10 Movies Like The Hunger Games

If any series followed directly in Katniss Everdeen's footsteps, it's this one. In a future Chicago, at sixteen you're sorted into a faction based on your personality traits. Don't fit anywhere, or fit everywhere? Then you're 'Divergent' and a danger to the state. Shailene Woodley carries the films as Tris Prior. The series declines toward the end, but the first film is a strong introduction, with Theo James as the mysterious love interest Four.

Waking up in an elevator with no memory, surrounded by boys trapped at the center of a gigantic, deadly maze. Dylan O'Brien plays Thomas, the newcomer who dares to disrupt the status quo. Where other films on this list focus on politics, this is pure survival horror and mystery. The Grievers are genuinely terrifying, the pace is relentless and you care about the Gladers as they fall one by one.

Before Katniss entered the arena, there was Ender Wiggin. In this sci-fi classic, children are recruited and trained in zero-gravity battle simulations to protect Earth from an alien invasion. It looks like a video game, but the ethical questions are heavy. Asa Butterfield plays the brilliant but isolated strategist, with Harrison Ford as the cold colonel pushing him to the limit. How far can you go to win?

Let's be honest: without Battle Royale there would be no Hunger Games. In this Japanese cult classic, a class of unruly students is dropped on an island, each given a random weapon (from a machine gun to a pot lid) and one order: kill each other until one is left. It's The Hunger Games without the Hollywood gloss: brutal, bloody and pitch-black. Quentin Tarantino once called it his favorite film. Essential viewing for fans of the genre.

The world is frozen and the last humans live on a train that never stops. The rich live in luxury at the front, the poor starve at the back. Chris Evans, grimy and gray, leads a bloody revolution from car to car. Director Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) creates a claustrophobic world full of bizarre characters, including an unrecognizable Tilda Swinton. An action film that doubles as a sharp allegory of class struggle.

Imagine a world without war, pain or suffering. Sounds perfect? The price is that there's also no color, music or love. Brenton Thwaites plays Jonas, chosen to carry the world's memories. The film literally starts in black and white and gains color as Jonas discovers emotions. With Jeff Bridges and Meryl Streep on board, it's less action-driven than The Hunger Games but just as philosophically interesting.

Aliens attack Earth not with lasers but in waves: power outages, disease and eventually infiltration. Chloë Grace Moretz plays Cassie, trying to save her little brother in a world where you can't trust anyone. It taps into the same paranoia and survival instinct. The story sometimes falls into YA clichés, but the devastated society is gripping enough to keep you watching.

If you mostly enjoyed the political resistance in Mockingjay, this is your film. In a fascist Britain, a masked man called V fights tyranny, with Natalie Portman as his unlikely ally. The film's Guy Fawkes masks became a real-life symbol for protest movements like Anonymous. It's intelligent, stylish and poetically sharp: a film about the power of ideas.

What if The Matrix and 1984 had a baby? Christian Bale plays an enforcer in a world where emotions are banned and citizens must take drugs to stay numb. When he misses a dose, he starts to feel, and to fight. The film introduced 'Gun Kata', a fictional pistol martial art that looks insanely cool. Bale is, as always, intense and convincing.

From Stephenie Meyer, author of Twilight, but sci-fi. Alien 'souls' take over human bodies and wipe their memories, but Melanie (Saoirse Ronan) refuses to disappear when her body is taken. The result is a unique story of two personalities arguing and cooperating in one body. It focuses more on romance and identity than hard action, but Ronan elevates the material.