Dystopian thrillers offer a way for filmmakers to show a horrifying future for the world, or to criticize current social conditions by pushing them to the extreme. These films have been around since the advent of cinema, with sci-fi masterpieces like Metropolis showing a terrifying future in the silent era of filmmaking.

Over the years, filmmakers have used dystopian thrillers to point a bold finger at corrupt government actions and how they could lead to a devastating future. With brilliant production design and use of genre tropes, these films offer either soul-crushing reminders of what lies ahead or celebrations of humans persevering in the face of great odds.

Snowpiercer (2014)

Years before he won an Oscar for Parasite, Bong Joon Ho directed the dystopian thriller Snowpiercer. The movie is based on the French comic book by Jacques Lob and Jean-Marc Rochette and follows a world on the brink of collapse during a new ice age. The wealthy and elite have a self-sustaining 1,001-car train that will keep them alive.

This dystopian story shows the poor and downtrodden forcing their way onto the train, only to be forced into the cattle cars, where they have little to nothing compared to the wealthy in the middle cars and the elite up front. It is easy to see the comparisons to modern-day society and class divisions, and that is the point.

The comic book, movie, and later the television adaptation work well as dystopian horror stories, telling viewers what they don’t want to hear about how people in the world are beaten down and walked on. Joon has always made socially-conscious films, and this was one of his darkest, but also one that tells a story society needs to hear today.

Dredd (2012)

Dredd is a 2012 science fiction action movie based on the long-running 2000 AD comics by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra. This takes place in a future dystopian version of the United States called the Cursed Earth and a violent metropolis called Mega-City One. The only law and order is a group called the Judges.

This takes the idea of a dystopian future to the extreme, as these Judges are the judge, jury, and executioner in all confrontations, killing anyone who they believe presents a threat to their society, real or imagined. However, as with most dystopian thrillers, even the heroes of this story are not the best people, and the innocents pay the price.

The movie was extremely violent, which was exactly what Judge Dredd fans wanted, and it represented a mᴀssive improvement over the 1990s Sylvester Stallone version. The cynicism in the movie is high, a needed trait in dystopian fiction, and it shows how the future could easily turn into an authoritarian nightmare.

Gattaca (1997)

Gattaca is a mostly forgotten 1990s dystopian thriller that was highly praised when it was released for its intelligent look at the future. This is a film that presents a society that uses only eugenics to conceive children through genetic selection to ensure they only possess their parents’ best hereditary traits.

Ethan Hawke is the star, a man born outside the eugenics program who is discriminated against and struggles to achieve his dreams as a result. This brings up themes of both natural selection and societal biases toward different social classes, and how these ideas can disrupt the concept of destiny.

This future claims that only those predestined by society are allowed to rise, and anyone who works and fights for their place falls short if not part of the rightful class in society’s eyes. As with the best dystopian fiction, this points a finger at class divisions and how the elite always rise, even if they don’t always deserve it.

Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)

The dystopian novel that remains a highlight of the genre is George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. This story follows a society that has become a totalitarian state and uses mᴀss surveillance and repressive regimentation to control people and strip almost all citizens of their rights. It also shows how the government can manipulate the truth and facts.

There have been a few adaptations of this story, and the best came in 1984, with John Hurt and Richard Burton in the lead roles. It follows most of the novel’s central themes, with the government using its mᴀssive power to persecute individualism and forcing groupthink into society as a whole to fall in line with political leanings.

Ironically, one of the key themes is the government using censorship to keep information out of the public’s minds, and George Orwell has been one of the most censored authors concerning various book bannings. Luckily, this movie still exists to tell his story in a time when many of the book’s fears are becoming frighteningly real.

Strange Days (1995)

Strange Days is a fascinating look at a dystopian future because the movie came out in 1995 and looked at a world that was only four years away. The film was one of the first looks at what would become the Y2K craze, and thankfully, the real world didn’t devolve into the chaos that this Kathryn Bigelow movie presents.

The story takes place in Los Angeles, which has become a dangerous war zone. There are also sci-fi elements with an illegal machine that records memories onto storage devices. However, the film’s themes involve real-world problems, such as heightened racism, police brutality, voyeurism, and abuse of power.

