Eric Langberg

Here's the secret about science fiction — it's never been about the future. Most sci-fi is a commentary on the present, tweaking the setting just enough to give plausible deniability as a way to make a statement about modern dynamics. H.G. Wells' classic novel "The War of the Worlds" imagined humanity fighting a race of tripod-like Martian invaders, a preamble made as a reflection of British colonialism, specifically what the Brits had done to the inhabitants of Tasmania. "Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?" he wrote (via JSTOR ). Similarly, when Steven Spielberg adapted the book in 2006, his "War of the Worlds" looked ahead to the end times by reflecting post-9/11 anxieties.

By Eric Langberg Grant Lamos Iv/Getty Images Video Muted

Ask just about any film fan and they'll agree that 1999 was one of the greatest years in movie history. This year gave us a wild line-up of instant classics, including "The Matrix," "Fight Club," "The Sixth Sense," "The Mummy," "Magnolia," and "Cruel Intentions," to name but a few. No matter what you were interested in,'99 had something to offer you at the box office, and everyone still talks about how incredible it was that there were so many smashes in theaters at the same time. 1998, on the other hand, tends to get overlooked.

In 2016, Adam Driver starred in a sci-fi movie where he played an experienced student of the universe's mysteries who becomes fixated on a younger person, interested in the fledgling powers they are starting to display. No, we're not talking about "Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens," which came out at the end of 2015. Just a few months later, Driver starred in "Midnight Special," an underrated film from director Jeff Nichols that not enough people have seen.

Horror ruled the 1980s, but by the time the following decade rolled around, fans had gotten a little tired of endless slasher franchising. Understandable, after being served movie after movie where attractive teenagers are chased through the night and cut to bits. After "Scream" changed the game in 1996 — proving that audiences were too savvy now for horror movies that weren't in on the joke — the rest of the decade brought us... well, a lot of movies like "Scream." As a result, many fans tend to overlook '90s horror movies, because there weren't nearly as many classics as there had been in earlier decades.

Horror films have been around since the earliest days of cinema. As the art form developed, the horror movie grew in popularity, enjoying several cycles of cultural dominance, backlash, retreat, and rebirth. After all, humans have enjoyed scaring each other for as long as there have been humans. Included in everything from folklore to religious texts, spooky elements can serve an important social function: They teach us what we should fear, keeping us safe by telling stories of people who messed with things they didn't understand and found themselves at the wrong end of something pointy. We learn from horror to not take chances with strangers, and to respect the dead, and how to confront the unknown.

Spies are groovy, baby! Whether your tastes tend more toward Austin Powers or James Bond, the back-stabbing, double-crossing Beverly Hills besties of "Totally Spies!" or the shaky-cam globetrotting dramatics of Matt Damon's Jason Bourne, chances are you've enjoyed a spy story or two. Hollywood loves making them, too. After all, the spy's episodic adventures and frequent changes of scenery make them perfect stock characters to build a franchise around; from the "Mission: Impossible" series to the seven actors who have played James Bond, there's money to be made in the world of espionage. If you make it, fans will show up.

"The Twilight Zone" was not just a show with amazing sci-fi premises and great storytelling twists; it was also capable of being quite unsettling.

In many ways, "The Matrix" was the perfect sci-fi movie to close out the 1990s. There was a sense at the time that we'd reached what people took to calling "the end of history" — with the collapse of the Soviet Union, some believed that capitalism and liberal democracy had triumphed and that Western civilization had reached its zenith. There were some fears over the so-called Millennium Bug (the idea that computer systems would crash when the year 2000 arrived), but, generally, the feeling was that we had ironed out most of the societal kinks of the past few decades. As "The Matrix" points out, this was nothing but an illusion.

Cinema draws much of its power from letting us witness things we wouldn't otherwise see in real life. Thankfully, most of us will never encounter serial killers in our day-to-day lives, but we sure do love to watch them on screen. Many of the most disturbing true crime documentaries of all time are about serial killers, but we don't even need our cinematic murderers to be real to find them entertaining. It seems that audiences will happily watch fictional killers stalk their prey, too.