10 Dystopian Sci-Fi Films Where The State Wins

Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale may have paved the way for The Hunger Games, but the original is very much the best - not least because it isn't shy about putting its blood, guts and gore front and centre.

In a totalitarian version of present-day Japan, a group of junior high classmates are sent to a remote island where they have three days to fight to the death until a single victor emerges. Known as Battle Royale, the game recurs yearly and is designed to keep the country's youth in line and produce adults who fear their state and toe the line.

The students use weapons, tools, basic survival skills and underhand tactics to try and make it out the other side, while Shuya (Tatsuya Fujiwara) and Noriko (Aki Maeda) become the de facto victors, circumventing the authorities' tracking systems in order to get back to base in one piece. The pair kill their sadistic teacher Kitano (Beat Takeshi) and escape the island, but despite this small personal victory the program has succeeded - the children have all killed each other and the Japanese government continues, justified and unabated, using the two new fugitives as further proof of why the program is necessary.