Top 20 Most Dystopian Movie Futures

NYC was going through a very turbulent time in the late 1970s, with the city infamous for crime, corruption, poverty, and violence. Writer-director John Carpenter wanted to make a movie about the cynical tone of the decade, being inspired by Watergate and gritty vigilante movies like “Death Wish.” The result is “Escape from New York,” in which Manhattan has been converted into a giant prison housing the country’s most undesirable elements. The film takes place in an alternate 1997, in which the entire United States has been taken over by urban decay and exceedingly high crime rates. It’s certainly a bleak depiction of the future, but people had few chances to be optimistic in the late ‘70s.

Penned and directed by the Oscar-nominated Andrew Niccol, “Gattaca” explores the concept of reproductive technologies and possible negative potentials for the future. In the world of “Gattaca,” the use of eugenics is widespread, with parents having the ability of choosing their child’s genetic traits to ensure a good life. These people are known as “valids,” and they are widely accepted and welcomed in society. Those who are naturally conceived have a short life span and are branded “in-valids,” meaning they are widely discriminated against and forced into menial labor. It’s a brilliant concept for a movie, exploring themes of racism, classism, and discrimination through the lens of eugenics.

This movie, and its source comic, takes huge inspiration from the mother of all dystopian fiction - George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four.” Its version of the United Kingdom is controlled by a neo-fascist political party called Norsefire, which discriminates based on race, religion, and sexual orientation. It also spies on the populace, brainwashing them with relentless propaganda — the use of video screens is widespread, and citizens are controlled with the use of mass surveillance. But the film also draws upon other themes relevant to a 21st century audience, including corporate corruption, intelligence gathering, and dishonest media campaigns. So, yeah, not a great place to live.

South Korean director Bong Joon-ho has established himself as one of the most eminent social filmmakers, with his works often touching on themes of classism and discrimination. “Snowpiercer” is no different, despite its fantastical setting. The movie takes place in 2031, with the Earth decimated by a new ice age. Said ice age was brought on by humanity when their attempt at stopping climate change backfired. The few survivors live on the titular Snowpiercer, a train that segregates its population based on wealth and power. There are a ton of thoughtful themes to unpack in this bleak future, with elements of social inequality, environmentalism, and revolution all explored to fascinating effect.

Terry Gilliam is a masterful entertainer, who made us belly laugh with “Monty Python” while also hitting us with thought-provoking dramas like “Brazil.” Another movie that was enormously influenced by “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” “Brazil” also tackles themes of hyper-surveillance and totalitarianism. In fact, the movie was developed under the tongue-in-cheek title “1984 ½.” It’s a world that is not only heavily decayed, but gray, lifeless, and full of outlandish technology and government bureaucracy. It all sucks the life out of protagonist Sam Lowry, who is a mere cog in the great machine of industry. It’s hard to describe the absurdist drama that is “Brazil” - it’s just one of those movies you need to see to believe.

Don’t let the Pixar logo fool you - “WALL-E” is a bleak movie, and it presents one of the most depressing dystopias in film. By the distant 29th century, Earth is left a barren wasteland following some type of environmental disaster. The last vestiges of humanity survive aboard spaceships owned by a megacorporation while robots clean up the mounds of garbage on Earth. WALL-E is one of these robots, and watching him work doesn’t make for the lightest children’s entertainment. In fact, “WALL-E” is quite a mature film, and it will likely introduce many kids to grown-up concepts like environmental preservation, corporate greed, and even the end of the world.

There’s nothing good about the world of “Soylent Green.” This is essentially Hell on Earth, with humanity on the brink of total collapse. The environment has degraded to the point of being inhospitable, with runaway global warming causing relentless humidity and barren oceans. New York City is overpopulated, with the rich living in guarded and walled-off communities while the poor live in total squalor. Some serve the rich, while others fight in the streets for clean water and eat processed food wafers from the Soylent Corporation. Can’t get any worse? Think again! Soylent’s new product, Soylent Green, is actually made from… well, an ingredient that’s revealed in one of the most famous disturbing twist endings in film.

