As this decade crosses over into its second half, a sense of what “the 2020s” represents has fully crystalized. Political hegemony and political disaffection are rising hand in hand. Technological overreach has turned every space into a transient one. Social interactions and mass culture are both more fragmented now than at any point in recent memory.

It’s all pretty bleak stuff, and understandably not of much interest to many filmmakers. Even for those who expressly wish to dialogue with the current moment, a general cultural malaise makes this difficult to accomplish. The most successful examples tend to prioritize channeling the emotions of the day over material specifics. In doing so, they unlock previously ineffable insights about how it Really Feels to live in the 2020s.

The following films are all concerned with forces that exist beyond the scope of their narratives. Be it a network of assassins or the mundane bureaucracy of global capital, the viewer is made aware of how these institutions shape the events on screen without being given a clear sense of how they are organized. These films cannot directly capture the enormity of their influence, but they are a constant presence in the background of the stories they inhabit, to the point where it feels like the fate of most characters is sealed from minute one. It’s easy to see how movies with this quality might resonate in a landscape where people are acutely aware of how much of their lives are subject to the whims of a small subset of political actors and oligarchs. That landscape has resulted in a decline in institutional security and pervasive axiety over the potential for further global catastrophe, and these five films provide an instructive survey of reactions to these troublesome conditions.

The Killer

David Fincher’s latest is an international thriller wherein place has lost all meaning. From Paris to Chicago to the Dominican Republic, we see the titular hitman order McDonald’s, hide out in a WeWork, and get an Equinox membership, all in the name of work. In this world, corporate hegemony has progressed to the point where these stop being signifiers of individual brands and instead become background noise in the hum of everyday living. There is often beauty to be found in the frame, but the movie must keep pace with its protagonist’s tireless efficiency.

There is no obvious space for introspection, and the viewer must take moments to step outside the propulsive narrative and appreciate that these cities offer more than just problems to be solved (and killed). Every character is resigned to violence of this world, sternly professional and pragmatic until the end. One of the eponymous Killer’s targets, already certain of her fate, quickly takes a moment to negotiate the circumstances of her death and ensure that her body is found. The Killer obliges—how generous, given the scenario. At no point is a more merciful or just outcome ever on the table. We have become familiar with this sort of resignation as lesser evilism has become a dominant philosophy among the political class.

Fight Club is a valuable comparison as another Fincher film with a nameless protagonist-narrator, but The Killer swaps out that film’s didactic narration for a meandering internal monologue which is all theoretically in the service of keeping its subject on task. “Stick to the plan.” No time to do so much as vocalize your ennui; there’s still work to be done.

AGGRO DR1FT

Here we have another assassin story, but any plot details of Harmony Korine’s shot-in-infrared “action” movie are almost entirely incidental; everything is in service of the image. Each moment is designed for maximum impact, but the film is not constructed with the dynamic pulse of a Michael Bay picture. Korine’s goal is to hypnotize the audience, to let them bathe in 80 minutes of images signifying Miami beach culture and 2000s video games.

Political and cultural narratives often feel “vibes-based” in this way; weeks or months of events are compressed in our shared memory, and particular associations are recalled through the use of intricate, sub-culturally specific shorthand. This mode of cultural production is such that many digital artifacts can become nearly inscrutable after only a year or two. AGGRO DR1FT draws on sturdier aesthetic inspiration than your average meme of the week, and manages to cohere as a singular text, but its hazy rhythm mimics the fragmented experience of the endless social media scroll. Its narrative and aesthetic pleasures are not traditionally cinematic, and it can be difficult to recall a clean sequence of events even just hours removed from the viewing experience, but AGGRO DR1FT is a mesmerizing film nonetheless. Its unique energy is its greatest appeal, and one that particularly gels with how modern audiences interface with culture.

Bama Rush

This MAX original documentary promised a thorough investigation into Greek life at the University of Alabama, but is quickly overwhelmed by its ambition to chronicle the constantly evolving narrative of #bamarush TikTok. The bigotry present throughout Greek life is gestured towards but never interrogated in any great depth, and the film lacks a clear ideological throughline, presenting the stories of the young women it follows largely without comment. University and sorority actors were vocally opposed to the film’s production, and this backlash becomes part of the text. It’s understandable why a viewer may be unsatisfied with the resulting film, but these details add up to create a unique effect.

Bama Rush becomes a frankly honest portrayal of how difficult it can be to construct a cogent argument in the information age. It’s easy to get sweeped up in the daily discourse, the most recent Take on a subject, the knowledge that few subjects can be completely understood. Speaking authoritatively yet responsibly becomes difficult when it seems like someone will always have better theory than you, or data you didn’t know about, or when your subject views you as a nuisance. Better to let the cameras roll and gather what everyone else is thinking first—it should be noted that this approach still enables moments of documentary insight, scattered as they may be.

Running parallel to the film’s depiction of rush season is director Rachel Fleit’s account of her own struggles with alopecia. Fleit was criticized for comparing her experience to that of her subjects being affected by the racism and misogyny of sorority culture, but in the absence of more precise ideological tools, this anecdotal approach is understandable. It is something to center the narrative around, and in an endless sea of perspectives, we can at least know our own. Frustrating as this can be, it is often all we have.

Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World

This nearly three-hour comedy follows Angela Raducanu as she drives around Bucharest to cast the subject of a workplace safety video. Nobody is excited to make this video, of course, and the circumstances of its production are ethically dubious at best. Certainly the most direct film on this list, DNETMFTEOTW strips the “plight of the worker” story of all sentimentality.

Angela occupies herself throughout the workday by filming improvised, satirical Instagram Stories and listening to an eclectic assortment of music in her car, but these small moments of would-be refuge are also flattened by the fact that they are ultimately happening on the clock. Everything is colored by the backdrop of the overlong, unfulfilling workday, and there isn’t a silver lining in sight. The movie ultimately points out many absurdities of working life and offers few solutions, which may feel empty, but one should recall the title. Doomerism, though pervasive for good reason, is not a cathartic endeavor.

Knock at the Cabin

All of these entries have gestured towards a collapse of some kind, so it seems appropriate to round this list out with a story about literal apocalypse. While on vacation, seven-year-old Wen and her dads are held hostage by four strangers, who tell the family that they must choose one person to sacrifice in order to prevent the end of the world. These outsiders largely try to present themselves as helpful, but the situation remains transparently unjust.

It’s easy to fall into despair about our own lack of agency over systems of global power, and M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin similarly makes no effort to justify its scenario as anything more than tragic and arbitrary. But it also highlights the opposite anxiety; its characters are thrust into circumstances where they have unfathomable responsibility over the fate of the world and no way to verify the consequences of their action or inaction. The only way to ensure that they have “done enough” is to completely destabilize the life they had previously known. The film suggests that such a sacrifice is ultimately the right course of action, that humanity is worth saving at all costs. But at the same time, the powers that be have already made it impossible to achieve any sort of “greater good” without real, tragic, unjust losses. This complicates the future we may work towards, but it is at least a guiding light.

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Movies of The Moment