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.
Films about androids and artificial intelligence have taken off in the 2010s. This comes produced by Ridley Scott who made Blade Runner, the defining classic on the theme; on the other hand, it ends up in the hands of a director who specialises in relationship dramas
Exceptionally written UK mini-series from Doctor Who producer Russell T. Davies following a diverse family throughout the 2020s that become a projection of current trends turned nightmarish
A sprawling international political thriller/satire about stolen nuclear weapons starring Sean Connery as a journalist
An acclaimed semi-autobiographical novel about a childhood growing up under Soviet rule is filmed translated to a near-future dystopian setting
SF action where Rutger Hauer is sentenced with a collar that will explode if he moves 100 yards apart from Mimi Rogers
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
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
Leigh Whannell, James Wan’s BFF and co-writer on the Saw and
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
Remake of the Ozploitation film where the original’s Most Dangerous Game scenario set in a dystopian future is lamely rewritten as a reality tv show and another Hunger Games ripoff. The original was fairly terrible; this has a lack of conviction in most regards that makes it even worse
Alan Rudolph makes a modern film noir that takes place in a vaguely futuristic setting. Starring Kris Kristofferson and Divine
Political What if scenario that sees British Prime Minister Tony Blair being publicly shamed and then placed on trail for his part in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The biting points are undone by the film being directed in a tone of strident farce
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)
Shion Sono is a director who has gained cult acclaim in recent years. This astonishes with the brashness of his approach, set among the street gang warfare of the near future where all of the dialogue is delivered in rap. On the other hand, the film lacks the budget to sustain such energy
Conceptually highly ambitious SF film about humans being biologically modified in order to be able to live on Saturn’s moon Titan. After a highly promising beginning, the film falls apart in a badly cliched unethical scientist and lab experiment amok ending
This has an interesting premise where a middle-aged man suddenly faces his teenage girlfriend returned unaged from a relativistic space voyage
A film that offers the depiction of a totalitarian future USA where Donald Trump has refused to leave office. This was made at the end of Trump’s first term and before his second term return to power.
Australian SF film about a man’s discovery of an alien artifact that helps regenerate body parts and gives him prophetic dream warnings of a coming nuclear war. An odd little film more than it is necessarily one that keeps you interested or dramatically engaged
Film from director Stephanie Rothman about a future where prisoners are exiled to an island whey they create their own ideal society
Russian SF film about a rejuvenation process where an interesting set-up tapers off into telling the stories of the newborns, not all of which are developed enough despite the lengthy time the film takes telling them
SF film in which a terminally ill Mahershala Ali has a clone copy created to take his place but then begins to have second thoughts
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
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
An outrageous Hong Kong prison film that comes filled with mind-bogglingly over-the-top splatter effects
Action film about an artificially intelligent fighter plane that goes amok. Rob Cohen directs in all the cliches of the genre and the seeming need to have something spectacular happening every few minutes
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.
From Joseph Kosinski, then riding high as the director of Top Gun: Maverick, Chris Hemsworth is cast in an interestingly ambiguous role as a scientist conducting illicit experiments with behaviour altering drugs
Following the huge success of films like Gravity and The Martian that portray space travel with scrupulous realism, this can be considered the Young Adult version. It pays surprising attention to getting its science right; on the other hand, that doesn’t excuse the gaping implausibilities elsewhere
Richard Kelly of Donnie Darko fame makes a work set in a near-future L.A., a sprawling film bursting at the edges with too many characters and subplots but not uninteresting
Film shot during the pandemic lockdown from Michael Bay’s production company set in a future where Covid has become even more virulent
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
At age 81, David Cronenberg is still on great form with this perversely fascinating work about the development of a technology that places cameras inside graves to observe corpses as they decay
Richard Linklater conducts an animated adaptation of the Philip K. Dick novel with extremely faithful results. Keanu Reeves is a police officer assigned to investigate what he realises is himself
Israeli film co-directed by Ari Folman about a girl with precognitive powers. After a great opening, the film loses all real dramatic impetus
Stylish but not always coherent South Korean near-future thriller about a comic-book artist, a hit woman and an amnesia drug
Impressive Australian film that recalls the Mad Max films. Rather than action spectacle, this feels like Mad Max as rewritten by Cormac McCarthy wherein a collapsed future echoes a beautifully written exploration of the soul of a man in a violent world
