Back to Guides Promotional art for the dystopian movie, Edge of Tomorrow, starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt.

20 Dystopian Movies & Shows to Stream Before the World Ends

How will the world end? 

Popular dystopian movies and shows have a lot of predictions. Some are relatively (hopefully) unlikely, like a zombie apocalypse or an alien invasion. However, some future predictions hit a little too close to home, especially when it comes to worldwide pandemics, government coups, global warming, and artificial intelligence (AI) entities gone rogue. 

From shows like HBO’s The Last of Us* to movies that take us places no one has gone before, check out these seriously surreal dystopian movies and shows you’re going to want to watch for pointers on surviving an apocalypse of any kind, before the world endshowever it happens. 

*The Last of Us requires the Disney+, Hulu, Max Bundle or the Max Add-on. Access content from each service separately. Content, feature, and device compatibility vary by service. ©2024 Disney and its related entities. Max ©2024 Home Box Office, Inc.

Best Dystopian Movies 

You can define “dystopian” in a number of ways. But generally, a fictional work that’s dystopian takes place in an altered existence or a future world characterized by some type of strife or struggle. It’s like a utopia that did a complete 180.

Ready to experience a dark and strange new realm? Check out our list of dystopian movies and shows.

Crimes of the Future (2022)

Title art for the dystopian movie, Crimes of the Future.

Crimes of the Future is a dystopian film heavily infused with horror, as well as some grisly surgery. 

At some point in the future, the human body quickly changes itself to adapt to the environment. This phenomenon, known as “Accelerated Evolution Syndrome,” can even cause the sprouting of new organs. 

An avant garde performance art duo stages a surgical theatre show that spotlights the removal of newly grown human organs. The show becomes a hit with the viewing public. In the meantime, the government attempts to track rapid organ development, becoming particularly interested in the duo’s popular performances.

Watch: Crimes of the Future 

Vesper (2022)

Title art for the dystopian movie, Vesper.

In this post-apocalyptic dystopian nightmare, a 13-year-old girl named Vesper lives with her paralyzed father. Much of the population, as well as food sources, have been destroyed by artificially engineered pests, with a sinister cabal controlling whatever resources remain. Vesper and a biologically altered woman attempt to make some ruined seeds grow once again.

Watch: Vesper

Chaos Walking (2021)

A still image from the dystopian movie, Chaos Walking.

How’s this for a dystopian world: no women. Well, that’s except for one girl who winds up on this strange all-male planet. 

Chaos Walking is set in the year 2257 on a planet fittingly called “New World.” The planet’s population can hear each other’s thoughts in a cacophony of images and sounds. The protagonist, a man named Todd Hewitt (Tom Holland), stumbles across the girl, named Viola (Daisy Ridley), and tries to protect her.

This dystopian sci-fi movie is based on author Patrick Ness’ trilogy of the same name.

Watch: Chaos Walking

Check out other movies based on books.

2073 (2025)

In the year 2073, a police state monitors citizens’ every move. Some people hide underground to escape this encumbered reality, while dreaming of a past that looks a lot like our present. Themes include climate change, human rights, and technology run amok.

Watch: 2073*

*2073 requires the Disney+, Hulu, Max Bundle or the Max Add-on. Access content from each service separately. Content, feature, and device compatibility vary by service. ©2024 Disney and its related entities. Max ©2024 Home Box Office, Inc.

Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

Promotional art for the dystopian movie, Edge of Tomorrow, starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt.

Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt star in this film set in a future Europe that’s mostly ruled by aliens. A military public relations officer, Major William Cage (Cruise), is ordered to become part of a mission to drive the aliens out. 

During the operation, Cage is killed — but caught in a recurring time loop, he’s reborn. A sergeant, Rita Vrataski (Blunt), has the same ability to return after dying. Each time either of them revive, they gain more knowledge about how to defeat the aliens, which they bring to the past to affect a different future. 

