Top 5 Conspiracy Movies

Top 5 Conspiracy Movies

Whether you believe in the Illuminati, the Lizard people or that the CIA are reading your thoughts telepathically or not, everyone loves a good conspiracy movie. The best of these types of film contain may twists and turns to leave the viewer intrigued and enthralled throughout the movie and we love nothing more than placing our tin foil hat on our head before settling in with popcorn for a viewing of our favourite conspiracy movie. We list our favourite movies of this genre below.

V for Vendetta

This 2006 film is based on the 1982 graphic novel by Watchmen author Alan Moore and is set in the 2020's Britain where a corrupt and abusive totalitarian government rules the nation. Known only as "The Party" they have stabilized the country, with the United States having been fractured as a result of prolonged conflict and a pandemic of the "St. Mary's Virus" ravaging the European continent, but this has come at a price of heavy oppression with political opponents and other "undesirables" imprisoned.

However, there is one person rebelling against The Party and the Guy Fawkes masked figure, known only as V, is that man to stand up to the conspirators in the government, who are planning on releasing the St. Marys Virus under the banner of a terrorist attack to cement their place in power. He does so by destroying the central criminal courts and by killing off government officials, and on November 5th he destroys the seat of power with a train laden with explosives. Despite being mortally wounded the seeds of revolution against the corrupt government are sown and the film ends with it being insinuated that power will return to the people once again.

Soylent Green

This film may be more than 40 years old, but it is firmly in our classic film category as it tells the story of an overpopulated world in the year 2022. 40 million people live in New York alone, with half of these people unemployed and many living homeless. Much of the population survives on food rations from the Soylent Company, with Red and Yellow the options available. They release a new product in the titular Soylent Green, a green wafer advertised to contain high energy plankton, but does this new ration contain a dark secret?

While investigating the murder of a top tier executive at the Soylent Company NYPD detective Thorn unearths a massive conspiracy about the high energy plankton used in the making of the new food stuff. The deep, dark secret is that there is no plankton and the food is manufactured from human remains; Soylent Green is People!

The X-Files: Fight the Future

This 1998 film is set between the fifth and sixth seasons of the nine season long X-Files TV series and contains everything that a conspiracy film should have! Aliens, corruption, shadowy figures, secrets and misdirection are all present and accounted for.

After the X-Files section of the FBI is closed at the end of season five of the series and Agents Mulder and Scully are reassigned a new threat is found on Earth. Coming from a black oil that infects people an incubates aliens and, despite their lack of authority, the agents must stop this threat from spreading. They travel through Texas, where the shadow government blew up the Dallas Federal Building to conceal the truth, to Antarctica after Scully is stung by a black oil infused bee and passes out and is brought to a secret lab in Antarctica. Mulder gains the vaccine to combat the virus that has infected Scully and rescues her after injecting the vaccine. This destabilises the lab she is kept in and after it collapses it appears from the ice as a spacecraft and flies away before Scully regains consciousness.

After this, despite having very little evidence, the X-Files are reopened as the film ends and just as season six of the series is about to begin.

Logan's Run

Logan's Run is another old classic film from the conspiracy genre, but unlike Soylent Green this film has no problem with overpopulation. The reason for this is that upon reaching the age of 30 years old all citizens in the sealed dome city that houses the last remaining survivors of the human race must undergo the ritual of Carrousel. The citizens are informed that they will be renewed after conducting the ritual, but they are vaporised by the controlling computers of the dome city.

This conspiracy is broken down by former Sandman (people who hunt runners) Logan 5 who becomes a runner (citizens that try to escape Carrousel) after being sent to investigate a mysterious group that aide runners. Logan learns the truth outside the city and when conveying this to the controlling computer it overloads and frees the citizens to return to life outside the city and without Carrousel.

The Bourne Identity

One of the more famous action conspiracy movies of recent times is The Bourne Identity that sees a amnesiac CIA assassin rescued on a boat after floating in the sea with two bullet holes in his back. Jason Bourne is unable to recall who he is or where he came from, but while being examined after being pulled aboard a laser projector is discovered implanted at his hip with a security box number. This leads our protagonist on the path of discovery of himself and his previous natures as well as leading him in direct confrontation with his former employers who are attempting to keep the fact that they have assassins on the payroll a secret from those in power and the public.

The film came from a Robert Ludlum book and spawned three further films, so with the public paying money to see this franchise continued will we get more action/conspiracy movies down the line?

As well as these movies there are plenty of TV series and episodes focusing on conspiracy theories, with the previously mentioned X-Files and 1960's cult classic The Prisoner the older series. 24, Burn Notice has all had major plot lines set to conspiracy mode too.