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.
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 Set a near future L.A. where the judicial system has been replaced by an A.I
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
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
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
Solid South Korean attempt to copy Gravity and The Martian with the attempts to rescue an astronaut who becomes stranded on The Moon
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
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
This has an interesting premise where a middle-aged man suddenly faces his teenage girlfriend returned unaged from a relativistic space voyage
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
Film shot during the pandemic lockdown from Michael Bay’s production company set in a future where Covid has become even more virulent
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
Film that takes place across three future eras that questions what happens when Virtual Reality produces artificial memories more vivid than real world ones
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
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!
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
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
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
Leigh Whannell, James Wan’s BFF and co-writer on the Saw and
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
An extraordinary anime adapted from Project Itoh, a conceptually challenging work concerning a villain who can manipulate language to drive populations to genocide
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
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
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 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
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
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 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
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
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
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
An acclaimed semi-autobiographical novel about a childhood growing up under Soviet rule is filmed translated to a near-future dystopian setting
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Animated film set in a dystopian near-future Europe of constant surveillance where even people’s heads are monitored
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Brian Yuzna usually makes well worthwhile films but this one about an escaped prisoner hunted by a killer cyborg dog fails to come together
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Stylish but not always coherent South Korean near-future thriller about a comic-book artist, a hit woman and an amnesia drug
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
Israeli film co-directed by Ari Folman about a girl with precognitive powers. After a great opening, the film loses all real dramatic impetus