Robert Redford’s Netflix sci-fi gem still underwatched

Robert Redford’s 2017 sci-fi film “The Discovery” is available on Netflix, featuring a man who proves the afterlife exists and the chaotic fallout that follows. Critics were tough, but Redford’s performance—especially an opening television interview—earned rea

There’s a moment in “The Discovery” that lands like a broadcast interruption—Thomas. played by Robert Redford. sits for a television interview and speaks directly about his breakthrough and what it has set in motion. It’s the kind of scene that tells you, right away, this isn’t just another sci-fi puzzle box.

“The Discovery” is a 2017 science-fiction film streaming on Netflix, and it has a strange reputation: overshadowed by the broader cultural memory of Redford’s earlier hits, it still manages to feel like a film you can stumble into and stay with.

In the movie, Thomas confirms—without a doubt—that the afterlife exists. The reaction is immediate and brutal in its simplicity. Many people in the general population choose death. believing they can reach the afterlife sooner and reconnect with deceased loved ones. Thomas doesn’t stop at the proof, either. He works on creating a machine that functions like a television into the afterlife. and as he builds it. new discoveries keep changing what everyone thinks they’re getting.

The question the film keeps circling is simple enough to follow but hard to sit with: what lies beyond, and what would it do to the way you live today? Even the movie’s structure—Thomas testing and observing, then watching how those findings reshape the people around him—keeps the stakes personal.

That said, “The Discovery” didn’t land warmly with critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, it received a 48% score from critics and 43% from audiences. One of the central complaints was emotional imbalance: Clarisse Loughrey of The Independent wrote that the film “poses far too many questions. but with no heart to search for the answers.” A lot of negative reactions echoed the same idea—viewers feeling the movie asks for meaning without always earning it.

Still, the pushback hasn’t erased the praise that matters most: Redford’s work. Todd McCarthy wrote for The Hollywood Reporter that “Redford’s work in the opening scene. in which he addresses his breakthrough and its consequences. is one of the strongest things he’s ever done onscreen.” That opening sequence matters because it frames the rest of the film’s direction—Thomas isn’t just discovering the afterlife; he’s watching what that knowledge does to the world in real time.

The strange part is how easily you can miss “The Discovery” in the shadow of Redford’s better-known classics like “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “Three Days of the Condor.” But once you’re watching. the film becomes less about reputation and more about experience. It may not be the best reviewed Redford title and it isn’t regarded as one of the strongest Netflix science-fiction picks. yet it still earns attention for its willingness to force viewers to reckon with what “proof” would cost.

If you want a late-career performance in an uneasy, big-question sci-fi story, “The Discovery” is on Netflix right now—and it’s the kind of movie that doesn’t let you scroll past for long.

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