Each week, Netflix drops a list of the top 10 films and TV shows dominating the platform. Last week, the 2006 satire Idiocracy hit that list as the No. 9 film in the US.
The movie didn't make a huge mark when it was first released in theaters. Due to its critical take on corporations and advertisers, it received almost no promotion from its distributor, 20th Century Fox. Over the last two decades, however, it's built a cult following.
Written and directed by Mike Judge, Idiocracy stars Luke Wilson as Army librarian Joe Bauers, who was selected for an experimental hibernation procedure. Along with a prostitute named Rita (Maya Rudolph), they were supposed to be placed in a state of suspended animation for a year. But when the military base housing the experiment unexpectedly closed, they were long forgotten.
Joe and Rita wake up 500 years later to discover a country that has been taken over by the least intelligent people. The president is a former Ultimate Smackdown champion, turned adult film star and, later, a politician. Every citizen is tattooed with a bar code. Drought and devastation are everywhere, partly because an energy drink named Brawndo has replaced water, even for irrigating crops. (Water cut into Brawndo's profits, so Brawndo bought the FDA, which seems like a somewhat realistic scenario.) Oh, and everyone wears Crocs. Back in 2006, the shoe company was a startup using product placement to promote its brand.
The film mocks capitalism, the media and government, depicting America as a country where education no longer exists (except at Costco's law school). Every store and TV channel has become dedicated to violence or some kind of sexual gratification, and corporations own and run everything.
It's dystopian, cynical and deeply funny, but the movie also has details that almost feel like prophecies. In one scene, Joe, who doesn't have a bar code and is, you could say, undocumented, is arrested.
Idiocracy has often been held up as a satirical prediction of what's to come, prophesying all the ways our country and the world have moved to deemphasize intellectualism or embrace the "corporations are people" ethos.
Judge, who reflected on writing the movie, once told Time magazine in jest that he wasn't a prophet, and he "was off by 490 years."
The film's resurfacing on Netflix has led some viewers to joke online that "it's a documentary now," and "we're living it." For some, that's hyperbolic. But there are definitely moments in the film that feel eerily relevant today.