Brian Yuzna usually makes well worthwhile films but this one about an escaped prisoner hunted by a killer cyborg dog fails to come together
Remade, the 1975 dystopian film about future sports is stripped of any of its big message (even of its future setting) and is turned into no more than a formulaic action film
A comedy variant on android/A.I. themes where two people use robot doubles for romantic subterfuge only for the two androids to elope together
Surprisingly warm and genteel story about the relationship between an aging cat burglar and a robot. For once, no cliches about robots becoming intelligent or discovering feelings but simply a credible piece extrapolated from contemporary robotics
I have to admit despite all the bad feeling for this, I liked it. While what went on in terms of the man inside the machine was cut and dried in the original, this has been shifted to give us a “the soul of Robocop” story . Moreover, the original’s biting satire of 1980s corporations and politics has been smartly updated to tackle some big 2010s issues
Alex Cox, director of the cult Repo Man , was once a name of some promise but he has instead spent more than two decades making increasingly obscure and amateurish films. His adaptation of a Jacobean revenge drama into a near-future setting improves this none despite a great cast line-up
Film about robot boxing that leaves no sports movie cliche untouched, nevertheless works effectively on all the right emotional cues. Capably made, with good effects and the cute kid steals the show
The Purge was a routine film that caught on with audiences but the premise lacks the legs to be a franchise – for one, it is based on a future scenario that has zero plausibility. This makes paper-thin stabs in terms of social issues but all interest evaporates when the guns start blazing
Slightly more interesting than its predecessor in that it takes the action out from gated communities into the streets, otherwise this offers just the same as The Purge – much in the way of heavy artillery and a patina of contemporary politics that have all the depth of a protest placard
Film based around the improbable concept of a future where on one night of each year all crime including murder becomes permissible. While this promises a rich vein of satire, the film only emerges as a variant on Straw Dogs
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
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
This Philip K. Dick adaptation has a great premise – Ben Affleck is an engineer with a blanked memory blanked only to find he has left himself clues from the future of things that are starting to come true. Alas, this is reduced to an action vehicle in the hands of John Woo
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
Pacific Rim wasn’t Guillermo Del Toro’s best film but it was a fun attempt to imagine giant Japanese mecha robots battling giant monsters. This is a sequel but without Del Toro it is reduced to no more than one of Michael Bay’s Transformers films
Giant mecha robots beating the crap out of giant monsters – what’s not to like? In comparison to the Transformers films, Guillermo Del Toro looks to find the soul of the robot jock – in essence, Transformers for grown-ups
There have been some impressive works about A.I. in the last few years. This plays out as Ex Machina by way of Training Day and is only notable in its ridiculous implausibility
Gimmicky B-budget film about a hi-tech future prison built at the South Pole. Thus has been thrown together with a giant snake amok plot. A passably routine effort
This is like an online version of 13 Sins about an internet site that pushes people to take increasingly more outrageous and eventually deadly dares. One of the new thrillers centred around social media that seeks to adopt its visual look, this is slickly polished and aimed direct to the teenage demographic
Solid time travel film about a man who struggles to find a way back to his love as her ex keeps changing the timeline so she doesn’t leave him
Indian film set in a future where female infanticide has become so widespread there are no longer any women. A fundamentally implausible idea is treated with some conviction
Brit Marling is one of the most intelligent creative faces of the 2010s/20s. Here she co-writes, co-directs and stars in a fascinating murder mystery set in the tech world at a futuristic retreat
Solid South Korean attempt to copy Gravity and The Martian with the attempts to rescue an astronaut who becomes stranded on The Moon
Film that takes place across three future eras that questions what happens when Virtual Reality produces artificial memories more vivid than real world ones
Wim Wenders film from a story idea by U2’s Bono set around the down-and-outs at a fleapit hotel slightly into the future. The film circles around a cast of eccentrics without ever really coming together
Animated film set in a dystopian near-future Europe of constant surveillance where even people’s heads are monitored
Director Timur Bekmambetov makes a film in the Screenlife process where the screen becomes a computer screen. Set a near future L.A. where the judicial system has been replaced by an A.I
Adaptation of a Doris Lessing novel set in a collapsing future England. Nicely portrayed but crytpically surreal touches end up baffling
The second film from Leos Carax, a near-future set romance that bursts with freshness and originality
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
