Plot: A courageous young woman fights for fresh water in the dystopian Scandinavian Union, an area that has dried up due to environmental disaster and a repressive military government.

KBZ’s Take: This Finnish film is based on the novel of the same name by Emmi Itäranta. We haven’t read the novel, but the film has an interesting dystopian world. There’s the totalitarian regime that restricts water usage, a class divide with many people living in poverty and an interesting take on how precious water has become with ritualistic Tea Masters and Tea Ceremonies.

The film has some great dystopian visuals (based on an apparent limited budget) but is very slow paced. However, for the patient viewer, you’ll be rewarded with an exciting third act and one of the better recent Dystopian Films.

Where to Stream / Buy: N/A

Plot: The old and overcrowded penitentiaries are just a memory. Inmates now serve their sentence in a state of deep sleep that renders them harmless and has drastically reduced recidivism. Until one day, a psychologist in charge of monitoring the mental state of inmates finds himself confronted with a prisoner over whom he’s lost all control.

KBZ’s Take: This Italian film is a Mystery Thriller set in a dystopian future where prison inmates are placed in deep sleep compartments for the length of their sentence. They are occasionally awakened (by law) and prison psychologists monitor them so they remember who they are and why they are there.

The film does take some time to get going, but there’s an interesting conspiracy component to the film involving memories tampered with by the government. It has a unique premise, but like Memory of Water, will take some patience to get through.

Where to Stream / Buy: N/A

Plot: After a governor issues an executive order to arrest the children of undocumented immigrants, the detained youth are offered an opportunity to have their charges dropped by volunteering to provide care to the elderly. Once inside the elder care facility, however, they discover more twisted secrets than they could have possibly imagined.

KBZ’s Take: This is film that was clearly inspired by Get Out (2017) and wants to be a Hispanic version of that film. Unfortunately, it doesn’t reach the lofty heights of Get Out but does present some interesting political themes of dystopia and a crazy government conspiracy.

Also, while the first part of the film takes on more of a satirical tone, the film does go into a much darker horror direction once the youths are placed in the elder care facility.

Where to Stream / Buy: https://amzn.to/453DaMN

Plot: In the aftermath of a nuclear disaster, a starving family finds hope in a charismatic hotel owner. Lured by the prospect of a free dinner, they discover that the evening’s entertainment blurs the lines between performance and reality. Will they wind up the spectators or the spectacle?

KBZ’s Take: Though this film has dystopian elements, it’s much more of a Post-Apocalypse Film. The premise of the film has been done before, but it’s the film’s execution of the premise which makes it worth seeing. Some people didn’t care for the slow build-up for the first half of the film, but we thought it added to the tension and eventual craziness of the third act.

Veterans of the subgenre will likely guess the ‘surprise’ of the film but it’s still a journey worth taking for a subgenre film in the vein of Soylent Green (1971) and The Colony (2013).

Where to Stream / Buy: https://www.netflix.com/title/81203335

Plot: After the collapse of Earth’s ecosystem, Vesper, a 13-year-old girl struggling to survive with her paralyzed Father, meets a mysterious Woman with a secret that forces Vesper to use her wits, strength and bio-hacking abilities to fight for the possibility of a future.

KBZ’s Take: We’ll start off by saying this is one of the best recent Dystopian Films with amazing visuals and worldbuilding. It’s a film that’s beautiful to look at (in a dystopian type of way) and you really get immersed in the world that Vesper creates.

The film also has some great ideas about genetic engineering – how it led to a worldwide collapse and how the rich now control food production via genetically coded seeds that can grow only once.  But the film’s weaknesses lie with its slow-paced narrative and lack of details and backstory for some of the elements presented in the film.

It’s still a film we would recommend to fans of the subgenre as you don’t often see a dystopian film as beautifully dark as this one.

Where to Stream / Buy: https://amzn.to/3OxGTgg

Plot: In a post-apocalyptic future, a mother and her daughters live in a Victorian conservatory, hiding from a devastating pandemic that erases human memory.

KBZ’s Take: This film is almost the exact opposite of Vesper as it has a very interesting story (and background) but there obviously was not enough budget to build out the dystopian world. But like Vesper, it’s also very slow-paced as it takes its time fleshing out the characters and filling in the backstory of the ‘memory virus’ that has wiped out most of mankind.

Like other films on our list, it will take patience to get through this film and it won’t be for everybody. There’s almost no action and the interactions in the film are between a small cast of characters. But, as you get deeper into the narrative and ‘twist’ at the end, it’s a film that will reward you for your patience.

