This Ultimate Y2K Sci-Fi Movie Made Virtual Reality Seem Almost Too Real
I've wanted to rewatch the sci-fi thriller Strange Days for a long time, but I kept forgetting because, honestly, I couldn't remember the title. I finally came across it on Hulu and checked it out, and I can't stop thinking about it.
Though Strange Days was released back in 1995, it looks and feels like it could've come out yesterday. It's one of those rare old movies that imagined the technology of virtual reality, or VR, without turning it into a gimmick.
Strange Days takes place in 1999 Los Angeles during the last 48 hours of the millennium. Lenny Nero, played by Ralph Fiennes, is a former cop who now peddles an illegal virtual reality experience called Playback.
Nero's friend and bodyguard, Mace (Angela Basset), tries to keep him rooted in reality and away from 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 own point of view.
The movie wasted no time dropping me into its jarring setting: The opening scene is an armed robbery filmed in first-person perspective, with the robber running from cops and jumping from one rooftop to another. A couple of scenes later, I saw tanks on the streets of LA and heard radio callers declaring that the world would end at the stroke of midnight on Jan. 1, 2000.
Strange Days reminds me of the best Black Mirror episodes -- both deeply disturbing and uncomfortably close to home. Director Kathryn Bigelow was influenced by the 1992 LA riots and incorporated those elements of racial tension and police violence into her work. The result is a movie that's sometimes difficult to watch but impossible to look away from.
At the same time, Strange Days is grounded by emotion. Nero (Fiennes) spends a good portion of the movie reliving memories of his failed relationship with the singer Faith (played by actress-turned-rocker Juliette Lewis). Lying in bed while he plays back footage of happier 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 in the lonely present day.
"This is not 'like TV only better,'" says Nero, as he introduces the VR Playback tech to one of his clients. "This is life."
But Bassett's character, Mace, believes otherwise, at one point confronting Nero over his attachment to his "used emotions."
"This is your life!" says Mace. "Right here! Right now! It's real time, you hear me? Real time, time to get real, not Playback!"
As I watched Strange Days in 2025, I couldn't help thinking of the virtual reality devices that exist today. VR headsets like the Meta Quest 3 and Google's upcoming AR glasses are bringing us closer than ever to the Playback tech in the film. And the immersive spatial videos for the Apple Vision Pro can make you feel like you're really reliving a three-dimensional recorded memory. As I considered the similarities between our current tech and Strange Days' Playback discs, I wondered if the future wants to be haunted by the past.
Despite being 30 years old, Strange Days' special effects hold up incredibly well. Where other 1995 sci-fi flicks like Hackers and Johnny Mnemonic experimented with early computer-generated imagery, Strange Days went for a more practical approach: Characters shift in and out of the Playback footage with a simple analog distortion effect, just like you'd find while watching home videos on VHS tapes. The point-of-view shots were carefully choreographed, and the resulting footage looks like you're viewing it through the recorder's eyes.
Strange Days also features standout musical acts. Juliette Lewis, in character as Faith, belts out two PJ Harvey tracks in on-screen performances that recall the best of '90s grunge. Rapper Jeriko One (played by Glenn Plummer) delivers biting social commentary in his music video. And contemporary artists Aphex Twin, Deee-Lite and Skunk Anansie perform during the movie's bombastic final act, a New Year's Eve rave in downtown LA. (It was a real-life concert with 10,000 attendees.)
Strange Days is both a thrilling action movie 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 received the recognition it deserved then. Still, I'm glad this sci-fi masterpiece is available to stream today. Though Strange Days isn't the easiest title to remember, the movie itself is unforgettable.
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