There are over a dozen movies set in 2022, some of which pictured the time as a faraway sci-fi era and some of which expected it to be a surprisingly pedestrian year. A great many movies released in 2022 will, of course, inevitably also be set in 2022. However, a select few movies released in the last few decades were also set in 2022, and some of them predicted a strange future for the world.
Although none of the movies set in 2022 were able to accurately forecast the reality of the new year, only a handful offered surreal, strange sci-fi stories that still seem as fantastical now as they did upon release. Surprisingly, many movies set in 2022 saw the year not as a Mad Max-style dystopian future, but instead as a relatively realistic and normal setting. However, with more than one movie expecting prisoners to be inhabiting remote islands and spaceships by 2022, it is fair to say that few movies offered an accurate image of the current human experience.
Of the 16 movies set in 2022, only 6 are sci-fi outings. Three are comedies and one recent ensemble rom-com, while 4 more are horrors. The last is a disaster movie, meaning most genres are well-represented in the rundown and it is hard to tell which will define cinema’s vision of 2022. From horror comedies like Hell Baby to moving family dramedies like Duckweed, though, the one thing that all of the movies seen here have in common is the fact that they all imagined an idea of 2022 before the year itself arrived.
Alien Intruder
Sci-fi legend Billy Dee Williams is the best thing about 1994’s Alien Intruder, a movie with a great premise and none of the wit, tension, or budget to pull it off. Alien Intruder’s conceit is ingenious, as the movie tells the tale of a convict-filled prison ship where violent offenders are allowed to live out their twisted fantasies via virtual reality until an alien interloper starts invading their dreamscapes and killing them off. However, what could have been a sci-fi Species is instead a drab and dull affair, despite the virtual reality sequences parodying everything from Westerns to film noir.
Geostorm
Released in 2017, Geostorm is one of its star Gerard Butler’s less compelling disaster movie efforts. Following the action star’s satellite designer as he attempts to curtail the titular storm’s trail of destruction, Geostorm is a middling outing that offered a vision of 2022 which was not too dissimilar to 2017. However, there is no mention of masks, social distancing, or any of the other hallmarks associated with 2022’s real-life global crisis, meaning Geostorm’s Roland-Emmerich-lite action failed to predict what would actually be the year’s defining worldwide news story.
Bill & Ted Face The Music
The other Keanu Reeves sci-fi series that returned to screens in the early 2020s, 2021's The Matrix Resurrections may have been a more hotly anticipated outing, but Bill & Ted Face The Music still managed the impressive feat of keeping its comedy feeling fresh and funny decades after the arrival of the original. While the belated sequel’s vision of 2022 was not entirely accurate to reality, Bill & Ted Face The Music was still a fun romp that pleased most fans of the earlier outings in the series.
The Purge
Released in 2013, Blumhouse’s home invasion thriller prescient piece of pandemic satire. However, the accuracy ends there. So far, America has not yet made crime legal any night of the year, although the Purge franchise is still going strong and later sequels have done a far better job of fleshing out the franchise’s fictional history.
Among The Shadows
A curious mix of political thriller and werewolf horror, Among the Shadows was briefly touted as Lindsay Lohan’s big comeback before its release in 2019. While it was the first movie that the actor had appeared in since 2013, there was unfortunately little else notable about the humdrum horror. The idea of werewolves and vampires secretly partaking in an eons-old war under the noses of unaware humans ittedly had serious promise, but Among the Shadows offered nothing that Kate Beckinsale’s action franchise Underworld had not already done in a bigger, better and more coherent fashion.
Deham
Despite having a stellar premise (the titular amoral antiheroes repossess organs from those who can’t pay their medical bills), 2010’s Repo Men failed to find a sharp point in its satire of the for-profit healthcare system. A decade earlier, the English-language Indian movie Deham suffered the same fate, despite telling a bigger scale version of the same story. The futuristic sci-fi satire imagined a world wherein poorer countries survived by selling organs to the rich and, despite the uneasy marriage of corporate money and healthcare provision remaining more relevant than ever in 2022, Deham’s vision of the future remains as predictable as critics found the movie upon release in 2000.
Hell Baby
Released in 2013, Hell Baby is a horror-comedy that makes the Little Evil will likely get a lot of laughs out of Hell Baby’s sketch comedy stylings. Many moments in this uneven comedy feel like half-finished skits and the runtime drags on a little, but genre legends Leslie Bibb and Rob Corddry are reliably hilarious and there are a handful of inspired jokes that make Hell Baby worth a watch. Bizarrely, though, the movie’s 2022 setting is barely addressed and little (if any) of the action hinges on Hell Baby taking place in the future.
No Escape
Released in 1994, the sci-fi action thriller No Escape remains one of Campbell’s Bond movies, No Escape is still an underrated outing for the helmer.
The Purge: Election Year
Both the first and third movies in the Purge franchise are set in 2022, but the second sequel offers a much more immersive vision of the franchise’s world than the self-contained action of the low-budget original. This proves both a blessing and a curse, as the satire of this sequel is sometimes a lot more clumsy and on-the-nose than that of its comparatively clever predecessors. That said, being released in the real-life election year of 2016 will inevitably age a movie’s message, and as far as The Purge: Election Year. That said, the movie’s vision of 2022 was undeniably way off.
Justice League Dark: Apokolips War
Released in 2020, return of Constantine.
