Last Year We Saw The “Liberal-Paranoia” Thriller Reincarnated

More than fifty years on, are we seeing a cyclical return of cinema viscerally reacting to a confused and exhausted world in turmoil?

[This article contains spoilers]

With the recent(ish) releases of Eddington, One Battle After Another, House of Dynamite and Bugonia I cannot fail to detect and compare the sudden upsurge of crisis-driven sociopolitical drama with the so-called “liberal paranoia” films of the 1970s. Except, while the former films were responding to the post-Watergate, post-Vietnam atmosphere of secrecy and institutional betrayal, today’s counterparts reflect on an entirely altered mood: one not of covert “paranoia” but of visible collapse.

In the throes of the cold war, and unsettled by the Kennedy assassination, 1960s America was in a state of unease and political disarray. This collective anxiety is absorbed in films like Fail Safe and Seven Days in May that channel these fears into tightly wound political thrillers. Then a little later, when government disasters like Vietnam and Watergate erupted, belief in the democratic system fell completely and it was no longer entirely “unamerican” to suggest the government was corrupt.

On top of that, the raggedy shackles of the hays code finally gave way and film studios now had the freedom to deliver more antagonising social criticism. This brought audiences a sudden boom of truly cynical political-paranoia dramas like The Conversation, Three Days of the Condor and Alan J. Paluka’s “Paranoia Trilogy” with Klute, The Parallax View and All The President’s Men.

All of these films (and more like them) were high-stress examinations of governmental distrust and democratic disillusion where paranoia functioned as a rational response to a system whose inner workings had become ominously opaque. And half a century later we seem to be experiencing a relapse of the cinematic symptoms, but the cause has mutated. Instead of an old-school paranoiac revival, the recent wave is reacting to a post-truth world that’s sliding into open dysfunction, where institutions aren’t quietly failing so much as falling apart in plain view.

This new strain, I believe, first found its footing at the start of the decade with Adam McKay’s 2021 film Don’t Look Up, which depicts two astronomers trying to warn the world of an earth-destroying comet as an allegory of handling of the climate crisis. Unlike the 1970s paranoia thrillers, the film leans into comedy to underscore its message, but is still translating a “hot” anxiety of the time (rooted in the 2019 peak of climate awareness) into a broadly satirical critique of institutional inaction. Then, in 2024, Alex Garland’s Civil War picked up this commentative thread, exploring social fragmentation and political collapse with more of the intense and serious characteristics of the paranoia film.

But it is especially during the latter half of 2025 where audiences have been treated to a whole buffet of these high-stress, crisis-driven narratives that confront societal breakdown head-on. Starting in July with Ari Aster’s Eddington, the film follows a sheriff’s mayoral campaign which is inflamed by the anxieties and conflicts brought on by both the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement. The sheriff’s dastardly, opportunistic methods only end up further unravelling the social order he sought to control, reflective of the blatant institutional mess we are seeing today. As the story descends into a fiery chaos, its ending suggests a world so overwhelmingly flooded with simultaneous crises that individuals are left quite literally paralysed (sorry).

This cynicism was furthered in September with Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another about a retired revolutionary trying to save and protect his daughter from an old nemesis: corrupt military official Steven J. Lockjaw. The film is lighter in tone as it is ultimately about resistance, however, do not be fooled by its deceptively hopeful ending. With the continued power of “The Christmas Adventurers Club,” the film pretty much reinscribes the very institutional logic it spent almost three hours diagnosing as broken and confronting. The fact that even Lockjaw’s demise is delivered not by the revolutionaries but by the club’s self-protective purging gestures towards a bleaker truth: the system devours its own but remains unshaken. Therefore, I suppose the title is perfectly apt as it really will be “one battle after another” since no solutions are offered, reinvoking a cyclical despair that is strikingly similar to The Parallax View.

That is not to say that we should be expecting these films to provide answers. I merely point out that this is another symptom of the “paranoia” revival since the films depict a world that cannot be saved. It should also be understood that these films only fail in offering solutions because they simply cannot do so. Eisa Nefertari Ulen, writing for The Hollywood Reporter, criticised Civil War saying the film failed to resonate with the contemporary moment because “[w]e as a people cannot fix a problem we cannot name.” Although I disagree that Civil War did not resonate, she is highlighting the complicated task these new political thrillers have of trying to tackle these huge issues of which we do not know the full extent of.

