The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
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.
A Kathryn Bigelow directed Cyberpunk film scripted by James Cameron concerning an illicit technology that can replay memories. This offers a powerful vision of a socially divided L.A. on the eve of the millennium
Director Brett Leonard started the fascination with Virtual Reality off with The Lawnmower Man but shot himself in the foot with this absurd braindead follow-up in which Denzel Washington pursues a madly OTT Russell Crowe as an android serial killer
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
A mishmash of Alien copy and supernatural serial killer film set in a drowned future London with a script that makes no real sense. The film’s buddy cop relationship starring Rutger Hauer does have its amusements.
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
SF action where Rutger Hauer is sentenced with a collar that will explode if he moves 100 yards apart from Mimi Rogers
An outrageous Hong Kong prison film that comes filled with mind-bogglingly over-the-top splatter effects
The novelty of a Cyberpunk biker film, this is an efficient actioner and assemblage of paper-thin cliches and poses with almost nothing of substance beneath them
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
Predator was one of the better Alien/Aliens copies of the 1980s. This sequel does little more than serve the same up all over again bar the substitution of a near-future L.A. for the jungle but manages to generate a reasonably intensive ride out of the action
1990s VHS SF/action with David Carradine as a future cyborg bounty hunter on the run with a wrongly convicted girl while hunted by his own side
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
The first film from Australian director John Hillcoat, a brutally tough depiction of a maximum security prison set in the future. Singer Nick Cave gives an extremely disturbing performance as an inmate
A classic Troma title that is actually more interesting than the actual film, which concerns wars between surf gangs in a collapsed future. The film does eventually achieve a bizarre over-the-top lunacy
The second film from Leos Carax, a near-future set romance that bursts with freshness and originality
Alan Rudolph makes a modern film noir that takes place in a vaguely futuristic setting. Starring Kris Kristofferson and Divine
A sprawling international political thriller/satire about stolen nuclear weapons starring Sean Connery as a journalist
Musician Neil Young directs a science-fiction film! I was hoping this would be another Repo Man, instead we get an incoherent mess that throws in a jumble of sf concepts and feels like it was made without a script
The second directorial outing of a young Charles Band, this is essentially an earthbound version of Alien. Not a very good film, the principal reasons to watch are some cheap effects and a young Demi Moore
A detective thriller set in a near-future Germany. Arthouse director Rainer Werner Fassbinder plays the detective. This came out three weeks before Blade Runner prefigures what was later called Cyberpunk
Adaptation of a Doris Lessing novel set in a collapsing future England. Nicely portrayed but crytpically surreal touches end up baffling
The first of the Mad Max films and a considerable jolt if one comes to it after any of the sequels. This is an altogether different film – a grim and violent road movie more in the vein of Death Wish
Early Derek Jarman film that acts as a snapshot of the 70s punk movement, a rambling indulgent treatise that depicts a future England that has collapsed into anarchy
Robert Aldrich makes a thriller in which rogue general Burt Lancaster hijacks a nuclear missile silo and demands the truth about the Vietnam War be released. A big muscular production that attained some controversy at the time
Film from director Stephanie Rothman about a future where prisoners are exiled to an island whey they create their own ideal society
Peter Watkins is the most underrated director of the 1960s – his films are fiercely anti-establishment attacks that come with an extraordinary incendiary charge. This mockumentary depiction of a near future where the government uses a rock star to manipulate the public rings even more true today
Comedy in which Jerry Lewis and Connie Stevens are forced to marry to go to The Moon. The sexual politics play out pretty embarrassingly today
Early sound era depiction of the attempts to build a tunnel between the UK and USA. The film conjures something of the epic architectural imagination of Metropolis but is crippled by dull, static scenes with characters sitting around talking (a novelty for early sound audiences)
A insanely madcap work of meta-fiction. Imagine stupider versions of John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson from Pulp Fiction mixed with Stranger Than Fiction as they discover they are fictional characters