The Electric State: Reading the plot through its mixtape

The Electric State is way more than just a sci-fi film about a girl, a guy, and a robot crossing a post-apocalyptic landscape. It’s a journey told in guitar riffs, punk growls, and bittersweet ballads. In this hauntingly beautiful odyssey, the end of civilization plays like a forgotten mixtape. Does Guardians of the Galaxy ring a bell? It should.

What’s left behind isn’t just broken machines or crumbling buildings—it’s sound. Faint melodies drift through abandoned towns, and classic tracks from an alternate 1990s version of America become more than nostalgia. They become memory, emotion, and resistance. The music doesn’t accompany the story. It makes the story.

Directed with quiet precision by the Russo Brothers and led by raw, layered performances from Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt, The Electric State is a film that trades dialogue for resonance.

In this story told with sound as much as image, every song acts as a compass, each one revealing more about Michelle’s grief, Keats’s guarded loyalty, and the world they’re trying to navigate. It’s not just a playlist. It’s a heartbeat.

Nostalgia holds the wheel in The Electric State

It all begins with Tom Petty’s Mary Jane’s Last Dance. The track hums through the opening scene as Michelle drives into the unknown, a girl carrying too much pain in a car that’s barely holding together. It’s a song about leaving, about endings, about something that once felt alive but now just flickers like static. And in Michelle’s silence, the lyrics speak for her.

Millie Bobby Brown doesn’t need lines to make the emotion land. Her performance is all in the breath, the posture, the way she stares just a second too long at the horizon. The song wraps around her like fog, not comforting but familiar. The Electric State uses this moment to set the emotional tone early. Nostalgia isn’t soft here. It’s sharp, heavy, and aching.

The Electric State and its soundtrack of resistance: When defiance becomes rhythm

Later, in a moment that simmers with tension, The Clash’s I Fought the Law tears through the stillness. It plays as Michelle and Keats push back against the decaying power structures clinging to what’s left of the world. This isn’t just rebellion for rebellion’s sake. It’s survival through sound.

Chris Pratt brings a scrappy energy to Keats, mixing sarcasm and sincerity in equal measure. His chemistry with Brown is unspoken but electric, and when the song kicks in, it doesn’t feel ironic. It feels earned. In The Electric State, law has lost all meaning, and those who resist aren’t criminals. They’re what’s left of humanity’s conscience.

Dancing on the edge of collapse

Amid all the grief and tension, there are moments that catch you off guard. One of them arrives in the middle of a chaotic chase scene when Good Vibrations by Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch blasts through the speakers. It’s jarringly upbeat, and that’s exactly the point. The soundtrack doesn’t just follow the scene. It dares to disrupt it.

This moment could have fallen flat, but under the Russo Brothers’ direction, it lands with surprising grace. The absurdity becomes catharsis. It’s not just comic relief. It’s a reminder that in dystopia, joy becomes an act of rebellion. Laughing feels dangerous. Dancing feels like defiance. And playing a song like this while the world is burning? That’s poetry.

When heartbreak plays quietly in the background

There’s a stillness in this story that hits harder than any explosion. One night, under a pale sky, Poison’s Every Rose Has Its Thorn plays over a scene that says everything without saying anything. Michelle and Keats sit in silence, surrounded by the hum of a dying world. And the song does the rest.

Millie Bobby Brown captures this moment with devastating simplicity. Chris Pratt, usually the one to break tension with humor, lets the silence speak for him. The ballad, often dismissed as cheesy, transforms here into something raw and honest. It’s not about lost love. It’s about holding on to something soft in a world that has turned hard.

Believing anyway: When hope sounds familiar

When Don’t Stop Believin’ begins to play, you might expect an eye roll. But what happens instead is something close to magic. There’s no winking, no meta-commentary. Just sincerity. The track, so overused it’s almost lost its meaning, finds new life here. It becomes a lifeline.

That’s the genius of how music works in The Electric State. Nothing is used cheaply. Nothing is thrown in for effect. Every choice lands. And in this moment, as Michelle faces the unknowable with nothing but faith in someone she may never find, the song feels right. It’s not about believing blindly. It’s about believing anyway.

When rebellion gets loud, loud enough to matter

There’s a moment when subtle resistance is no longer enough. That’s when Judas Priest’s Breaking the Law kicks in, roaring through the speakers as Meat and Metal rise to face their own programmed fate. It’s not just a needle drop. It’s a full-on emotional rupture.

What makes this scene unforgettable isn’t just the music but how fully the film leans into its fury. There’s no room left for quiet grief or ironic detachment. This is catharsis, pure and unapologetic. Breaking the Law becomes the anthem of machines fighting back against a world that used them up and threw them out. It’s not about revenge. It’s about finally being heard.

Danzig’s howl in the darkness

Later, in a darker stretch of the journey, Danzig’s mother slithers into the background like a threat you didn’t see coming. The song is heavy, primal, aching with tension. It wraps around Michelle as she confronts a moment of moral collapse. Mother doesn’t comfort. It warns.

There’s something ritualistic about how this track is used—almost like a curse or a slow burn. It reminds you that not every part of this journey is redemptive. Some choices leave a mark. And with Danzig’s voice cutting through the tension, The Electric State reminds you that rage can be sacred too.

The weird, tender heart of a robot and a piano

And then, there’s the taco robot. Sitting among the ruins, playing a half-broken version of Wonderwall on a dusty piano. It should be ridiculous. It is ridiculous. But it’s also one of the most human moments in the entire film.

The scene doesn’t need words. The song, worn and echoing, floats in the air like a memory no one’s ready to let go of. The Russo Brothers lean into the surreal, and it pays off. This is what makes The Electric State special. More than just the action. Not only the world-building. These quiet, bizarre, oddly emotional moments that remind us what it means to feel.

The Electric States delives a mixtape that remembers what matters

This isn’t just a soundtrack. It’s a confession. A memory. A lifeline. The songs don’t decorate scenes. They define them. From Tom Petty to Poison, from Marky Mark to Journey, from Judas Priest to Danzig, each track becomes a layer of meaning wrapped around the characters’ silence.

With Millie Bobby Brown anchoring the emotion in The Electric State and Chris Pratt grounding the absurd, the film never loses its balance. And under the guidance of the Russo Brothers, it finds beauty in the collapse. The Electric State doesn’t just ask what’s left when the world ends. It answers with music. And somehow, that’s more than enough.

Because even in a ruined world, if the song still plays, there’s still something left to fight for.