Science fiction is one of Tamil cinema’s more demanding genres to pull off, and the ranking rewards the films that committed fully. Venkat Prabhu’s time-loop thriller Maanaadu leads, followed by Vikram Kumar’s reincarnation-and-relativity romance 24 and R. Ravikumar’s time-travel charmer Indru Netru Naalai.

Towering over the commercial end is S. Shankar’s Enthiran (Robot), the film that showed Tamil cinema could mount effects-driven sci-fi at a global scale. Positions come from a composite of IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic and TMDb scores, adjusted for sample size so a broadly-seen film outranks a thinly-rated one however inventive its premise.

Full ranking below, each with cast, ratings, streaming and our verdict.