Conspiracy cinema: from the Eyes Wide Shut ritual to the year 2030

Conspiracy cinema: when the screen predicts the script of power

Can a film released in 1981 be pointing to a date in 2030? Around that question, a catalogue of films and series about conspiracies, secret societies and predictive programming has been taking shape, now with more than 250 entries. It starts with three classics of the subgenre: Eyes Wide Shut (1999), with its elites and rituals; The Skulls (2000), inspired by Yale University's secret society Skull and Bones; and The Conspiracy (2012), a mockumentary about two young men who pursue a vanished conspiracy theorist and end up tracing Bohemian Grove. From there, the list becomes a map.

What predictive programming is and what is attributed to it

The thesis behind the whole thing is simple: audiovisual fiction supposedly acts as an early warning of events that later arrive. The strongest case is the British series Utopia (2013-2014), two seasons and twelve episodes in which a group of comic-book fans pursue the manuscript of The Utopia Experiments while an organisation called The Network hunts it. Some see in it an advance preview of the pandemic script, and the timing really is striking. It should be said clearly: this is an interpretation, not a proven fact. The second season is considered dispensable, on the grounds that it repeats patterns without adding anything new.

Early Warning and the Book of Revelation passage that sets 2030

Of all the pieces, the one most cited for its date is Early Warning (1981), also known as Early Alert, which is openly admitted to be painfully bad. In the scene that circulates, a revelation about 2030 appears alongside the passage from Revelation 13:16-18, the one about the mark on the right hand. The interpretive leap is considerable: the text is taken, the numbering associated with Hebrew letters is applied to it, and from there a literal date is extracted. No one has settled that calculation, and it remains open whether the end it refers to is symbolic or a real countdown.

Elites, lodges and real secret societies

Beneath that layer, lodge-themed titles pile up. The Ninth Gate (1999), an adaptation of Arturo Pérez-Reverte's novel starring Johnny Depp, carries a reading that turns it into an initiation story: the protagonist is supposedly introduced into a lodge, and each episode of the plot forms part of the ritual. The Day of the Beast (1995) is the Spanish contribution, directed by Álex de la Iglesia and mixing black humour with esoteric knowledge. And beneath them all, a recurring shot: the Washington Monument as an explanation, according to that reading, of who pulls the strings.

Cults, pagan rituals and sacrifices on screen

Midsommar and Hereditary, both by Ari Aster, head the block on cults, witchcraft and human sacrifice. The Wicker Man (1973) is reclaimed as the subgenre's forerunner, with its matriarchal cult; the remake with Nicolas Cage divides opinion, because it appears with a low score on review aggregators. The Cabin in the Woods (2011) adds the meta twist: the sacrifices exist to satisfy an audience. The Hunt (2020) closes the group with strangers who wake up in a deserted place to be hunted like animals.

Dystopias of social control: from Demolition Man to Branded

The other axis is control. Demolition Man (1993) depicts a docile, harmless society, with fines for swearing. Brazil (1985) brings in Kafkaesque bureaucracy and the interrogation scene. Branded posits corporations that activate a genetic code to induce dependence and passivity. The Fourth Kind (2009), shot as a mockumentary with Milla Jovovich, throws abductions into the mix. K-PAX, The Thirteenth Floor, Fahrenheit 451, Cube, Rakka —Neill Blomkamp's short film available free on YouTube— and The City of Lost Children complete a catalogue that ranges from aliens to transhumanism. On this last point, some warn that certain films work, it is argued, as programming for the collective unconscious.

The series: Utopia, The Handmaid's Tale and Zero Day

In long-form, The Handmaid's Tale contributes the distribution of reproductive permits between a world A and a world B, with theocracy, pollution and repression. Zero Day, with Robert De Niro as former president and executive producer, begins with a cyberattack blamed on the usual suspects and ends up pointing to an inside job. And there is an archival curiosity: Millennium was cancelled and its ending arrived as an episode of another series.

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With this material, anyone would say cinema has been warning us for four decades. It could also be that we have spent four decades looking in the frame for what we already knew before we sat down.