In these uncertain times, you may find yourself thinking about the apocalypse more often than usual. That’s not to say the world is ending, but a global pandemic will, uh, change how you think about things pretty quickly. And while some may find that the kinds of movies they want to watch right now arecomfort filmsoradventure movies—something to take their mind off the day-to-day—some may want to go the opposite direction. Just immerse themselves in cinema that reflects the world we’re living in right now, or one we’re heading towards.
To that end, we here at Collider put our heads together to come up with the definitive list of the best apocalypse movies ever made. These films may offer a glimpse at what’s ahead, they may be full of pointers for how to navigate societyaftera global catastrophe, and more often than not they’re an exaggerated look at what would happen if the world just went to hell. But we can guarantee one thing: they’re all worth watching.
Our criteria for selecting “apocalypse” movies were films in which the world has gone through some sort of catastrophic event. So this ranges from the extreme ofMad Max: Fury Roadto a more subtly changed world (if we could’ve putThe Leftoverson here, we would have).
But all of these films have something to say not just about the world wecouldbe living in, but the one we’re living in now—pandemic or no. So peruse our list of the best apocalypse movies below, and get to preppin’.
Director:George Miller
Writers:George Miller, Brendan McCarthy, Nico Lathouris
Cast:Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Hugh Keays-Whiteley
You might think it’s crazier than a chromed-out War Boy to callMad Max: Fury Road—set in a future where the human race nuked itself to shit and the world is controlled by a brutal overlord—a “comfort watch” in these trying times. But man,Fury Roadis pure high-octane cathartic release.George Miller, possibly insane director of the first threeMad Maxfilms and alsoHappy Feet, just took a bunch of 18-wheelers and rally cars out into the desert and blew them up for real.Charlize Theronplays a one-armed warrior woman who batters a despot’s regime to pieces.Tom Hardygets straight-up thrown around for the entire ride. WatchingMad Max: Fury Roadone time is the equivalent, heart rate-wise, of jumping a go-kart over a gorge, which is helpful when you can’t actually go outside. A perfect film. Watch it immediately. Have a lovely day.–Vinnie Mancuso
Snowpiercer
Director:Bong Joon Ho
Writer:Bong Joon Ho, Kelly Masterson
Cast:Chris Evans, Song Kang Ho, Ed Harris, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, Jamie Bell, Octavia Spencer
At this point I should only have to tell you thatBong Joon HodirectedSnowpiercerand that should immediately bump it up to the top of your must-watch list. Just likeParasitewas a favorite film of 2019,Snowpiercersnagged a spot on my personal top ten list back in 2014. The movie is an adaptation of the French graphic novelLe Transperceneigeand takes place in 2031 aboard a train with no final destination. It just circles the globe, shielding survivors from the results of a disastrous attempt to stop global warming. Similar toParasite,Snowpierceraddresses a slew of socioeconomic concerns through a taut thriller that successfully juggles a variety of tones and genres. While the wealthy are living in luxurious, vibrant cars at the front of the train, Curtis (Chris Evans) and the others confined to the tail end are forced to make due with dreary accommodations and a questionable food source while living in constant fear of being targeted by violent train staffers. But now, enough is enough. Curtis decides it’s time to lead a revolution and make his way to the front of the train, taking the viewer from the dreariness and horrors of the back, to an all-out brawl, to a serene greenhouse, to a disturbingly cheery classroom and beyond, all while balancing a mix of sheer terror and satire, challenging you to think twice about familiar social constructs and exactly what it means to be a leader. -Perri Nemiroff
This Is the End
Writer/Directors:Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg
Cast:Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, Jonah Hill, James Franco, Danny McBride, and Craig Robinson
