Fans of the cyberpunk genre have a lot to look forward to, with adaptations of Blade Runner 2099 and Apple TV’s Neuromancer. But if you’re hungry for a great “high-tech, low-life” movie right now, you might consider looking to the not-so-distant past. Strange Days flew under my radar for years, but now it’s one of my favorite science fiction films.
Despite being released in 1995, Strange Days still looks like it came out yesterday. It’s one of those weird old movies that imagined virtual reality technology without turning it into a gimmick.
Strange Days takes place in 1999 in Los Angeles during the last 48 hours of the millennium. Lenny Nero, played by Ralph Fiennes, is an ex-cop who now sells an illegal virtual reality device called Playback.
Nero’s friend and bodyguard, Mace (Angela Bassett), tries to keep him grounded in reality and out of trouble. Together, they work to track down a brutal rapist and murderer — a man who uses VR Playback discs to record his crimes from his perspective.
The film wasted no time in getting me into its mesmerizing scene: The opening scene is an armed robbery shot in first-person, with the robber running from the police and jumping from one rooftop to another. A few scenes later, I saw tanks on the streets of LA and heard callers announcing that the world would end at midnight on Jan. 1, 2000.
Strange Days reminds me of the best episodes of Black Mirror — both deeply disturbing and close to home. Director Kathryn Bigelow was influenced by the LA riots of 1992 and incorporated those elements of racial tension and police violence into her work. The result is a movie that is sometimes difficult to watch but impossible not to watch from afar.
At the same time, Strange Days is based on emotion. Nero (Fiennes) spends a good portion of the film recalling memories of his failed relationship with singer Faith (played by actress-turned-rocker Juliette Lewis). Lying in bed while playing flashbacks of happy days, he can trick himself into believing he’s roller skating with Faith again — until the disc stops spinning and he opens his eyes, back to the lonely present day.
“This is not the same as ‘just better TV,'” Nero said, as he introduced the VR Playback technology to one of his customers. “This is life.”
But Bassett’s character, Mace, believes otherwise, at one point confronting Nero about his attachment to his “used feelings.”
“This is your life!” Mace said. “Right here! Right now! Real time, you hear me? Real time, time to get real, not Play!”
As I watched Strange Days in 2025, I couldn’t help but think about the virtual reality devices that exist today. VR headsets like the Meta Quest 3 and Google’s upcoming AR glasses bring us closer than ever to movie playback technology. And Apple Vision Pro’s spatially focused videos can make you feel like you’re reliving a three-dimensional recorded memory. As I considered the parallels between our current technology and Strange Days’ Playback discs, I wondered if the future wants to be bothered by the past.
Despite being 30 years old, the special effects of Strange Days hold up surprisingly well. Where other 1995 sci-fi films such as Hackers and Johnny Mnemonic experimented with early computer-generated imagery, Strange Days went for a more realistic approach: Characters move in and out of playthroughs with a simple analog distortion effect, like you’d find while watching home videos on VHS tapes. The point-of-view images are carefully edited, and the resulting video looks like you’re watching it through the eyes of the recorder.
Strange Days also features outstanding musical acts. Juliette Lewis, starring as Faith, belts out two PJ Harvey tracks in an on-screen performance that recalls the best of ’90s grunge. Rapper Jericho One (played by Glenn Plummer) delivers a scathing commentary in his music video. And contemporary artists Aphex Twin, Deee-Lite and Skunk Anansie perform during the film’s finale, New Year’s Eve in downtown LA. (It was a real life concert with 10,000 attendees.)
Strange Days is both a thrilling action film and a mind-bending exploration of technology and memory. I’m surprised it was a box-office flop in 1995, and I wish it had gotten the recognition it deserved back then. Still, I’m glad this sci-fi masterpiece is available to stream today. Although Strange Days doesn’t have a very memorable title, the movie itself is memorable.
