I don't know if Arrival has a book, and if it does I didn't read it. But the movie seems pretty solidly in what you're describing as "sci-fi" here. Takes a single premise and then builds the world around that "what-if". Same with Contact and Jurassic Park, with touches of drama and action / horror, respectively.
Yeah, Arrival fits well and I enjoyed it. There are a number of lower budget films you could add to that list like Primer, Moon (2009), or Gattaca. Ex Machina is sci-fi + drama. I'm sure there's plenty more. There's just a tendency for sci-fi films to lean heavily into action (or occasionally horror) like The Martian film did when compared with the book.
Jurassic Park feels more action/horror focused to me, but it has a sci-fi premise.