Strange Days was a box office failure when it came out, but it is much better than critics at the time made it sound. It has become a mᴀssive cult favorite and offers a heightened look at violence and authoritarianism, even using footage from the Rodney King beatings in the film to show a parallel to the story’s violence.

Dark City (1998)

If there is one dystopian thriller that owes a lot to the classic film noirs, but is set in a dystopian society, it is Dark City. Directed by Alex Proyas, Dark City tells the story of an amnesiac man (Rufus Sewell) who is suspected of murder and sets out to discover his true idenтιтy and clear his name.

The movie delves into neo-noir horror when a group of individuals known as the Strangers begins to pursue him. Dark City is an interesting mash-up, with hints of film noir masterpieces like The Maltese Falcon and an obvious influence from episodes of The Twilight Zone on display.

The allegories in Dark City are numerous, with the idea that the city’s inhabitants are prisoners, unaware that they are prisoners at all. This society also has its dark overlords, beings who believe they know what is best for society and have created a form of urban repression, something that only the enlightened see a way to escape from.

Logan’s Run (1976)

The 1967 novel Logan’s Run is a dystopian thriller where the government orders that all people must die on their 21st birthday to properly maintain the world’s diminishing resources. Most people willingly accept their execution, but others reject it and become Runners.

The тιтular character, Logan, is tasked with eliminating Runners before they reach the mythical Sanctuary, where they believe they can live outside of society’s rules. The movie makes some major changes, including changing the age from 21 to 30, and the ending is also changed, altering the entire message of the novel’s ending.

The book ends with a hopeful future for the Runners, while the movie takes a darker turn, revealing that the authoritarian government is not always lying to its people. However, both deal with a society held under their government’s thumb, whether they agree with it or not.

V For Vendetta (2005)

Directed by James McTeigue and based on a script by The Wachowskis, V for Vendetta is based on the Alan Moore and David Lloyd graphic novel. This is a dystopian thriller set in a future totalitarian society that has brought the UK under its control. The story follows a young woman (Natalie Portman) caught in a terrorist plot.

Hugo Weaving plays V, with a mask based on Guy Fawkes, a man who plans a terrorist bombing of the Houses of Parliament on Guy Fawkes Night. The society in this movie is horrific, with immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, and members of alternative religions imprisoned or executed.

This is a brilliant dystopian thriller because it shows the uprising and how someone with deep beliefs can sway an entire nation to stand up against an oppressive and violent totalitarian government and bring it to its knees.

RoboCop (1987)

Paul Verhoeven has mastered delivering his beliefs in movies, but he often has viewers misinterpret them. An example is how Starship Troopers is called a pro-war movie, while it is 100% anti-totalitarianism and anti-war. This is also true for RoboCop, which some call pro-totalitarian, but is an indictment of the dangers of that system.

The 1987 dystopian thriller is about a police officer who is killed in the line of duty but revived as a cyborg called RoboCop, who begins his campaign against crime by any means necessary. While there is violence and RoboCop is the hero, the scenes where the corporate stooges who run the government are gunned down reveal the truth.

RoboCop is about the danger of companies influencing government decisions, and how, when they get control, it comes at the cost of regular citizens. Verhoeven takes his cyborg supercop and has him show everything wrong with his existence, and then he brings the corporations to the ground.

Battle Royale (2000)

Years before The Hunger Games was a novel series or a movie, Japanese filmmaker Kinji Fukasaku did it all better in his dystopian thriller Battle Royale. Based on the Koushun Takami novel of the same name, it follows a totalitarian Japanese government that forces a group of junior high students to fight to the death.

This is a scarier movie since these students are mostly pre-teens and early teenage kids who are put into a situation where they have to kill or be killed. It became an instant cult classic, thanks to its struggle to find a home in the United States because of fears of controversy or lawsuits based on the subject matter.

Quentin Tarantino has praised Battle Royale as the movie he wished he had made. What makes this film so frightening is that it presents a society that believes having kids kill each other is the best way to stop juvenile delinquency among youths, showing the horrors of these extreme belief systems.