Daybreakers (2009)
June 6, 2026
The Spierig brothers imagined a near future where vampirism has won. It is a genuinely smart science-fiction idea, and for its first hour the film is a sharp dystopian satire.
Tag: Dystopia
Dystopias are warnings wearing story costumes, and the good ones age into prophecy. This tag collects reviews of dystopian film and fiction: engineered societies, quiet horrors, and the presents each dark future was written about.
Action HorrorUnderworld Series (2003-2016)
June 6, 2026
The Underworld films turned the vampire into a leather-clad action hero across five entries. As a whole it is more than the sum of its uneven parts.
2020sSinners (2025)
June 6, 2026
Ryan Coogler's Jim Crow-era vampire film uses the genre to explore Black art and cultural memory. It establishes the stakes of everything that follows.
2000sIdiocracy (2006)
May 19, 2026
Mike Judge's 2006 dystopian satire. Average man wakes in 500-years-dumber future.
1920sMetropolis (1927)
May 17, 2026
Fritz Lang's 1927 German silent SF epic. The film every dystopian city movie has copied.
1990sFortress (1992)
May 17, 2026
Gordon's 1992 SF prison action film. B-movie premise, A-movie commitment from Gordon.
2010sDredd (2012)
May 16, 2026
Dredd is the rare comic book adaptation that fully understood its source material. Alex Garland wrote, between his collaborations.
1990sStarship Troopers (1997)
May 16, 2026
Starship Troopers is one of the most misunderstood films of the 1990s and one of the most accomplished political satires in mainstream science fiction. The adaptation is loose in ways that have generated decades of argument.
1990sDemolition Man (1993)
May 16, 2026
Demolition Man is one of the funniest action films of the early 1990s and one of the most accidentally prescient. Marco Brambilla directed in his feature.
1980sEscape from New York (1981)
May 16, 2026
Escape from New York is John Carpenter's dystopian action film and one of the foundational works of 1980s post-apocalyptic cinema. Carpenter directed and co-wrote with Nick Castle.
2010sTotal Recall (2012) Review
May 10, 2026
Critics judged Wiseman's 2012 Total Recall against the wrong reference film. The 1990 and 2012 versions of Total Recall are different films, not competing films.
1980sRoboCop (1987) Review
March 20, 2026
RoboCop is a better film than its premise suggests and a more subversive one than its marketing implied. Paul Verhoeven made a corporate satire inside a violent action film, and the two registers enhance each other instead of competing.