Film

The Apple

Other titles called The Apple: the 1998 film.

A 1980 disco-fever fever dream posing as cautionary sci-fi. Two wholesome kids stumble into a neon-soaked 1994 music industry controlled by a satanic entrepreneur. Part musical, part moral panic, entirely disorienting: a fascinatingly wrong film that swings for the fences and misses the stadium.

TMDb rating2.3

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love garishly sincere, cheerfully tacky musicals where the costumes, synth-pop and satire are all turned up to eleven and nobody apologises for it.

Skip it if you want a tight plot or subtle performances; the songs are loud, the jokes broad, and its satire of the music business is more enthusiastic than sharp.

What it asks of you: Brisk at under ninety minutes, it lurches from one loud set piece to the next and rarely lets a scene breathe, so you must accept its weirdness fast.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Xanadu1980

Olivia Newton-John and Gene Kelly in a glittery, earnest musical fantasy about art and commerce. Like The Apple, it's genuinely strange and utterly committed to its own weirdness, with production design that's almost hallucinogenic.

But The tone whiplashes wildly between sincerity and camp. If you need your musicals grounded in reality, this will feel airless.

Xanadu poster

Phantom of the Paradise1974

Brian De Palma's glorious monster-in-the-music-industry riff: stylish, darkly funny, and obsessed with how art gets corrupted by ambition. It has bite where The Apple has teeth.

But It's relentlessly cynical and moves fast. There's no comfort in this one, and the 70s rock aesthetic won't speak to everyone.

Phantom of the Paradise poster

Rock of Ages2012

A glossy, knowing musical about the music industry's seductive danger. Julianne Hough and Diego Boneta are wide-eyed newcomers much like The Apple's couple, discovering glamour and moral compromise.

But It's slicker and safer than The Apple—sometimes aggressively so. The earnestness curdles into something resembling a music video.

Rock of Ages poster

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Apple

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Godspell1973

Both are didactic musicals using youth, color, and song to warn against spiritual corruption—but Godspell trusts joy to make its point, while The Apple relies on dread.

A New York-set musical where Jesus and his disciples cavort through the city in face paint and madness, teaching parables through song and vaudeville. Like The Apple, it's a moral allegory disguised as a carnival—except it genuinely works, and the ecstasy feels earned.

But It's relentlessly chipper about profound things. The whimsy doesn't pause, and the religious content (however playful) will alienate some viewers entirely.

Godspell poster
More like this (8)

Pennies from Heaven1981

Steve Martin in a Depression-era musical about desire, temptation, and the gap between fantasy and life. It shares The Apple's commitment to using music as moral commentary, but with genuine heartbreak underneath.

But It's bleak and sexually explicit in ways that might surprise you. The tonal shifts are deliberate but not always successful.

Pennies from Heaven poster

Tommy1975

Ken Russell's unhinged rock opera about a deaf, dumb, and blind boy who becomes a messiah. It's gloriously excessive, visually deranged, and completely sure of itself in a way only 70s cinema allowed.

But It's genuinely difficult viewing. The ugliness is intentional, but that doesn't make it easier to sit through.

Tommy poster

Hair1979

Milos Forman's musical about youth, conformity, and Vietnam. Like The Apple, it uses songs to explore how systems try to swallow individual identity, but with more warmth and genuine emotion.

But The politics feel dated, and the second act loses momentum. Some of the musical numbers are genuinely awkward.

Hair poster

Shock Treatment1981

The Rocky Horror Picture Show's spiritual sequel: a dystopian musical satire about television, celebrity, and control. It shares The Apple's contempt for media manipulation, wrapped in joyful weirdness.

But It's bewildering even by cult-musical standards. Most people find it impenetrable rather than charming.

Shock Treatment poster

Thank God It's Friday1978

A disco-era ensemble film about one night at a nightclub, with Donna Summer and a sound-stage vision of 70s hedonism. If you want more of that particular fever-dream world, this is it.

But It's thin and episodic. The dialogue is sometimes painful, and the film feels like a 90-minute music video.

Thank God It's Friday poster

Can't Stop the Music1980

The Village People's autobiographical disco musical—the other 1980 music-industry film that swings wildly for the fences. It's so confidently absurd it loops back to charming.

But It's deeply, genuinely bad in ways that make even affectionate viewing a commitment. The homophobic subtext in its context is uncomfortable.

Can't Stop the Music poster

Forbidden Zone1982

Both films create alternate-reality music-industry dystopias through sheer visual commitment and moral panic, but Forbidden Zone abandons realism entirely where The Apple clings to narrative.

Danny Elfman and the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo made a surrealist, black-and-white musical fever dream about a family crossing into a rule-broken dimension. It has The Apple's commitment to wrongness and visual strangeness, but filters it through vaudeville and genuine anarchy.

But It's aggressively weird even for midnight-movie standards. There's no plot, no character arc—just images, grotesquerie, and Elfman's score.

Forbidden Zone poster

Liquid Sky1982

Both are 1980s genre hybrids about youth subcultures being corrupted or invaded by outside forces; both use electronic music and futuristic aesthetics to explore how desire and temptation operate in modern life.

A low-budget indie sci-fi art film about a tiny UFO hovering over Manhattan, and the underground club scene it crash-lands into. It's an experimental film about youth, drugs, and sexual identity disguised as science fiction—genuinely alien, synth-scored, utterly unlike anything mainstream cinema attempted.

But It's deliberately obscure and formally challenging. The acting is nontraditional, the plot is fragmentary, and subtitles won't resolve the strangeness.

Liquid Sky poster

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