While it’s full of fantastic action and thrilling set pieces, the “Mad Max” franchise also has a vision, and it’s a bleak one. The films are centered around societal collapse, with each movie presenting some unique representation of the horrible future. The first movie takes place on the brink of collapse, with crime and murder running rampant. The second is an even more post-apocalyptic film with settlers and raiders fighting in the barren wilderness of Australia. And both “Beyond Thunderdome” and “Fury Road” present more fantastical stories, complete with underground refineries, gladiatorial arenas, warlords, and War Boys. The franchise wonderfully blends the realistic with the outlandish, crafting one of the most unique dystopias in the process.

Perhaps the most influential science fiction film ever made, “Metropolis” is every bit as relevant today as it was in 1927. The titular Metropolis is a city divided by class and powered by dangerous manual labor with a high risk of death. Powerful business magnates control the city from their high-rise skyscrapers while the poor live in underground bunkers and power the city with treacherous machines. The visual language of the film is symbolic and highly influential, with the layout of Metropolis serving as a metaphor for class distinction and industrialization. The city was also influenced by Biblical stories like the Tower of Babel and the turbulent Weimar Republic that was the government of Germany at the time.

Well, we’ve built it up enough, so here it is! Written and directed by Michael Radford, “Nineteen Eighty-Four” brilliantly captures the gloomy horror of George Orwell’s seminal masterpiece. In this alternate 1984, Britain has been renamed Airstrip One and has been incorporated into the totalitarian superstate of Oceania. Its citizens live in squalor and are subjected to propaganda and constant surveillance. Big Brother watches over all (literally), and any behavior that goes against the status quo of the regime is punished by the Thought Police. Even history itself is rewritten to coincide with the concocted story of Oceania. “Nineteen Eighty-Four” and its concepts have widely influenced the dystopian genre, and names like Big Brother and Thought Police have become a part of the cultural lexicon.

Don’t let the title fool you — “RoboCop” is a whip-smart action movie that punches way above its weight class. Like many dystopian films, “RoboCop” was inspired by a cynical reality, with writer Edward Neumeier taking inspiration from the bleaker cultural aspects of the 1980s. This included the introduction of Wall Street yuppies, the increasing power of megacorporations, the urban decay of Detroit, and controversial Reaganomics. The story takes place in a near future, where Detroit has become an industrial wasteland filled with rampant crime and corruption. The visual language of “RoboCop” is powerful, perfectly portraying a dirty city filled with rust, dust, smoke, and old machinery. It’s not pleasant.

Adapted from Suzanne Collins’s book of the same name, “The Hunger Games'' franchise is undeniably one of the darkest series of young adult fiction-based filmmaking. It takes place in Panem, a dystopian nation composed of twelve districts. These districts compete in the annual Hunger Games, in which “tributes” fight to the death in a large gladiatorial arena. The Hunger Games serve two functions - they’re meant as revenge against a failed rebellion, and they serve to entertain the elite residing in the Capitol, who cover the Games like a sporting event. Like many great pieces of dystopian fiction, “The Hunger Games'' embodies thoughtful themes of classism and rebellion, and it contains more than its fair share of horrible violence.

Are you over the age of 30? Well, sorry, but if you lived in the world of “Logan’s Run,” you’d be dead. Oh, sorry, “renewed.” In this movie, the last remnants of humanity live in a sealed-off subterranean city. Unlike other works of dystopia, the citizens seem quite content and live pleasurable lifestyles. However, there’s one major catch - to prevent overpopulation, those who hit 30 are culled in a special rite called “Carrousel.” Those who don’t accept the rite are hunted by the Sandmen and ultimately killed. The film was inspired by many elements of the early 1970s, including the self-involvement of the “Me generation” and the counterculture movement that favored youth and abandon over age and conformity.

Steven Spielberg really can do it all, and that includes adapting Philip K. Dick and crafting a sci-fi dystopia. “Minority Report” takes place in 2054, with premeditated murder becoming a thing of the past. That’s thanks to three clairvoyants called “precogs” who receive visions of a future homicide and notify the authorities. They then arrest the perpetrator before the crime can occur. This sounds great in theory, but there are numerous problems associated with the program, including human rights infringements, loss of personal autonomy, and the titular “minority reports,” which is when one precog experiences a very different vision. Dick created his story to explore themes of authoritarianism, which he found worrying at the height of the Cold War.

