The latest film from the stable of director Adam McKay is parodical and farcical, but also authentic and despondent, not unlike his previous venture with The Big Short (2015). But unlike the former, Don’t Look Up — the story of a people facing an advancing comet, a planet killer —is complete fiction. The film, however, has the disturbing and prescient quality of the Black Mirror (2011–2019) series, hitting home with the realisation that science fiction is closer than we think to reality; in other words, reality can indeed be stranger than fiction.