A fascinating and well told work about artificial intelligence and mind upload. If the third act falls into disappointingly cliched patterns, this is nearly three-quarters of a strong and intelligent science-fiction film
A Chinese-made attempt to make a disaster movie with a crosscut of characters aboard a luxury airliner. What causes the film to plummet down into the ridiculous is the addition of a horde of mutant cats
Based on an acclaimed book, once to be directed by David Cronenberg. This opened to bad reviews but is not uninteresting. A near future setting, precognitive dreams and Amber Heard as a sizzling femme fatale
Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart bid farewell to the X-Men franchise. One of the strongest films in the series, having been stripped of superheroics and allowed to play out as a character drama
A heist film set in a near-future USA where a group of criminals are preparing a last big caper before the activation of a mind control device that will make crime impossible
English language adaptation of an anime. The original was controversial for its copious sex and violence; here we get an anodyne action movie that is no more than The Punisher cast with a teenage girl
A near future film that with eviscerates the royals with biting savagery as it depicts Prince Charles becoming the King of England and clashing with the government of the day
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
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
This comes out like a comedy version of The Purge almost, where a future California lottery awards the winner millions if they can avoid every other person trying to kill them
An SF outing from Thomas Vinterberg that proved a flop with audiences. It is never satisfying as an SF film but you cannot deny it is directed with a beautiful and sophisticated cool that draws you inside it
Wes Anderson is at his best when he does stop-motion animation as in Fantastic Mr. Fox and here. Essentially a Disney talking animals animated film where the animals talk like real people, this comes with considerable charm
What should have been a modest conceptual SF story about people coming to discover the true nature of the world they live in is killed by being turned into an loud and over-inflated Michael Bay action vehicle
Finnish filmmaker Timo Vuorensola makes a conceptually wild film about invasion by Nazi flying saucers from the Moon. Stunning quality effects on a minuscule budget that rival the work of professional houses
Modest story about a catastrophic countrywide powercut – rather than depicting a widespread apocalypse, the film is a character-driven piece focused around two sisters living on their own at a cabin in the woods
A reality bending film about a man held in an automated prison where he must outsmart the prison’s A.I. in order to affect an escape
The anime Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade was a fascinating play of metaphors that mixed terrorism and Little Red Riding Rood. This is a live-action remake from South Korea
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
From the title and poster, you get the impression this is a future-set film about hoverboards or drones. Instead we have a near-future film involving agri-business conspiracy where euthanasia is dispatched by corporate lackeys
This comes with the promising set-up of the setting of a socially collapsing near-future L.A. where Jodie Foster is a disgraced medic who runs an off-the books hospital that treats the criminal underworld.
The fifth of the Highlander films. It is hard to believe people could actually make a film worse than Highlander II but this is akin to Edward D. Wood Jr on a multi-million dollar budget
Spike Jonze addresses virtual relationships in this story of a romance between a man and an A.I. A film that is astonishing in its freshness, naturalness and avoidance of any of the cliches that have dogged other treatments.
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
Full-length follow-up to Hard Revenge, Milly and the same mix of ferocious action and over-the-top splatter. Despite a large budget, this is marginally the lesser in sheer entertainment
Ferociously entertaining Japanese film about a cyborg-enhanced heroine on a revenge trail. Mostly a series of ridiculously over-the-top action moves combined with copious degrees of blood
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
An extraordinary anime adapted from Project Itoh, a conceptually challenging work concerning a villain who can manipulate language to drive populations to genocide
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
Michael Dudikoff-starring action film about the use of advanced technology during a Middle Eastern war as Syrian terrorists hijack and threaten to fire US nuclear missles
In this, the fifth film in The Purge series, the scenario becomes even more interestingly political, becoming a satiric take on MAGA America and the Capitol Riots
Blumhouse have handed the reigns of The Purge series to African-American filmmaker Gerard McMurray who takes the opportunity to get political and drag the series into the era of Black Lives Matter
Spanish comedy produced to celebrate the turn of the millennium in which the fates of several people wind together on the eve of the end of the century
A superpowers rather than a superhero film with Gugu Mbatha-Raw as a woman with abilities on the run who is forced to seek refuge with her estranged family
An existential puzzlebox of a film where a group of job interviewees are locked in a room and asked to work out what the question is. A fascinating conceptual film that falls somewhere between Cube and Saw