Please help me compile a list of classic "dark future" movies.

The Time Machine, either incarnation.
The Day the Earth Stood Still, the original, kind of hints at it.
I, Robot, although it has a “resolved” ending, leaves us feeling that the possibilities for a repeat are too likely…
There are more, let me think on this. GQ, I love this stuff!

Silent Running

1984

Strange Days

Dark Angel (TV Series)

The Fifth Element

Gattica

Uh, 1984. No list is complete without the classic.

Asimov, Heinlein… of course the lists above have included some of the best – Blade Runner would’ve been my first choice. Despite Sean Young – but you’ll have to google that for her antics.

Edit: Button and I wrote that at the same time. Jinx.

Mad Max 2 The Road Warrior immediately springs to mind.
War of the Worlds
Pretty much any/all “global warming” based disaster movies…..The Day After Tomorrow/2012 etc.

The first time I remember seeing my mom cry, was when we saw On the Beach:
“The residents of Australia after a global nuclear war must come to terms with the fact that all life will be destroyed in a matter of months.”

A few more classics:

A Scanner Darkly

A Boy And His Dog
(featuring a very young Don Johnson pre-Miami Vice) a very creepy ending.

THX 1138
(a pre-Star Wars gem from George Lucas)

Fahrenheit 451

Metropolis

Any of the original in the series based upon The Planet of the Apes

War of The Worlds (the original, NOT the remake with Tom Cruise)

Brazil-it’s pretty trippy, but it’s good.
Dark City.
Children of Men.
A Clockwork Orange.
To name a few-so many good ones.

Oh, this is kind of depressing. I’m going to go watch some Star Trek, now, seriously “rosy future” stuff, that…

Great answers all!

Totally forgot about “A Boy and His Dog” and “A Clockwork Orange”. Also, I have never seen “On the Beach”

Keep em’ coming…

Brazil
The Road

EDIT: @bostonbeliever already mentioned Brazil. Amazing movie.

AI Artificial Intelligence

Minority Report

These two are not totally bleakly Dystopian but parts of them are (the entire underworld of the outcast Androids in AI, for instance)

In Minority Report, things don’t look as bleak as they are in reality. Not a future I would care to live in.

@JilltheTooth Stream it my way and popcorn and drinks on me. I’ll even do my Picard impression for ya.

OMG (to use a phrase my teen daughter would) I have an opportunity to use the strangest futuristic movie I’d seen – which not many even know about (I think it got a difficult rating – perhaps X or something back in the day when R just didn’t cut it.)

Strange Days

It’s just a link to the IMDb page. Ralph Fiennes is excellent – this is not for the faint-hearted – the rape scenes are beyond nauseating. There is a twist – which makes them even harder to watch then one might be “used to.”

If you remember the rape scene in A Clockwork Orange – then this makes it look like a picnic.

Oh, and The Adventures of Pluto Nash-that was DARK. To live in that future would be truly hellish.

I’m just going to come right out & say it, Wall-E is a fantastic film & a fine example, which is nice.

How about “The Terminator”.

Also, I seem to vaguely remember a movie staring Bruce Willis as a time traveler who briefly winds up in the civil war era before reaching his destination (with a civil war era bullet in his behind).

A couple more oldies but goodies. How could I forget them.

A Handmaid’s Tale (absolutely chilling)

Zardoz
( featuring a young Sean Connery with really long hair and the ending twist is cute.)

Idiocracy . Sadly that looks like that’s direction in which we are headed.
Well educated, financially sound people, using birth control and limiting the number of children. The uneducated, and impoverished reproducing like rabbits, requiring, no, demanding food aid from everywhere else.

@zensky

Re: Strange Days (listed in my first post) I agree with your cautions but it’s a really good movie, nonetheless, even tho not that well known. Once you begin watching it, it really hooks you into the premise. I stumbled across it in a late night rerun on some obscure cable channel and wondered how I’d missed it initially.

Really puts the Dys in Dystopian, right?

Found the title of that Bruce Willis movie: Twelve Monkeys

Oh.. how about The Matrix

Moon
Escape From New York
Solaris
Pandorum
The Stand

Anybody got any more older ones from the 60’s, 50’s or earlier.

Sunshine. Although it doesn’t focus at all on the actual dystopian conditions on Earth, but instead on the crew of a space ship on a mission to reignite the sun. Excellent movie.

Also, I really like this thread.

When Worlds Collide.

Fahrenheit 451 ( 1966 )

On the Beach – 1959

There is a good list here

The Day After Tomorrow—1983.

Surrogates
12 Monkeys
The Postman
Waterworld

all my other favorites have already been mentioned.