This is explored somewhat in the not-quite-as-anticipated but still resonant House of Dynamite, released in early October. In it, director Katheryn Bigelow depicts the US government grappling with an unnamed nuclear threat hurtling towards Chicago. The President describes the state of things as being like a “house of dynamite,” with the world on a hair-trigger alert: constantly on edge, yet unsure exactly why. Because of this the film’s tone and story is highly reminiscent of Fail Safe with the ever-present threat of nuclear disaster and nothing to do to stop it. The audience is left hoping for some form of resolution or explanation, a tension that is never fully satisfied except by the faint explosions that play over the end credits. While I found this to be quite annoying, I will admit it felt very much in-line with the sense that due to post-truth distortion we quite often feel we have no idea what’s really happening.

And finally and most recently, Yorgos Lanthimos’ sensational Bugonia! Here we see a lot of familiar names like Emma Stone and Ari Aster from Eddington (both producing) and Jesse Plemons from Civil War. But although less overtly political than the other films, Bugonia taps into the spiralling conspiratorial thinking and epistemic vertigo of our post-truth era. The film even instils this into the viewer experience by constantly forcing the audience to flicker between believing there actually is a secret corruption behind the CEO and believing that the captors are pure paranoid-delusionsists.

What ensues throughout is an almost comedic exhibit of contemporary dysfunction. At one point Plemons’ character, the conspiracist fraying at the edges, spits out a prevailing sentiment saying, “There are no options. There are no rules. There are no deals. There’s no payoff. There’s no money. There’s no legal system. There is no congress. There is no America. There’s no global democratic order, okay?!” And although this is coming from a deeply unstable man, the line and overall conspiracy is nevertheless meant to resonate not as paranoid fantasy, rather, a blunt acknowledgment of the visible unraveling which feeds the anxiety that no one seems to be running things anymore. Which is why the ending, absurd as it is, is not only most appropriate but lands with the weary acceptance of our current moment where you just kind of think “yeah, why the hell not?!”

Taken together, it’s clear that these four films are all both reacting to and perpetuating the feeling of catastrophe that characteristically reigns during times of political uncertainty. And though I hesitate to, I could even rope in Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later (which was written by Alex Garland, hello again!).

The genre is starkly different but its thematic treatment of the political detachment brought to the UK by COVID-19 and Brexit isolationism causes the film to achieve a similar reflective status, whilst also exhibiting how this is no longer just an American issue (well… was it ever?) – it is global.

So… not only was it a dreary end to the year, but this creative climate indicates that we’re witnessing a full-blown reboot of the liberal-paranoia genre. Which means two things: 1) if such films are your bag, buckle up as there might be more to come; and 2) unfortunately, the pattern indicates that we are perhaps reliving a sociopolitical crisis to the historic scale of the 1970s (or perhaps even exceeding it).

Furthermore, the parallels are becoming increasingly more apparent with Iran’s protests and government massacres as it is the biggest crisis the country has seen since the 1979 revolution. I do not highlight these connections to fear-monger, but also I do not think I’ve established anything that isn’t already painfully clear.

What I am merely trying to highlight is that film has always functioned as a fossil of its moment’s collective fears and anxieties, and the recent influx is suggesting that everyone, frankly, is kind of freaking out. (Although, on a lighter note, a more casual parallel is the exciting return of The Muppet Show).

Like the films, I can offer no solution. But I will say that as we drag ourselves ceaselessly forward into this scary post-2016 world where the value truth seems to be constantly at risk, reliance on AI is concerningly on the rise, and the structures of society appear to be ripping at the seams, we must continue to show our outrage and anxiety through mediums like film that help us to diagnose the issue and reflect on how to remedy this cacophony of debilitating turmoil.

We’re experiencing a world where leadership is failing, collaboration is on the decline, the climate continues to collapse, and as a result we’re the closest the Doomsday clock has been to midnight. But who knows… maybe 2026 will be the year we turn this around!