Film

Downsizing

Name: Downsizing
Genre: Drama, Science Fiction, Comedy
Released: 2017
Cast: Matt Damon, Christoph Waltz, Hong Chau, Kristen Wiig, Rolf Lassgård

Alexander Payne's shaggy dog of a movie starts as a broad satire — Matt Damon shrinks himself to four inches to escape debt and save the planet — then quietly turns into something stranger and sadder about privilege, guilt, and what a good life actually requires. It's tonally lopsided and oddly moving, more interesting than it is fun.

TMDb rating

5.4

If you liked this

Sideways2004

Payne's funniest, saddest film about a man muddling through disappointment with wine and self-pity. If you liked the melancholy underneath Downsizing's jokes, this is the purer, sharper version of that voice.

But No sci-fi hook at all — just two men behaving badly on a wine trip. Some find its lead insufferable.

Parasite2019

A class satire that starts as comedy and ends somewhere much darker, with the same interest in how wealth literally reshapes the spaces people live in.

But Far more violent and tightly plotted than Downsizing — this one has teeth and doesn't wander.

Being John Malkovich1999

A ludicrous high concept used as a Trojan horse for real feeling about identity and escape, executed with total conviction, exactly Downsizing's trick but far weirder.

But Charlie Kaufman's whimsy curdles fast if you're not on its specific, jittery wavelength.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Incredible Shrinking Man1957

Sixty years before Damon, this film used the exact same premise — a man made physically tiny — to ask the same question Downsizing does: what is a person worth when the world literally shrinks them down?

The original shrinking-man movie, made when the Cold War made body horror feel like existential horror. A man's diminishment becomes a meditation on insignificance and dignity.

But Black-and-white, slow by modern pacing, and its special effects are charmingly, obviously of their era.

Snowpiercer2013

Class stratification made literal through science-fiction spatial logic — here it's a train instead of shrinking, but the moral math is the same.

But Grimmer and more action-driven; it wants to thrill you, not make you feel wistful.

Her2013

A lonely, decent man in a near-future world quietly reordered by technology, told with the same tenderness Downsizing reaches for in its back half.

But Slower and more inward — almost no plot, just a mood and an ache.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind2004

Proof that a wild sci-fi premise can carry real heartbreak without losing its playfulness — the tonal balancing act Downsizing is chasing, done masterfully.

But Structurally fragmented and emotionally raw in ways that hit much harder than Downsizing ever does.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind poster

The Truman Show1998

A high-concept satire about manufactured contentment that becomes, by the end, unexpectedly moving about what a person actually owes themselves.

But Broader and more overtly comic in its first half than Downsizing's drier register.

WALL·E2008

The environmental despair Downsizing gestures at, delivered with more clarity and heart, and almost no dialogue for its first act.

But It's a kids' film — gorgeous and devastating, but built for a very different audience.

Okja2017

Another film about corporate solutions to planetary problems that turns out to have a giant, tender heart hiding inside its satire.

But Swings even harder between goofy and horrifying — some viewers find the tonal whiplash exhausting.

Children of Men2006

Both films ask what ordinary people owe a planet in crisis, but where Downsizing answers with quirky compromise, this one answers with grim, unblinking urgency — the same anxiety in a completely different key.

A near-future where humanity has essentially given up, shot with unbearable tension and one of cinema's great long takes. It's what Downsizing's environmental dread would look like without any comic relief.

But Bleak, violent, and relentless — there is no whimsy here to soften the despair, and no easy hope offered at the end.

The Age of Stupid2009no page yet

It takes Downsizing's premise — that individual lifestyle choices might avert planetary catastrophe — and strips away the fantasy, showing what that question looks like without a shrinking machine to solve it.

A documentary-drama hybrid imagining a future survivor looking back at archival footage of our present-day climate apathy, intercut with real people's ordinary, self-defeating choices.

But No stars, no jokes, and a didactic streak — it's activist filmmaking that wants to unsettle you, not entertain you.