotion — I want to cry, laugh, and feel genuinely hopeful, even if the world is a mess. CDevastation and grandeur — an ending that makes me sit in silence for a few minutes after. DAmbiguity — something that leaves enough open that I'm still thinking about it days later. EBleakness — an honest refusal to pretend the world is tidier than it actually is. NEXT QUESTION → 06 Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what's even possible. AA gleaming modern city with a hidden underside — beauty masking rot, wealth masking desperation. BA collapsing suburban life that opens onto something infinite — the multiverse of a single ordinary person. CThe corridors of power and science at a world-historical turning point — where decisions echo for decades. DThe grimy, alive chaos of New York and Hollywood — fame as both destination and trap. EVast, indifferent landscape — desert and highway where violence arrives without warning or reason. NEXT QUESTION → 07 What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable. AProduction design and mise-en-scène — every frame composed to carry meaning beneath the surface. BEditing and tonal control — the ability to move between registers without losing the audience. CScore and sound design — music that becomes inseparable from the dread and awe of what you're watching. DCinematography as performance — the camera not recording events but participating in them. ESilence and restraint — what's left unsaid and unshown doing more work than any dialogue could. NEXT QUESTION → 08 What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you. ASomeone smart and resourceful who makes increasingly dangerous decisions under pressure. BSomeone overwhelmed and ordinary who turns out to be capable of something extraordinary. CA brilliant, tortured figure whose gifts and flaws are inseparable from each other. DA self-destructive artist whose ego is both their superpower and their undoing. EA quiet, principled person trying to make sense of a world that has stopped making sense. NEXT QUESTION → 09 How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately. AI love a slow build when I know the payoff is going to be seismic — patience for a devastating reveal. BGive me relentless momentum — I want to feel breathless and emotionally spent by the end. CEpic runtime doesn't scare me — if the material demands three hours, give me three hours. DI want it to feel propulsive even when nothing is technically happening — restless energy throughout. EDeliberate and unhurried — I want dread to accumulate in the spaces between the action. NEXT QUESTION → 10 What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want? AUnsettled — like I've just seen something I can't fully explain but can't stop thinking about. BMoved and energised — like the film reminded me what actually matters and gave me something to hold onto. CHumbled — like I've been in the presence of something genuinely important and overwhelming. DExhilarated — like I've just seen cinema doing something it's never quite done before. EHaunted — like a cold, quiet dread that stays with me for days. REVEAL MY FILM → The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works. ParasiteYou are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho's Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it's ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image. Everything Everywhere All at OnceYou want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels' Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn't want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it's about. OppenheimerYou are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort. BirdmanYou are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it's about. Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor's ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn't be possible. Michael Keaton's performance and Emmanuel Lubezki's restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all. No Country for Old MenYou are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ 3 ‘All of Us Strangers’ (2023) Image via Searchlight Pictures Adam (Andrew Scott) goes back to his childhood home and finds his parents still living there, exactly as they were the day they died in a car crash when he was twelve. They haven't aged a single day. Neither has the house. Andrew Haigh directed this like the most natural thing in the world instead of building it up as a twist, which makes it hit even harder once you understand what it actually means. Adam comes out to his parents as gay, decades after he needed to and decades after they can do anything with that information except finally just listen. Jamie Bell and Claire Foy play the parents with a gentle, aching patience, and Paul Mescal, as the neighbor Adam falls for in the present, gives him a reason to keep choosing the living world over the one he's built with ghosts. I haven't been able to describe this movie to anyone without my voice doing something weird halfway through. 2 ‘The Boy and the Heron’ (2023) Image via Toho Hayao Miyazaki said this would be his last film. He's said that before, so nobody really believed him, but watching it, it plays like a director quietly settling his own accounts. Mahito, grieving his mother and resentful of his new stepmother, follows a talking heron into a strange tower world built out of memory, war, and something close to the afterlife. There's less plot here than in most Miyazaki films, and more of the loose, dreamlike logic that only shows up when a filmmaker stops worrying about being understood. It won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, and it's easy to see why once you notice how much of Miyazaki's own life, his childhood during the war, his complicated feelings about the studio he built, is quietly folded into every frame. 1 ‘Poor Things’ (2023) Image via Searchlight Pictures Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) is brought back to life with the brain of her own unborn child, and the movie makes you watch her actually grow up, in real time, inside an adult body. Stone plays that development with her whole physicality, stumbling and grabbing at things early on, learning to speak in clipped, blunt sentences, slowly turning into someone with real appetite and real opinions about the world she's just been dropped into. Yorgos Lanthimos shoots the whole thing through fisheye lenses and painted, unreal skies, so nothing on screen ever looks like it's pretending to be our world. Willem Dafoe plays the scientist who built her with real tenderness underneath all the stitched scars, and Mark Ruffalo, as the man who tries to seduce and then can't control her, ends up being the funniest, most humiliated man in any movie that year. Stone won her second Oscar for this, and it's nowhere close to a stunt performance. It's one of the strangest, fullest arcs I've watched an actor build from scratch. Poor Things Release Date December 7, 2023 Runtime 141 minutes