Are you still just like, really,reallyannoyed by the idea of celebrities “helping” during a pandemic by singing John Lennon’s “Imagine” from the comfort of their mega-homes? Then the balm you need isThis Is the End, the pitch-perfect horror-comedy directed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg that satirizes how Hollywood’s biggest names would react to the literal apocalypse. The answer, as in real life, is: “Very Poorly”. Playing themselves, Rogen,Jay Baruchel,Jonah Hill,James Franco,Danny McBride, andCraig Robinsonfind themselves holed up in Franco’s L.A. mansion as demons rise from the Earth and the end of days arrives. If it’s one thing we’ve for sure learned during this pandemic it’s that celebrities arenot“just like us”, but at leastThis Is the Endis pretty dang funny about the whole thing.– Vinnie Mancuso
12 Monkeys
Director:Terry Gilliam
Writers:David Peoples and Janet Peoples
Cast:Bruce Willis Madeline Stowe, Brad Pitt, and Christopher Plummer
To sayTerry Gilliam’s vision of the future in12 Monkeysis bleak is to say the sky is blue. And it’s the thematic bleakness that really comes through. The future part of the story is set in 2035, where a prisoner living in an underground compound (Bruce Willis) is selected to be trained to go back in time and stop a deadly virus from wiping out almost all of humanity in 1996. Why are prisoners used? Because time travel is dangerous, of course, and they’re expendable. Willis’ character goes on a pretty gonzo trip once in 1996, and past, present and future begin to blend together as we barrel towards a humdinger of an ending. Along the way, he crosses paths with a mental patient and radical environmentalist played byBrad Pitt, in a role that would earn Pitt his first-ever Oscar nomination. This movie is nuts, and kind of a “worst case scenario” for a viral pandemic. –Adam Chitwood
Director:Andrew Stanton
Writers:Andrew Stanton and Jim Reardon
Cast:Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin, Fred Willard, John Ratzenberger, Kathy Najimy, and Sigourney Weaver
If you’re in the mood for an apocalypse movie that has an optimistic bent,WALL-Eis your best bet. Pixar’s 2008 masterpiece envisions a future in which humans have entirely left planet Earth behind on account of the buildup of garbage, trash, and waste everywhere. Humans now live on a giant cruise ship out in space, but have forgotten their roots—the only lives they remember are the ones they lead now, in which computers program their every moment and their muscles have atrophied from lack of use.WALL-Eis actually probably more accurate than we care to admit, but the charm of the film is that at its root it’s a love story between two robots, who eventually work together to remind humans where they came from. Even when things look darkest, there’s still hope. Assuming you’ve got some kind robots to help nudge you in the right direction. –Adam Chitwood
The Day After Tomorrow
Director:Roland Emmerich
Writers:Roland Emmerich and Jeffrey Nachmanoff
Cast:Jake Gyllenhaal, Dennis Quaid, Ian Holm, Emmy Rossum, and Sela Ward
If you like your apocalypse movies with a hefty dose of bombast,Roland Emmerich’sThe Day After Tomorrowain’t bad. Notably we’re not putting Emmerich’s2012on this list—that movie isbadbad. But whileThe Day After Tomorrowis a little cheesy and inelegant at times, it ultimately works. The film is a $125 million warning sign about the effects of climate change. Tt follows an American paleoclimatologist (Dennis Quaid) and his colleagues and son as they attempt to warn government officials of an impending disruption to the North Atlantic Ocean circulation. The government officials don’t listen, what the scientists said would happen happens, and the world welcomes a new Ice Age. The visual effects here are pretty stunning, and Emmerich does a swell job of holding tension while showing what a catastrophic weather event would do to New York City. You know, in case you needed a reminder of another major world-changing event destined to happen in addition to this whole pandemic thing. –Adam Chitwood
Escape from New York
Director:John Carpenter
Writers:John Carpenter, Nick Castle
Cast:Kurt Russell, Harry Dean Stanton, Donald Pleasance, Adrienne Barbeau, Ernest Borgnine
This might seem…a little on the nose right now. ButJohn Carpenter’s dark sci-fi classicEscape from New Yorkis a warning sign and a reminder that things could always be worse.Kurt Russellplaying a jacked renegade with an eye-patch named Snake Plissken gives this movie a fun edge—and itisfun, and somehow even weirder than anyone ever remembers—but it’s alsosuperbleak, with a screenplay Carpenter wrote pissed-off as hell in the wake of the Watergate scandal. It’s about governments that fail their people, and what happens to a lower class after they’re completely forgotten. In this case, that just happens to lead to a city-wide prison-state that holds deadly wrestling matches presided over by a blinged-out overlord named The Duke (Isaac Hayes). Let’s, uh, hope we never reach that point.–Vinnie Mancuso
Escape from L.A.
