10 Best Dystopian Movies On Netflix That You Should Watching Update 04/2024

Best Dystopian Movies On Netflix

To put it another way, utopia and dystopia are not the same thing. As opposed to the latter, dystopia is a world in which there is a lot of pain or injustice, generally in a dictatorial or post-apocalyptic society. Toward the end of the year, we can’t help but wonder if we’re moving toward a utopian beginning or an eventual dismal conclusion.

For a long time, we’ve fantasized about what it will be like to live in the future. The Blade Runner-esque future envisaged in Ridley Scott’s film? It is possible that the future would be like that of Snowpiercer, who predicted that the final remains of humanity would be transported by train to a new Snowball Earth following a failed attempt at climate engineering to curb global warming.

We don’t know what’s in store for us right now. Many movies in the past have shown the future in ways that can be used to forecast it. Netflix has a plethora of films and television shows that accomplish the same thing.

In order to make better predictions about the future, we looked up Netflix’s top ten dystopian films.

10. 2012 (Roland Emmerich – 2009)

2012 (Roland Emmerich – 2009)

Even though Roland Emmerich’s disaster movie starring John Cusack, Amanda Peet, and Chiwetel Ejiofor predicted the end of the world back in 2012—which clearly didn’t work out well—the film follows geologist Adrian Helmsley (Ejiofor) who discovers the Earth’s crust is becoming unstable after a massive solar flare caused by an alignment of the planets, and novelist Jackson Curtis (Cusack) as he attempts to bring his family to safety as the world is destroyed by a series of asteroid strikes.

In its depiction of catastrophic events, the film makes reference to Mayanism and the 2012 phenomena. As the world comes to an end, 2012 is a compelling film to watch since it features a terrific cast, as well as numerous natural disasters.

9. Ready Player One (Steven Spielberg – 2018)

Many people utilize OASIS (Steven Spielberg’s virtual reality software) to get away from reality’s desolation in Ready Player One, which takes place in 2045. This game pledges OASIS’s ownership to the winner if it can be completed before businessman Nolan Sorrento’s (Mendelsohn) corporation can do so. Wade Watts (Sheridan), an orphaned adolescent, teams up with four allies to try to complete the game before the corporation can do so.

Ernest Cline’s novel of the same name, published in 2011, was the inspiration for this film, which was praised for its stunning visuals and fast-paced narrative. Some reviews said the film’s plot was an improvement over the original material, while others highlighted considerable deviations from the book. In addition to the 91st Academy Awards, the 24th Critics’ Choice Awards, and the 72nd British Academy Film Awards, it got visual effects nominations for this movie.

8. Passengers (Morten Tyldum – 2016)

Passengers (Morten Tyldum – 2016)

Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt feature in the picture, which is loosely based on the EC Comics classic 50 Girls 50 from the 1950s. Michael Sheen and Laurence Fishburne round out the cast. Two people woken ninety years too early from an induced sleep on a spaceship, which is transporting thousands of passengers, to a colony on an Earth-like planet in a star system 125 light-years beyond Earth.

Passengers is a thought-provoking film on life, death, and the meaning of existence, thanks to its intriguing premise and strong performances from both of its leads. At the 89th Academy Awards, the film was nominated for two awards: Best Original Score and Best Production Design.

7. Snowpiercer (Bong Joon-ho – 2013)

“Snowpiercer,” one of the best contemporary films depicting class prejudice, is driven by an overarching metaphor/microcosm for both now and the future. Everything about this film is top-notch, from the director to the cinematography to the editing. It’s the kind of thing that teens and tweens should look up to and emulate.

“So that was the challenge, that was the excitement, to shoot the entire movie inside a train, and I felt like yeah, I am going to make the best train movie ever and had all this expectation,” the filmmaker says of filming the train segments. However, I became quite nervous immediately before the session began. The very thought of filming in such a cramped, fast-paced environment, filled with tunnels and light, excited me immediately.

6. Arrival (Denis Villeneuve – 2016)

Arrival (Denis Villeneuve – 2016)

Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, and Forest Whitaker feature in Denis Villeneuve’s science fiction film Arrival, which is based on Ted Chiang’s 1998 short tale “Story of Your Life.” An Army linguist is tasked with discovering ways to speak with aliens that have come on Earth before the situation escalates into a full-scale conflict.

