Sci-fi movies can be escapist, with Star Wars probably being the best example, if you’re willing to count that as science fiction (some will tell you it’s not, being more of a fantasy story set in space). Plenty are about human nature and exploring how it’s altered (or not) by technology, usually (but not always) in the future, and so maybe it’s accurate to say that lots of science fiction is thought-provoking. See 2001: A Space Odyssey, which isn’t really escapist entertainment, but it’s also not entirely pessimistic about the future. Just a little. Artificial intelligence is scary.
As for the movies that are pessimistic, or genuinely harrowing? That’s what can be found in the following films, all of them especially far from escapist. Some are engaging, and maybe entertaining if you don’t mind being on edge, though others are genuinely just confronting. Important thing is they’re all heavy, and ultimately not very hopeful about humanity and its future, or potential lack thereof.
10
‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ (1984)
Nineteen Eighty-Four is the quintessential dystopian story, at least of the 20th century, and it was translated decently well in this film adaptation, which they got kind of cute with by releasing it in the actual year of 1984. The George Orwell novel, published in 1949, tackles a lot all at once, with its look at a bleak future where surveillance is pervasive and various freedoms have been drastically reduced or outright taken away.
There is a tiny bit of hope for some small sections of Nineteen Eighty-Four, with characters who try to resist all the totalitarianism around them, but the hope’s short-lived. Any excitement is stomped out pretty fast, too. It ends up being a pretty bad time overall, to put it mildly, but obviously. It’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Its reputation is such that it’s not really a surprise, this being the quintessential dystopian story and all.
9
‘Brazil’ (1985)
Another dystopian movie, Brazil is honestly about as cynical as Nineteen Eighty-Four, but it’s also a bit more broadly comedic, which has the effect of making the heavier stuff feel all the more surprising. The whole thing is farcical, and quite energetic, to the point where watching it feels a bit dizzying, since it’s about a man’s life falling apart in a world that has ceased to make any sort of sense.
It plays around with things tonally, and then also, there’s some ambiguity in parts of the film about what might be imagined and what might be distressingly real, and things collapse – and then become less ambiguous – in genuinely upsetting ways. Then again, Brazil is kind of fun at times, or at least engaging because of how chaotic it is, but you do eventually come away from it all feeling emotionally wrecked.
8
‘The Long Walk’ (2025)
This one’s pretty recent, but honestly, it’s about as heavy as dystopian movies about deadly games get (probably even more harrowing than Battle Royale, in some ways). It’s The Long Walk, and it involves a bunch of teenage boys taking part in a competition that involves the bunch of them walking non-stop. Well, they can stop, but if they stop for too long, they get shot in the face. One by one, they all die, until one person remains on his feet, and then he wins.
The Long Walk involves a bunch of teenage boys taking part in a competition that involves the bunch of them walking non-stop. If they stop for too long, they get shot in the face, basically.
The movie introduces you to a group of largely sympathetic young men, and then lets you know almost straight away that you’re going to see most of them die. Stephen King was not messing around when he wrote this one, early in his writing career, and honestly, the film adaptation ends up being similarly bleak, even if there are a couple of changes made near the end of the story.
7
‘Seconds’ (1966)
Seconds is a movie about identity, specifically about getting out of one’s life with a technology that allows those with sufficient money to fake their deaths and take on the appearance/identity of another person entirely. Even when things seem to be going to plan, there is a real dread that hangs over almost every minute (and every… second?) of Seconds, so when things go from bad to worse, it’s kind of inevitable.
But the inevitability does nothing to stop the whole thing from being incredibly crushing, and it’s impressive how unsettling Seconds is, even though, at the time of writing, it’s not far off turning 60 years old. It was ahead of its time, in many ways, and it’s one of those unique sci-fi/horror movies that’s always likely to remain disquieting; hell, maybe even another 60 years from now. Come back in 2086 and get ready to feel bad all over again!
6
‘Hard to Be a God’ (2013)
Though it’s a weird and exceptionally long movie, Hard to Be a God is pretty easy to summarize, since it’s about an expedition to an Earth-like planet, done for the purpose of getting the population there to progress past their equivalent of the Medieval era. But the scientists who undertake this expedition end up being tempted to exploit the population and play God, as the title suggests, and then things get messy.