Watch: Edge of Tomorrow

Greenland (2020)

A comet veers off its predicted course and heads toward earth, where its impact would render humankind extinct. As a comet shard strikes and destroys Tampa, Florida, a family in Atlanta, Georgia, fights for survival — ultimately traveling to Greenland to avoid the upcoming apocalypse the best they can.

Watch: Greenland*

*Greenland requires the Disney+, Hulu, Max Bundle or the Max Add-on. Access content from each service separately. Content, feature, and device compatibility vary by service. ©2024 Disney and its related entities. Max ©2024 Home Box Office, Inc.

The Maze Runner (2014)

Title art for the dystopian movie The Maze Runner.

Maze Runner is a classic for fans of the dystopian future/sci-fi action genre. 

Thomas (Dylan O’Brien) finds himself in a strange elevator with no memory of his life before — not even his name. Quickly realizing he’s not alone, Thomas exits the elevator to a dystopian society of other male teenagers determined to find a way out.

The Matrix: Resurrections (2021)

Title art for the dystopian action film, Matrix: Resurrections.

Heart-racing action, iconic special effects, and Keanu Reeves — what more could one possibly ask for in a dystopian future film?

The newest movie in The Matrix franchise, The Matrix: Resurrections follows Neo (Reeves) as he finds himself in a world of dual reality — following the white rabbit once again. 

Watch: The Matrix: Resurrections*

*The Matrix: Resurrections requires the Disney+, Hulu, Max Bundle or the Max Add-on. Access content from each service separately. Content, feature, and device compatibility vary by service. ©2024 Disney and its related entities. Max ©2024 Home Box Office, Inc.

Boy Kills World (2023)

Title art for the dystopian film, Boy Kills World.

A boy (named Boy) survives a bizarre ritual where a local family, the Van Der Koys, kills 12 people on live TV. While Boy’s mother and sister die, he manages to stay alive — but the harrowing experience leaves him deaf and mute. Saved by a shaman, Boy grows up and schemes to enact revenge on the Van Der Koys. But circumstances aren’t what they seem. Who can Boy really trust?

Watch: Boy Kills World

Blade Runner: 2049 (2017)

Title art for the dystopian movie, Blade Runner: 2049.

Set in the not-so-distant future, humans have advanced AI far enough to create bioengineered humans, called “Replicants,” to do forced labor. 

In this chapter of the Blade Runner franchise, new Los Angeles Blade Runner, Officer K (Ryan Gosling), discovers a dangerous secret that leads him on a quest to find Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) — a former Blade Runner who’s been missing for three decades. 

Watch: Blade Runner: 2049

Want more Blade Runner? Stream Blade Runner (1982)*.

*Live TV plan required to watch live content on Hulu. Regional restrictions, blackouts, and additional terms apply.

High-Rise (2015)

Title art for High-Rise.

In a self-contained apartment building, Dr. Robert Laing (Tom Hiddleston) seeks complete and total anonymity. In this enclosed setting, he seemingly has everything — an office, grocery store, gym, spa, restaurants, and even a school. No one needs to leave, and most people don’t, which makes privacy hard to come by. 

The high-rise is divided by income: The lower earners live on the bottom floors, while the wealthy elite live closer to the top of the 40-story building. However, when a class struggle erupts, the “perfect” place to live quickly devolves into violence and murder between the building’s top floor-dwellers and those stuck closer to the ground. 

Watch: High-Rise*

*High-Rise requires CINEMAX® on Hulu add-on subscription.

Dystopian TV Shows

With these binge-worthy TV series, you can experience frightening, intriguing worlds again and again. Queue up a few episodes (or all of them) and settle in for a sci-fi, dystopian immersion.

Paradise 

Several years after an apocalyptic event, Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) — an agent in the U.S. Secret Service — is singled out as the person responsible for the President’s assassination. As Collins tries to uncover the circumstances around the President’s death and struggles to determine who to trust, twist after twist leave viewers on edge. 

Watch: Paradise

The Last of Us

Title art for the 2023 hit HBO show, The Last of Us.