We don’t know that “Planet of the Apes” takes place in a future dystopia until the very end of the movie, when the iconic plot twist recontextualizes all of what came before. Three astronauts crash on a distant planet in the year 3978, and George Taylor comes to live with a society of talking apes in the imaginatively-named… Ape City. Of course, we learn in the final seconds of the film that this isn’t a distant planet, but a decimated Earth. A nuclear war ravaged our home thousands of years before, destroying most vestiges of humanity and allowing apes to evolve into the dominant species. The Aristocrats!

Regarded as one of the best movies ever made, let alone one of the best pieces of dystopian fiction, “Akira” is a seminal piece of animation. Loosely adapted from the manga of the same name, “Akira” takes place in an alternate 2019 where Tokyo has been destroyed and replaced by “Neo-Tokyo.” This city is an urban hellscape, populated by rampant crime, ferocious gang violence, and societal unrest. Futuristic technology is also heavily utilized by the totalitarian government, ensuring their complete control over the oppressed populace of the city. With individual freedoms constricted and dissent swiftly suppressed, there’s not much to enjoy about Neo-Tokyo, despite its rather flashy name.

One of Stanley Kubrick’s many masterpieces, “A Clockwork Orange” is a challenging film, both in regards to its violence and thematic content. Futuristic Britain is in a state of complete anarchy. Urban decay and homelessness has set in, and roving gangs of violent criminals are a common occurrence. Enter protagonist Alex DeLarge, a gang member who gleefully partakes in “a bit of the old ultraviolence.” But the authoritarian government certainly isn’t innocent either, and the film raises moral quandaries by highlighting the infamous Ludovico technique, a brutal form of aversion therapy that is meant to rehabilitate criminals. Kubrick himself referred to them as a totalitarian government that turns its citizens into little more than robots.

It doesn’t get much more dystopian than the complete extinction of the human race. That’s the issue facing humanity in Alfonso Cuarón’s “Children of Men.” For some unknown reason, the world is facing an infertility crisis and women are unable to become pregnant. This has naturally caused global pandemonium and widespread panic. Making matters even worse is the horrid state of the world. Many countries are embroiled in war, a massive depression has set in, and the United Kingdom has turned into an authoritarian regime that throws refugees in cages.. The movie’s brutal worldbuilding is second to none, as is the gritty way that Cuarón captures it.

One of the most influential films of the last quarter-century, “The Matrix” is a fascinating flick that blends mesmerizing action with deep themes. The year is 1999 and humanity is flourishing… except in reality, it’s around 2199 and humankind has been enslaved by powerful machines that harvest their bodies as an energy source. The Matrix is a simulated reality that has been made by these machines to placate their human subjects and keep them under their control. A few humans have escaped the matrix and now live underground, the surface having been left a barren wasteland. We can see why Neo puked upon learning the truth.

Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions.

“Waterworld” (1995)
It’s the World…Filled With Water

“Dredd” (2012)
Mega-City One Is a Post-Nuclear Wasteland Infested With Crime

“Dark City” (1998)
A Dark Biopunk Hellscape Controlled by The Strangers

“12 Monkeys” (1995)
The Few Survivors of a Deadly Virus Are Forced to Live in Underground Bunkers

“Fahrenheit 451” (1966)
Firemen Destroy All Forms of Literature In a Government-Sponsored Book Burning

Ridley Scott’s masterpiece sure looks cool, but we wouldn’t want to live in it. Another Philip K. Dick adaptation, “Blade Runner” takes place in a grubby 2019 Los Angeles. The film’s production design is simply outstanding, crafting one of the grungiest cities ever put to film. Implied to be the result of some ecological disaster, the city is polluted, decayed, and bereft of nature or animals. It’s also a victim of an omnipresent police force and an all-powerful corporation that controls everything. It’s enough to send humans off-world to interstellar colonies - colonies that are run by synthetic humans that don’t have any rights and who can be chased down and killed by “blade runners.” So, no, we wouldn’t want to live in it.


Which of these futures would you least want to live in? Let us know in the comments below!