Maybe the best approach to making a dystopian film, given the state of the planet in 2020, is to not set it many years from now. The ruined worlds of classic movies such as Blade Runner or A Clockwork Orange typically exist decades in the future, as grim warnings about the path society is on. But Brandon Cronenberg’s Possessor, a gleefully gory bit of techno-horror in theaters starting tomorrow, is set in the past—an alternate 2008 where online surveillance has become the norm, city streets are eerily empty, and income inequality has reached staggering proportions. In other words, it’s a different world from ours, but a distressingly familiar and plausible one.