12 Scariest Sci-Fi Movies Of All Time

This flick gets a lot of love from comedy sci-fi aficionados, but we’re throwing it on this list where it belongs lest any unfortunate reader make the same mistake many viewers have since its release of reading “from Monty Python member Terry Gilliam” and assuming they’re in for a funny, inventive ride, rather than a gloomy, hopeless injection of nightmare fuel.

Sure, the film opens as a relatively straightforward satire of bureaucracy, as our long-suffering wage slave protagonist discovers he doesn’t exist, according to the state, due to a clerical error. What follows is all manner of chases, scrapes, and quirky “vive la resistance” antics as Jonathan Pryce’s likeable sadsack is empowered by his blossoming friendship with Robert de Niro’s fire brand revolutionary.

Then comes the vicious denouement, wherein we discover our hero’s happy ending is a delusion he believes in only due to having his brain broken by government-mandated torture.

That’ll be the return of the phrase “Kafka-esque”, then.