Writers:John Carpenter, Debra Hill, Kurt Russell
Cast:Kurt Russell, Steve Buscemi, Stacey Keach, Peter Fonda, Pam Grier, Bruce Campbell
1981’sEscape from New Yorkis a classic pulp action thriller. The 1996 sequelEscape from L.A.is exactly none of those things. However, it is still absolutely worth watching, both as a fascinating artifact of mid-90’s cinema and as an artifact of the mid-90’s hubris surrounding the power of digital effects. I want the scene in which Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) surfs on an apocalyptic wave holographically projected on my tombstone for all eternity, alternated on weekends and holidays with the scene in which Snake shoots hoops for his freedom. There are no digital effects in that sequence, but it is no less important to me.John Carpenter’s joy for filmmaking can still be felt in this subpar follow-up about the future island of Los Angeles being converted into a prison camp for moral degenerates by a theocratic president, and it remains just as chaotically libertarian as the original. (Snake once again is barely a hero and essentially dooms humanity because the person giving him orders is an asshole.) It’s endlessly cheesy, but it’s impossible not to enjoy yourself anytime Russell and Carpenter make a movie. -Tom Reimann
War for the Planet of the Apes
Director: Matt Reeves
Writers: Mark Bomback, Matt Reeves
Cast: Andy Serkis, Woody Harrelson, Steve Zahn
When my girlfriend and I left the cinema after seeingWar for the Planet of the Apes, tears streaming down our cheeks, we looked at each other. Assessed each other’s emotional states of being. And then my girlfriend said something that will forever be lodged in my cinematic appreciation brain: “They’re monkeys!” In a very silly voice, she analyzed exactly why we were so gobsmacked by this epic motion picture, the conclusion to thePlanet of the Apesreboot trilogy and perfect extension ofMatt Reeves’ previous perfect, darker-than-dark middle chapterDawn of the Planet of the Apes. Somehow, these filmmakers turned a potentially silly premise, which we’ve seen played for camp many times on the screen, into an exacting, comprehensive, emotionally complicated, and ultimately hopeful screed on the need for empathy to triumph over power for humanity to succeed. And… they’re monkeys!Andy Serkisplays the lead monkey, Caesar, in another of his absolutely perfect motion capture roles. His fellow apes and he seem to have established dominance, or at least a queasy co-leadership of “the Earth” with humans. UntilWoody Harrelson’s Colonel, a cruel and bigoted leader of a human anti-ape militia, decides it’s time for humans to take theirs back. Thus the war is on, a taxing, heart wrenching, all-encompassing war that brings every character to the brink (especiallySteve Zahn’s perfect performance as the sweetest ape you’ll ever see). And on the other side of this brink? Hope. The promise of light after the darkest moments. The knowledge that love defeats hate. And, again, I cannot stress this enough: They’re monkeys! -Greg Smith
Director:John Hillcoat
Writer:Joe Penhall
Cast:Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Robert Duvall, Charlize Theron, and Guy Pearce
Be forewarned:The Roadis one of the bleakest movies on this least, and indeed one of the bleakest films ever made. Based on theCormac McCarthynovel of the same name, the film takes place in a world that has been ravaged by a global cataclysm that caused an extinction event. A father (Viggo Mortensen) and son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) try to navigate their way through this true wasteland, fighting off cannibals, thieves, and their own psyches. Indeed,The Roadis a film about the devolution of humanity in the wake of such a catastrophic event. Who are the “good guys” and who are the “bad guys?” In a world where food and shelter are scarce, does it behoove anyone to be kind? And what are the ramifications of violence?The Roadoffers absolutely no easy answers and isdefinitelynot a feel-good movie. But if you’re down to, like, just really wallow in a worst-case scenario for humanity, I supposeThe Roadis worth giving a whirl. –Adam Chitwood
