Children of Men (2006)
★★★★ — Children of Men (2006)
Released in 2006 and set just two decades into the future, Children of Men arrives from a specific tradition of British dystopian fiction, one that runs from H.G. Wells through Orwell and on into P.D. James, whose 1992 novel The Children of Men provides the source material here. The premise is genuinely unsettling in its simplicity: worldwide human infertility has left civilisation in slow-motion collapse, and a former activist named Theo (Clive Owen) finds himself tasked with escorting the only known pregnant woman on earth to safety. The film was produced under Universal Pictures alongside Strike Entertainment and Hit & Run Productions, and came out to strong critical attention on both sides of the Atlantic. It sits in that relatively rare category of science fiction that treats the genre not as spectacle but as a mirror, using a near-future Britain of detention camps, crumbling infrastructure, and exhausted bureaucracy to reflect anxieties that felt very much alive in the mid-2000s.
Behind the camera is Alfonso Cuarón, the Mexican director whose range across genres had already been demonstrated by his work on everything from intimate Spanish-language drama to, perhaps most surprisingly for mainstream audiences at the time, a rather assured entry in the Harry Potter franchise with Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. With Children of Men, however, Cuarón shifted into considerably darker territory, working with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki to develop a visual language built around long, unbroken takes that place the viewer uncomfortably inside the action. The result is a film that feels rawer and more immediate than most of its science fiction contemporaries, polished but never clean in the way that studio productions tend to be. He would later push similar formal ambitions even further in Gravity, though the worlds could scarcely be more different in their emotional register.
The cast assembled here is a strong one. Clive Owen, no stranger to morally pressured roles as anyone who has seen him in Sin City will recognise, carries the film as a man defined less by heroism than by reluctant obligation. Clare-Hope Ashitey brings a quiet, grounded presence to the film's central figure of hope, while Chiwetel Ejiofor and Julianne Moore round out the supporting cast with considerable authority. Michael Caine, in a performance that went somewhat against type at the time, appears in a role that provides some of the film's few moments of warmth. The ensemble never feels over-assembled, each performance calibrated to the film's deliberately muted, worn-down atmosphere.
Weirdly realistic dystopian beauty. There's something about this film that hits different now, especially after living through COVID. The way the world falls apart under crisis, the hopelessness, the fear, the quiet brutality, it all feels eerily grounded. Visually, it’s stunning. Those long, chaotic single takes are masterclasses in tension. Clive Owen gives such a grounded, worn-down performance and the film never leans into melodrama, it just lets the bleakness speak for itself. It’s a haunting vision of the future, but also oddly hopeful. Still hits hard nearly two decades later. Also shout out to the same house as where 28 Weeks Later was filmed
That observation about the filming location is exactly the kind of detail I find myself noticing on rewatches too, those small real-world connections that remind you how much of this film was built in and around actual, recognisable British spaces rather than fabricated on a backlot. It adds to the texture of the thing. For me, Children of Men is one of those rare science fiction films that earns its place in the conversation not because of what it imagines, but because of how honestly it imagines it. Nearly twenty years on, it has only grown in weight. Sometimes the most hopeful films are the ones brave enough to show you exactly what hope costs.
Rating: ★★★★ | Year: 2006 | Watched: 2025-04-15
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Children of Men (2006) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
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Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Alfonso Cuarón: Gravity (2013) · Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
More with Clive Owen: Beyond Borders (2003) · Sin City (2005)
More from United Kingdom: Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Shinjuku Boys (1995) · The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) · Blue (1993)
More from the 2000s: Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) · Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) · Daredevil (2003) · Apocalypto (2006)
More science fiction: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Fantastic Planet (1973) · Nightmare City (1980) · The Long Walk (2025)
More thriller: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Angst (1983) · The Long Walk (2025) · Punishment Park (1971)
