10 Dystopian Sci-Fi Films Where The State Wins

With demagogues, oligarchs and dictators rising like the sea levels, it seems that state powers around the globe are increasingly being used to benefit the few rather than the many, putting the authoritarian jackboot into the man on the street. Thus, in these trying times, it always pays to have a movie to turn to - if only to show us how things should not be done!

During the original rise of global fascism in the 20th century, dystopian fiction became something of a mainstay, progressing into cinema with increasingly ambitious projects that used developing technologies to capture the misery, poverty and magnitude of all-encompassing future states. Dystopian, authoritarian, totalitarian - no matter your preferred nomenclature, there is a digital ocean of science fiction films on offer that exemplify everything wrong about overreaching government rule.

The Japanese authorities pit teenagers against each other in Battle Royale; the US government conducts secret tests on its citizens in Cube; the British state looks ever-inward in 1984; and whichever authority is in charge in Dredd makes sure its citizens remain terrified. No matter how much you hope for a happy ending, these are ten dystopian science-fiction movies that end with the state coming good and overthrowing the little guy.

Cube 2: Hypercube, the sequel to Vincenzo Natali's masterful, pre-Saw bottle horror, got about as much attention as its predecessor, despite upping the stakes and providing an unexpectedly expansive world of fears for the puzzle game horror.

Hypercube lands us in an all-new cube structure, with another rag-tag group of strangers who must band together to get out alive, while battling temporal, spatial, metaphysical and just downright weird traps. And maybe, just maybe, in the process they can find out who is behind the mysterious Izon corporation that has created the whole ordeal. While the players start off on even footing, psychotherapist Kate (Kari Matchett) soon takes centre stage, not least because she is one of the only remaining members of the group by the time we hit the third act.

But despite Kate snagging a little drive of confidential data on Izon from one of the other captives, and making it to the exit in one piece, things don't quite go down as planned. The sole survivor of the Hypercube, Kate wakes up in the hands of unnamed operatives, and is shot in the head, as the other shoe finally drops: Izon is a proxy for the US government, used to disguise its nefarious experiments involving its own citizens. They terminate "Phase 2" and abandon the facility, moving on to who only knows what next.