The current political regime has only been in power for four months and already they’ve begun dismantling basic principles and constitutional rights provided by the U.S. government, with the spoils going to the benefit of the uber rich and at the expense of this country’s most vulnerable people. From erasing Black history, the LGBTQ+ community, women’s accomplishments, and so much on government websites to mass firings of critical agencies like the Federal Aviation Authority and USAID, the goal of the orange-tinged menace and his minions is clear: converting this democracy into a dictatorship run by oligarchs.
As our fellow citizens are being deported to concentration and torture camps abroad and disappeared on American soil if they happen to be a certain kind of brown — all while an ethnic cleansing takes place in Gaza funded by this very government — it feels strange to escape in stories. For those who’d like to experience imaginary extensions of our current sociopolitical moment, here are the 10 best dystopian films to revisit while the world burns.
Idiocracy (2006)
I first saw Mike Judge’s Idiocracy when I was living in Spain and my Spanish and non-USian comrades were flabbergasted when I told them this future could very easily happen in this country. It only took 19 years, but lo and behold, Idiocracy’s world is here. And ever so much worse than Idiocracy predicted. Because we might have a cartoonishly obtuse president akin to President Camacho (Terry Crewes), but his minions are smart as whips as they dismantle the US system of governance from the ground up and beyond.
We also have no hero figure anywhere in sight to save us and stop the demolishing of democratic norms as those in power on the Democrat side performatively wring their hands in anguish and do nothing concrete to stop these horrors. I never thought I’d actually prefer the world of Idiocracy. Yet here we are.
Max Max: Fury Road (2015)
Whenever I have nowhere healthy to put my rage and frustration at the current political state of things, I put on Mad Max: Fury Road. The entire Mad Max franchise has been prescient in so many ways, but Fury Road is my favorite as is centers a group of badass women warriors who band together against a disgusting, despotic pervert who would have them chained up as breeding cows like our current kleptocrat in chief wishes in the growing American dystopian hellscape.
Throughout Fury Road the women ask, “Who killed the world?” and in our corresponding real-world nightmare we can safely say that the current administration is the culprit. This is a cathartic watch, especially if you take a break from the news for a couple days after to leave yourself with the feeling that the good guys won, even if for a moment.
The Road (2009)
On the flip side of Fury Road’s hopeful ending we have The Road, adapted from Cormac McCarthy’s bleak novel of the same name. Starring Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee as unnamed father and son in the apocalypse, this brutal film pulls no punches as we follow the slowly starving pair through a wasteland that has been wrecked by environmental and social devastation. Cannibals roam the country, and this film is not for the squeamish as some of their victims aftermaths on screen might actually have you throwing up, like I did the first time I saw it.
This is a heartbreaking film, and one for the folks who would like to prepare for the emptiness that awaits should this kind of slow cataclysm unfold in real time.
28 Days Later (2002) and 28 Weeks Later (2007)
28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later are set in a world where a mutated virus escaped from a lab, turning its infected into zooming zombies whose feral natures stop at nothing to devour anything human left in their paths. Both films pose the question of what happens to survivors’ humanity when faced with the incomprehensible.
In 28 Days Later, this question is salient upon meeting a group of soldiers who have camped in a manor, and who have no qualms about using a pre-teen girl as their sex slave in an England where lawlessness is the rule of the land.
In 28 Weeks Later, family ties are put to the test after during the viral plague as a father is reunited with his two children and forced to face with what he did to their mother to survive. With news of a 28 Years Later in production, this is a good time to revisit Danny Boyle’s seminal zombie films.
Snowpiercer (2013)
A self-sustaining train that can never stop moving holds the final survivors of a new ice age in a socially stratified loop that reflects an old-world hierarchy still very much present in a supposedly frozen and uninhabitable Earth. While it seems a far-fetched plot and one that’s hard to imagine taking place on a train, this action horror unfolds some gnarly worldbuilding that in many ways reflects what’s been happening on Earth since 2013 when the movie came out. Like, we’ve seen several billionaires travel to space just because they can, as prices for regular folks continue to rise and housing costs are reaching unsustainable levels provoking housing crises across the USA.
Directed by Parasite’s Bong Joon Ho, this piece of social commentary just gets more and relevant.
Children of Men (2006)
The year is 2027, just two years from now; environmental devastation has caused sterility in the human population and governments around the world have resorted to totalitarianism as their method of social control. When a young Black woman Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey) is discovered to be pregnant — the only known pregnant person in the world — a variety of underground groups work together to keep her safe and out of the tyrannical government’s hands.
Children of Men balances drama and action beautifully. Even though it’s a heavy burden to bear, it also reflects how vital Black women are and always have been to the future of free societies that are community-based and sustainable, not these proto-fascist capitalist-driven consumer states that destroy life on Earth for the profit of a greedy few.
The Hunger Games (2012)
In an America that’s been broken up into working class districts that all serve an elite capitol, every year the youngsters are drawn from lotteries and sent to the city to fight a gladiator match to the death for the amusement of the wealthy. Adapted from the bestselling series of novels by Suzanne Collins, the film versions remain faithful to the source materials in many ways — and for some the books might be easier to handle.
This YA installment of dystopian visions is for those with a strong enough stomach to handle not just extreme violence against children, but children themselves being forced into heinous acts of brutality for survival.
Fahrenheit 451 (2018)
Michael B. Jordan is so hot in Fahrenheit 451. Literally. He plays a fireman whose job it is to burn books deemed unsuitable for the public by an autocratic government.
Based on the chilling novel by Ray Bradbury, the HBO remake couldn’t be more timely as this current administration continues erasing history it finds inconvenient to their white nationalist narrative, including expanding banned books lists and cutting funding for writers and other artists whose jobs it is to call these injustices out.
The Girl with All the Gifts (2016)
A fungal parasite has taken over the world and turned the infected into flesh-eating zombie creatures known as the Hungries. The Girl with All the Gifts is set on a military base’s medical wing where scientists and doctors are studying children who have been infected, but not turned into the feral creatures — at least not yet.
Young Melanie (Sennia Nanua) is one of these special children, whose bond with one of her captors/teachers Miss Justineau (Gemma Arterton) leads her to escape with Melanie instead of kill her after their camp is infiltrated by Hungries. Part sci-fi horror and part apocalypse drama, The Girl with All the Gifts is an extraordinary and moving story about all the different ways we adapt to survive.
A Quiet Place (2018)
In John Krasinski’s directorial debut, a family ekes out a quiet existence on a farm in a world that’s been taken over by bloodthirsty alien creatures who hunt by sound. Most of the film is “spoken” in sign language, featuring hearing impaired actor Millicent Simmonds as the sullen teenage daughter Regan, and Krasinski’s real-life wife Emily Watson as his on-screen partner. The performances here are moving.
Watching A Quiet Place in today’s context, I can’t help but wish for the aliens to take over our world. From genocide to concentration camps in El Salvador, I’d prefer their proliferation on our planet than the fascist forces that are gaining in power every day. Just saying.