Where to Stream / Buy: https://amzn.to/3Y7zojn

Plot: When two men discover the biggest gold nugget ever found, they must find a way to excavate it.

KBZ’s Take: This is another film on our list that falls under the ‘love it’ or ‘hate it’ category. It doesn’t have futuristic dystopian visuals or technology and doesn’t feature an oppressive totalitarian regime. What it does focus on are two things common to every human – survival and greed.

The film is primarily about Man One (Zac Efron) and his mistrust of Man Two (Anthony Hayes) when they discover a half-buried gold nugget worth millions of dollars. At that point, the film is about Man One’s survival as Man Two leaves to get an excavator to dig out the gold. Greed plays a major role later in the film, but it’s a very good Survival Drama as Man One tries to survive an unforgiving environment.

Where to Stream / Buy: https://amzn.to/44H9qpl

Plot: All the rules are broken as a sect of lawless marauders decides that the annual Purge does not stop at daybreak and instead should never end as they chase a group of immigrants who they want to punish because of their harsh historical past.

KBZ’s Take: The Forever Purge is the most controversial film on our list and elicited backlash from right wing politics in the United States. While we won’t get into the political reaction to the film, we will note that all the Purge films have had political undertones focused on societal class and race and this film is no exception.

As a Dystopian Film, The Forever Purge excels when it mirrors real world issues set in a near future environment run by a far-right authoritarian government. But the film also has its own issues as the political commentary isn’t fleshed out or expanded upon and the horror segments seem recycled from previous films of the franchise.

With that said, it’s still one of the better Purge films and one of the best subgenre films of the last few years.

Where to Stream / Buy: https://amzn.to/457WdWt

Plot: As the human species adapts to a synthetic environment, the body undergoes new transformations and mutations. Accompanied by his partner Caprice, celebrity performance artist Saul Tenser showcases the metamorphosis of his organs. Meanwhile, a mysterious group tries to use Saul’s notoriety to shed light on the next phase of human evolution.

KBZ’s Take: We had mixed feelings about this film. While it was great to see David Cronenberg return to Body Horror, we had hopes from the trailers that Crimes of the Future would be one of his best films. The body horror segments throughout the film don’t disappoint and are some of the most interesting of that subgenre. However, it’s the dystopian elements that falter on initial viewing only because they aren’t explained very well.

The film has a very good dystopian backdrop focused on biological evolution and a government conspiracy to suppress the rise of these ‘evolutionists’ that can consume plastic and have no need to consume organic food. But this conspiracy is not very well defined in the film and results in a confusing narrative.

The reason we still have the film listed so high and strongly recommend the film, is that after reading various explanations of the film and rewatching it, the film’s novel dystopian themes make much more sense. In fact, they are some of the best of the subgenre and we would encourage anybody that has seen the film and was disappointed in it, to read the explanations and watch it again. You won’t be disappointed!

Additional Lists: Best Recent Body Horror Films #4, Best Cronenberg Body Horror Films #8

Where to Stream / Buy: https://amzn.to/3m9hxJW

Plot: On an uninhabitable 22nd-century Earth, the outcome of a civil war hinges on cloning the brain of an elite soldier to create a robot mercenary.

KBZ’s Take: JUNG_E’s Dystopian environment is a result of climate change and has some of the best visuals of the dystopian world in the entire subgenre. While the film is also about other various film subgenres including Cloning, Robots, Artificial Intelligence and Military Sci-Fi, its core theme is about the relationship between a mother and daughter.

From a pure Dystopian Film perspective, there are many unique visuals in the film from a future world submerged in overflowing oceans to transits that have been built to allow travel within newly designed cities affected by climate change. There’s also the amazing special effects and thrilling action sequences involving robotic fights. One particular robotic design in this film is one of the most realistic we have seen.

But despite these visual elements and action sequences, the core of the film is about a daughter overseeing a military simulation involving a cloned version of her mother’s brain. As the narrative progresses and more details are revealed about the mother and daughter, it gives emotional depth to every other element in the film – especially in the third act.

There are some issues in the film – primarily some humor that seems out of place – but JUNG_E is one of the rare Dystopian films that has a unique theme and masterfully balances action and emotion.

Additional Lists: Top Films About Clones You Haven’t Seen #6, Best Films About Cloning #19, Best Military Sci-Fi Films #20

Where to Stream / Buy: https://www.netflix.com/title/81465109