Unfortunately, we’re all too familiar with the horrors of a global pandemic. HBO’s The Last of Us brings us right back to the panic we collectively experienced in 2020this time, by way of a deadly cordyceps fungus. In this fictional world, mind-controlling mushrooms take over a person’s body, turning them into zombie-like monsters.

The outbreak causes society to collapse into a scary, post-apocalyptic world. Survivors Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) become an unlikely duo as they keep each other alive on a cross-country trek.

Watch: The Last of Us*

For an inside look, watch the Making of: The Last of Us*

*The Last of Us requires the Disney+, Hulu, Max Bundle or the Max Add-on. Access content from each service separately. Content, feature, and device compatibility vary by service. ©2024 Disney and its related entities. Max ©2024 Home Box Office, Inc.

The Handmaid’s Tale

Title art for The Handmaids Tale on Hulu.

In Gilead, a future society led by men, women are stripped of their rights and freedom. Any woman deemed “amoral” is forced to become a Handmaid, whose only purpose is to bear children for the elite families of Gilead.

The Hulu Original series follows June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss), a Handmaid renamed Offred, who refuses to fall under the government’s control. As Gilead’s leaders try to “reform” her, it becomes clear that if June goes down, all of Gilead goes down with her. 

Watch: The Handmaid’s Tale

The Leftovers 

Title art for the HBO Original series, The Leftovers.

Laurie Garvey (Amy Brenneman) believes the end-of-days are near, and they are — well, at least according to the cult-like group she’s in. How else can she explain the mysterious disappearance of 2% of the world’s population?

Part drama, part dystopian mystery — The Leftovers is a must-watch for fans of any genre. 

Watch: The Leftovers*

*The Leftovers is available on Hulu with HBO Max® add-on subscription.

The Last Man on Earth

A still image from the dystopian comedy, The Last Man on Earth.

Dystopian stories can be quite darkbut not this FOX comedy series starring comedy duo Will Forte and Kristen Schaal

Meet Phil Tandy Miller (Forte). He’s the last man on Earth after a virus wipes out the entire human race — or so he thought. When he unexpectedly encounters another survivor, the couple pairs up and, well… does whatever they want. They’re the last people on Earth after all. 

Watch: The Last Man on Earth

Lost

Title art for the hit ABC series, Lost.

The passengers of Oceanic Airlines Flight 815 must band together after their plane from Los Angeles to Sydney crash-lands on a remote, tropical island in the Pacific. Lost is about more than survival — it’s a high-stakes dystopian drama about an accidental plane crash that might not have been an “accident” after all. 

Discover the bigger and stranger powers at play in this quintessential 2000s ABC drama. 

Watch: Lost

Firefly

When Earth’s resources are used up, a different solar system becomes home to all of Earth’s inhabitants. In this new solar system, dozens of planets were transformed into Earth-like civilizations. The central planets formed The Alliance, which forces all of the other planets to live under their rule. 

This cult classic series follows Malcolm “Mal” Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) as he leads a renegade crew on a firefly-class spaceship called Serenity. The crew’s work consists mainly of smuggling and cargo runsuntil they find something worth fighting for.

Watch: Firefly

The Purge

Title art for the dystopian series, The Purge

In the TV adaptation of the hit film series, The Purge explores an alternate America ruled by a totalitarian government in which all crime is legalincluding murderfor one 12-hour window each year. The horror series follows seemingly unrelated characters as they try to make it out of Purge Night alive. 

Watch: The Purge

Utopia Falls

A still image from for the dystopian show, Utopia Falls

Following a war that destroyed all other life on Earth, a colony called New Babyl has risen from the ashes. Within the dome-covered community, citizens are ruled by a government known as the Tribunal. When children turn 16, they’re invited to participate in a yearly performing arts contest called the Exemplar. 

When a group of teens set to perform stumble upon an ancient archive hidden in the woods, they find books, music, and other artifacts that lead them to question everything their society has taught them.

Watch: Utopia Falls

Need a break from dystopian societies? Find some comic relief with funny movies and shows streaming now on Hulu.


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