Equinox (1992)
Futuristic Film Noir
A follow-up to Alan Rudolph’s Trouble of Mind, a work of neo-Film Noir in a futuristic setting where Matthew Modine plays twins who are drawn into underworld dealings
Near Future Settings
Near Future Settings take place in a future that is not too distant from today. Exactly how close is not something that is clearly defined – it can be a few months to a few years to 10-20 years, although usually less than a 100 years or more.
As opposed to a Future setting, a Near Future Setting looks very much like the world does now. People generally maintain the same fashion styles, drive the same vehicles and behave as they do today. By contrast, a full future setting might have become a Dystopian society, a Cyberpunk world, a Post-Apocalyptic setting, a point when humanity has expanded out into space, or even a Far Future where the world has radically changed and is barely recognisable.
The near future setting might presume a technological advance (usually only a single one) or some social change. Often a near future setting will be used by a story to predict current trends in society, particularly those of a socio-political nature, extended a little further beyond what it is now.
Eagle Eye (2008)
Surveillance Thriller/A.I. Amok
Shia LaBeouf ends up on the run from the FBI in a conspiracy involving an A.I. A thriller about the surveillance society that, despite much sound and fury, finds almost nothing to say about its subject
Dracula III: Legacy (2005)
Dracula in the Modern Day
The second of two video-released sequels to Dracula 2000, this takes place with more of an action emphasis and features vampire hunters tracking Dracula across rebel-torn future Europe
Double Dragon (1994)
Videogame Adaptation/Future Martial Arts
Disappointing adaptation of the arcade videogame. The game is premised on mindless martial arts action but the film pitches everything down to pre-teen audiences and make the two brother protagonists into dorks
The Door Into Summer (2021)
Time Travel
Robert Heinlein’s time travel novel gets a surprisingly faithful adaptation from Japan. This keeps the story’s double structure that tells one story and then with considerable conceptual dexterity reveals another hidden in the margins
Death of a President (2006)
The Assassination of George W. Bush Mockumentary
Mockumentary that caused outrage at the time in depicting the assassination of then-sitting US President George W. Bush. This does not hold back in some damning political punches
Cosmopolis (2012)
Vision of Near-Future Social Collapse
David Cronenberg film that takes place in a limousine and consists of a surreal drift through a near-future world in the midst of economic collapse, observing it with darkly brilliant, razor-sharp agitprop dialogue
Code 8 (2019)
Superpowered Heist Film
One of the few original, non-comic book based superhero films of the 2010s set in a world where those with powers are treated as a minority. This is essentially a heist film but with the addition of super-powers
Class of 1999 (1990)
Killer Android Schoolteachers
Mark L. Lester’s follow-up to his earlier The Class of 1982 about a teacher forced to adopt vigilante actions in a lawless classroom. In the interim, The Terminator came out and this now has killer android schoolteachers
Civil War (2024)
US Social Collapse
Alex Garland is one of the most interesting creative names out there in the genre at the moment. Here he offers a frightening depiction of a near future USA collapsed into civil war
Chappie (2015)
Artificial Intelligence/Robot Becomes Self-Aware
Neill Blomkamp’s film about A.I. turns into Short Circuit dropped into the militarised future of RoboCop. Of all the rich possibilities in the idea, all we get is a goofy comedy with a pimped-out carjacking robot
The Car: Road to Revenge (2019)
Possessed Car
The Car concerning a possessed car is one of the forgotten films of the 1970s. Why it has produced a sequel 42 years later is a scratch of the head. Not that the two films even resemble one another
Brick Mansions (2014)
Near Future Action/Walled-Off Ghetto
The English-language remake of the Luc Besson-produced Banlieue 13. The electrifying parkour scenes of the original now seem routine and the film’s social set-up so thinly sketched as to be negligible as science-fiction
Branded (2012)
Brand Names Revealed as Parasitic Entities
An ambitious film in its depiction of a near-future Russia and satire on the media. The latter half has the hero undergo a mystical experience and discover that advertising brands are living entities that feed on human need
Black Road (2016)
Near Future Film Noir
Near future set science-fiction noir as a cyborg-enhanced hero is drawn in to conduct an investigation on behalf of a morally ambiguous femme fatale. Despite a reasonable effort made, this is a little too low key
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part II (2013)
Comic-Book Superhero/Animation
The second of the two-part animated adaptation of Frank Miller’s classic graphic novel. The film is staged as a series of epic confrontations between iconic DC characters and written with a dark bite to emerge much more satisfying than the first part
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part I (2012)
Comic-Book Superhero/Animation
The first of a two-part animated adaptation of the classic graphic novel ever written. The film lacks the same impact because, firstly, it is an incomplete story, and secondly, Frank Miller’s ideas have now become so much part of the modern Batman
Banlieue 13: Ultimatum (2009)
French Future Action/Walled-Off Neighbourhood
Sequel to the French action hit. The plot shuffles the same basic elements around but it is the action we have come for, which is slow to start but soon kicks into exhilarating high gear
Banlieue 13 (2004)
French Future Action/Walled-Off Neighbourhood
Luc Besson written/produced film that is a French rehash of Escape from New York but director Pierre Morel gives it a series of exhilarating action and parkour sequences
Atomica (2017)
Mystery at a Future Nuclear Waste Recycling Plant
While the title suggests some lost 1950s atomic monster film, this is a rather dull film that concerns mysterious happenings at a near future nuclear waste reprocessing plant
Atlas Shrugged (2011)
Libertarian Political Fantasy/Ayn Rand Adaptation
The first in a three part film adaptation of Ayn Rand’s novel that makes a heavy-handed and frequently tub-thumping argument for the virtues of selfishness and despisal of any rules of fairness
Atlas Shrugged III: Who is John Galt? (2014)
Libertarian Political Fantasy/Ayn Rand Adaptation
The third of the trilogy of films adapted from Ayn Rand’s absurd fantasy wherein the leaders of the business world decide to go on strike because they don’t feel appreciated enough
Atlas Shrugged II: The Strike (2012)
Libertarian Political Fantasy/Ayn Rand Adaptation
The second film from Ayn Rand’s libertarian fantasy. This gets more into the meat of Rand’s ideas (wherein the wealthy decide to ignore an undeserving world) and is even more ridiculous than the first film
Archive (2020)
Mind Upload Into an Android Body
One of the better in the fad for Artificial Intelligence films we have had since the 2010s with Theo James trying to place his late wife’s consciousness into an android body
Apex (2021)
Human Bloodsports
Another of the last films that Bruce Willis made before his mental deterioration forced him to retire. A variation on The Most Dangerous Game where Bruce plays a bad-ass facing hunters with his bare hands
The Anomaly (2014)
Identity Bender/Brain Hijackiing
A surprisingly good conceptual SF film concerning a man trying to deal with a series of increasingly more surreal jumps in which he finds his body is being hijacked
Among the Shadows (2019)
Near Future Werewolf Private Eye/Murder Mystery
A film about the internecine in-fighting among werewolf clans and a werewolf P.I. in a near-future European Union. With Lindsay Lohan as the EU President’s wife!
Amelia 2.0 (2017)
Mind Upload Into an Android Body
The theme of Mind Upload is waiting for the one film to come along and define its theme. This, in which a comatose wife’s body is loaded into an android body, is not that film and only reaches for cliches
Alien Nation (1988)
Human-Alien Buddy Cop Film
Made not longer after the buddy cop hit of Lethal Weapon, this has a curmudgeonly human paired up with an alien partner. A fairly ordinary cop show plot is boosted by two fantastic central performances