The 50 Best Dystopian Movies of All Time

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That dystopian movies have become a genre all their own speaks to our fears of the future. As oppressive regimes across the globe turn to technology to control their populaces—and we see our own government putting kids in cages and eroding privacies we’ve long taken for granted—we get a glimpse the terrifying possibilities of where we may be headed. It’s natural for us to explore those what-if scenarios in film, something we’ve been doing since at least 1932 when Fritz Lang brought Metropolis to life.

Not to be confused with post-apocalyptic films (though the two may overlap), dystopian films deal with a decidedly human threat from those in control. Dystopian societies are marked by mass suffering and great injustice, and we don’t always have to look for fiction to see examples. For our purposes here, we’ve focused on Earth, eliminating films where the threat is from another planet. We’ve also eliminated post-apocalyptic films where society hasn’t been rebuilt to the point of a functioning government. That’s left a still very wide swath of cinema to consider, from sci-fi looks into the distant future to cautionary tales of a much more recognizable world in our present or even past. This may not be escapism, but as the increasing number of dystopian movies, novels and TV series prove, we remain captivated by stories of societies gone wrong and the struggle of individuals to overcome.

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10. A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Director: Stanley Kubrick

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9. Children of Men (2006)

Director: Alfonso Cuarón

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8. Stalker (1979)

Director: Andrei Tarkovsky

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7. Akira (1988)

Director: Katsuhiro Otomo

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6. Metropolis (1927)

Director: Fritz Lang

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5. WALL-E (2008)

Director: Andrew Stanton

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4. Robocop (1987)

Director: Paul Verhoeven

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3. The Matrix (1999)

Directors: The Wachowskis

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2. Brazil

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1. Blade Runner (1982)

Director: Ridley Scott

Just as The Road Warrior set the look and tone for countless post-apocalyptic cinema-scapes to follow, so too did the world of Ridley Scott’s dingy, wet and overcrowded Blade Runner set the standard for the depiction of pre-apocalyptic dystopias. But he also had Harrison Ford, Sean Young, Rutger Hauer and a cast of actors who all bring this Philip K. Dick-inspired tale of a replicant-retiring policeman to gritty, believable life. Beneath the film’s impressive set design and inspired performances lies a compelling meditation on the lurking loneliness of the human (and, perhaps, inhuman) condition that continues to resonate (and trigger new creations, like Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049) to this day.

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