An under-the-radar sci-fi shoot ’em up made on a minuscule budget battles back against its streaming oppressors

When you think of action-packed sci-fi thrillers that come bearing an eye-catching high concept, no shortage of bullet-riddled set pieces, and plenty of splashy visual effects, you’d think the budget would be a bank-breaker. Turning that notion on its head, though, the severely underrated and unfairly overlooked Kill Command was made for a pittance.

Writer and director Steven Gomez’s unheralded gem cost the princely sum of a million pounds, which is roughly $1.2 million and change when adjusted for current exchange rates. However, you’d never be able to tell from watching the movie, which is a testament to how Kill Command managed to squeeze so much out of such minuscule funding.

Mission: Impossible and Hobbs & Shaw ass-kicker Vanessa Kirby leads the charge as a soldier engaging in a simple training exercise with he rest of her squad, one that quickly goes awry when they discover a sentient enemy unlike anything they’ve ever encountered before has arrived on the scene, pitting man versus machine in an explosive battle to the death.

For less than the cost of the catering budget on a major Hollywood production, Kill Command blows most of its spiritual and thematic contemporaries out of the water, something streaming subscribers have been discovering firsthand after the gun-toting roller-coaster ride established itself as one of the most-watched titles on the iTunes global charts this week, per FlixPatrol.

Sci-fi action thrillers are ten-a-penny wherever and however you consume your media, but sleeping on Kill Command is a mistake that doesn’t need to be made any longer.