Well, they get messy thematically and narratively, but before that point, Hard to Be a God is also messy in the more literal sense, since it’s one of the grimiest and dirtiest sci-fi movies ever made. There is so much mud, blood, and like, other things. Maybe you don’t want to know. Anyway, there aren’t too many other sci-fi epics out there like it, and maybe that’s for the best.
5
‘The Thing’ (1982)
The Thing is fairly entertaining in a more or less conventional way, as opposed to some of the other movies here, so long as you don’t mind being on edge for almost all of the film’s 109 minutes. This movie involves an alien life form hunting down some researchers who are all largely confined to one location, and said life form can mimic the other life forms it’s assimilated eerily well.
This makes paranoia a pervasive feeling throughout all of The Thing, and it’s impressive how much suspense the movie milks from such a simple premise. Very few opportunities for catharsis exist in The Thing, which sets it apart from other movies about outgunned humans having to survive more advanced alien life forms (see Predator and Aliens, especially).
4
‘On the Silver Globe’ (1988)
Another epic, and a visually striking one, too, On the Silver Globe has an opening act that covers a great deal of time, showing a new civilization that’s set up by some scientists on a planet that’s not Earth. Then, after a bunch of generations have passed, some people from Earth travel there and try to control things in a bit of a “Hard to Be a God” sort of way, but everything goes potentially even worse than it did in that film.
It’s harder to make sense of things in On the Silver Globe, too, partly because the movie wasn’t quite finished… but enough of it was that it still works in its own weird/fractured way. Everything here is unsettling, basically. That’s the main takeaway, and you do leave the film feeling confused, unnerved, and shaken. Maybe in a good way. Depends how prepared you are for some intense stuff going into it, possibly.
3
‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’ (1976)
David Bowie is understandably best known for the music he made across a varied and consistently adventurous career, but also, he wasn’t a bad actor, and certainly took on some interesting roles whenever he stepped in front of the camera. The Man Who Fell to Earth is one of the more noteworthy ones, since it really had Bowie at the center of things, playing an alien who comes to Earth because his home planet is running out of water.
While on Earth, he just generally has a pretty bad time, and the movie’s unapologetically somber, kind of looking at all the terrible things that can happen to someone living on this planet, and how people might well treat a literal alien (not well, to put it mildly). The Man Who Fell to Earth is slow-paced, grim, and also disturbingly realistic/grounded for a movie about alien life.
2
‘A Clockwork Orange’ (1971)
A Clockwork Orange doesn’t need too much of an introduction, since it’s probably the most well-known (or infamous?) movie in this ranking. But, to be brief, it’s about a dystopian society where crime is out of control, and so an experimental procedure is created that intends to rid violent criminals of their free will, forcing them to not commit crimes, but then there are problems and moral issues related to doing that.
The film explores them without giving any easy answers, and while it’s a stylish and honestly pretty well-paced movie, it is heavy and upsetting in the end, since the world here feels unfortunately believable, and it’s one without many sympathetic or genuinely good people, it seems. A Clockwork Orange is about extreme crime and extreme forms of “justice,” and the forcefulness of both sides of the conflict ends up suggesting that things will only continue to get worse and more chaotic for the dystopian world depicted here.
1
‘Threads’ (1984)
It’s so relentlessly downbeat and focused on being realistic that it feels strange to even call Threads a science fiction film, but it does look at a bleak future caused by the outbreak of nuclear war. And, again, at the time of writing, that is still a thankfully hypothetical thing, and Threads makes it abundantly clear why it progressing beyond hypothetical might well quite literally be the worst thing in the world, and for the world.
So, call it a war movie, if you want, and if it is, then it’s one of the heaviest war films ever made, too. The way things collapse so fast, once the nuclear bombs start flying/exploding, and then society ceases to be, and then generations into the future, everything and everyone are all the more screwed up. It is undeniably one of the most dread-inducing films ever made, so it’s fairly easy to put Threads in the top spot here, in all honesty. Never watch it, but also, it’s a must-watch. Make of that what you will.
Threads
- Release Date
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September 23, 1984
- Runtime
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112 Minutes
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Karen Meagher
Ruth Beckett
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Reece Dinsdale
Jimmy Kemp