For its exploration of communication with extraterrestrial intelligence under Villeneuve’s direction, the 89th Academy Awards gave the film eight nominations in the Best Picture category, along with nominations in the Director category, cinematography category, and screenplay category, as well as a prize for best sound editing.

5. V for Vendetta (James McTeigue – 2005)

The Wachowskis adapted Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s 1988 DC/Vertigo Comics limited seriesV for Vendetta into a screenplay for the James McTeigue-directed V for Vendetta. The film is set in an alternate future in which the United Kingdom has been subjugated by a Nordic supremacist and neo-fascist totalitarian regime. It centers on V (played by Hugo Weaving), an anarchist and masked freedom fighter who attempts to ignite a revolution through elaborate terrorist acts. Natalie Portman plays Evey, a young working-class woman caught up in V’s mission, and Stephen Rea plays a detective leading a

Anarchists have seized on it as a symbol of government oppression, and many political organizations see it that way. Guy Fawkes mask has become “a familiar brand and convenient placard to use in protest against tyranny—and I’m glad with people wearing it, it seems unique, an icon of popular culture being used this way.”

4. Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón – 2006)

Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón – 2006)

In 2027, two decades of human infertility have left society on the verge of collapse, and this is the setting for Children of Men. The government of the United Kingdom detains and returns asylum applicants to their countries of origin. Owen plays Theo Faron, a civil servant who must assist refugee Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey) in escaping the commotion in the streets of Cairo. Julianne Moore, Michael Caine, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Pam Ferris, and Charlie Hunnam also star in the film.

Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography and Best Film Editing were all nominated for Academy Awards. Aside from that, it was nominated for three BAFTA Awards and won two of them, including Best Cinematography and Best Production Design. It was also nominated for three Saturn Awards, winning one for Best Science Fiction Film. 117 film critics from across the world rated it 13th in a list of the 100 greatest films of the 21st century in 2016.

3. A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick – 1971)

‘A Clockwork Orange,’ Stanley Kubrick’s radioactively insane thesis on violence, was adapted from the 1962 novel of the same name by Anthony Burgess. Psychopathic delinquent Alex is imprisoned for murder and rape in the film’s narrative. To lower his sentence, he agrees to participate in an experimental government therapy, but things go awry.

To this day, it is regarded one of the first films to loosen cinematic regulations on violence. One of the most significant works in cinema and other media is A Clockwork Orange. “Genre-less” directing techniques of Kubrick have made the picture a staple in popular culture, which Adam Chandler of The Atlantic attributes to the film’s “new innovation in shooting, soundtrack, and production.”

2. Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve – 2017)

Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve – 2017)

Blade Runner 2 is Villeneuve’s follow-up to Ridley Scott’s 1982 original, starring Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Ana de Armas, Sylvia Hoeks, Jared Leto, and Edward James Olmos. As K, a Nexus-9 replicant “blade runner,” Gosling uncovers a truth that could destabilize society and alter the course of human history.

The film was nominated for and won several awards, including Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects at the 90th Academy Awards. At the 71st British Academy Film Awards, it was nominated for eight awards, including Best Director, and won two.

Since Blade Runner’s release, the subject of whether Deckard is human or a replicant has sparked debate. A replicant is what Ridley Scott has claimed Deckard was; Harrison Ford and other filmmakers believe that ambiguity is vital to keeping Deckard as an open-ended character. Blade Runner 2049 doesn’t end the debate about this topic.

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick – 1968)

Despite being released fifty years ago, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey remains one of the most important and defining films in the history of cinema. To this day, it stands as a monumental tribute to Stanley Kubrick’s unbridled talent, whose filmmaking landscape was forever altered by the release of The Shining.

In 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke wrote the screenplay. Following the discovery of an alien monolith that was altering human evolution, HAL and the crew of A Space Odyssey set off on a journey to Jupiter. From some who regarded it as a darkly apocalyptic to those who saw it as a hopeful reassessment of the hopes of humanity, it dealt with a wide range of subjects, including existentialism, human evolution, technology, artificial intelligence, and the potential of extraterrestrial life.

a stunning display of cinematic genius that elevates the images to a higher plane of existence. What would we think of Kubrick’s La Gioconda film today if Leonardo had written at the bottom of the canvas, “This lady is smiling slightly because she has decaying teeth”—or “because her beloved doesn’t know she’s keeping something from him”? It would stifle the viewer’s appreciation and bind him to a different reality. 2001 should not be the year where that happens.”