20 Apocalyptic Films to Get You Through the Next Four Years
Science fiction cinema can be a pretty rewarding and rip-roaring genre, particularly when handled with insight and speculation. Within the sci-fi genre exists many sub-genres for enthusiasts and nerds to fawn over, dissect, and dork out upon. It’s here that we come across one of popular culture’s most enduring categories of doom and gloom; those stories that busy themselves with the end of the world, often in a post-apocalyptic wasteland or other exposed apocalyptic apparitions. It’s a juicy and enjoyable category, to be sure. Ironic, perhaps, as many of these films project current social trends into the future, and often it’s our own ignorance and disdain that did us in.
Now, before we stampede to our list (and it was a fun and frustrating list to gather, some deserving films didn’t quite make the cut), please allow a brief word of clarification: Apocalyptic films are not the same as dystopian films (that’s another list for another day, and yes, it will include films like A Clockwork Orange, Blade Runner, and Never Let Me Go), and while zombie films often qualify as apocalyptic, we decided to waive those films from this list, too. Ultimately, what we hope you’ll gather from this list of fantastic films are some new thrills and some ominous amusements that might make you feel a handful of years with Trump in the White House could be a lot worse…
20. Snowpiercer (2013)
Highly-stylized to a fault, director and co-writer Bong Joon-ho (Memories of Murder, The Host) has a lot of infectious fun with this action-oriented sci-fi thriller. Based on by Jacques Lob’s graphic novel “Le Transperceneige”, Snowpiercer is a film with a rather outrageous premise that you have to accept straight-up in order to enjoy, and if you do, you’re in for a helluva ride. Due to a global warming acceleration brought on by a climate engineering accident, an ice age has prematurely arrived, decimating all life on earth. The only survivors are the passengers/inhabitants of the Snowpiercer, a massive train on a circumnavigational track around the globe. But that’s just the setup, in a nutshell. The action unfolds with a satirical sting as class warfare and revolution erupts on board the train as the lower classes, led by one Curtis Everett (Chris Evans) want their slice of fun pie.
Witty, weird, and full of vibrant visuals and dextrous action sequences, Snowpiercer is a subversive and exuberant spectacle.
19. The Quiet Earth (1985)
Inspired by Craig Harrison’s SF novel of the same name, Geoffrey Murphy’s (Goodbye Pork Pie) sci-fi film is a survival epic as scientist Zac Hobson (Bruno Lawrence), part of “Project Flashlight”, an international consortium energy program, awakens one morning to find the city he lives in deserted. No, not just the city, he soon discovers, but the entire world. Everyone’s gone and Zac’s search for survivors is hindered only by his own potential mental collapse. It’s an End of Days with a surprisingly light touch and some slick psychology that gets the most from its eerily effective Twilight Zone vibe.
18. How I Live Now (2013)
Another literary adaptation (based off the celebrated novel by Meg Rosoff), this coming-of-age amidst apocalypse drama by Scottish director Kevin Mcdonald (The Last King of Scotland, Touching the Void) is an intelligent antithesis to the Hunger Games franchise, of which it’s oft compared. It also features another fine performance from Saoirse Ronan (Brooklyn, The Grand Budapest Hotel), who makes the more tender and heart-stirring elements of this tale that much more palpable and sadly profound. What feels like a formulaic YA romance gets decidedly dark with a strong and uncompromising finish.
17. The World’s End (2013)
The third and final film in Edgar Wright’s Cornetto Trilogy — the others being Shaun of the Dead (2004) and Hot Fuzz (2007) — this comedy sci-fi foray finds a group of 40-something friends reunited for one last hoorah. The game cast includes Wright regulars Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost along with the likes of Paddy Considine, Rosamund Pike, and Michael Smiley, amongst others. Without spoiling any of the fun, let’s just say that a pub crawl to recapture the glory days may or may not result in a killer robots of alien origin and pastiches ranging from Phantom of the Paradise, The Thing, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Mad Max. If the world is set to end with these beer-swillin’ lads around, maybe it won’t be as bad as all that? Nah.
16. Shame (1968)
Disaster and dread haunts every meticulous frame of Ingmar Bergman’s starry-eyed Shame. Liv Ullman, luminous as always, and Max von Sydow are in the fight of their lives as global war reaches them in their island retreat. This is the only film in Bergman’s distinguished CV that could be classified as speculative fiction with his only depiction of what mankind’s future could be like, and it’s a dark and dreary place.Where do they run to now and will they survive? Shame answers these questions artfully and with terrible adorn.
15. The Road (2009)
Aussie auteur John Hillcoat (Ghosts… of the Civil Dead, The Proposition) faithfully adapts Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, ensuring a vivid portrayal of The Road less travelled (because it’s a post-apocalyptic wasteland). Harrowing, bleak, and brave, it’s a moving film with a magnificent cast (but truthfully isn’t quite capable of the poetic power of McCarthy’s prose).
14. Twelve Monkeys (1995)
Terry Gilliam’s dystopian satire, based off of Chris Marker’s La Jetée, is an agitated, artful, and heady mix of genre staples, creative chaos, and cinematic spectacle. It’s more intelligent than most sci-fi actioners, thanks in part to great performances from Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, and Brad Pitt (in an Oscar nominated role) while Gilliam, as ever, creates many arresting visuals, tragicomic tableaus, and time travel twists. Don’t miss it.
13. Soylent Green (1973)
Of all the paranoiac thrillers to come from 1970s America, Richard Fleischer’s cultish classic on overpopulation, also a quotable classic, is one of the most delectable. It’s also good for a dinner date as you and your date will eat it up (sorry, not sorry). But terrible puns aside, the bleak future Fleischer paints is one of overpopulation, a greenhouse effect in full swing, and an overworked NYPD detective, Thorn (Charlton Heston) on the brink of a terrible and terrifying discovery and a conspiracy involving Soylent Industries.
12. Planet of the Apes (1968)
Before Tim Burton’s terrible remake or the thus far successful reboot series, The Planet of the Apes franchise began beautifully with Franklin Schaffner’s impressive 1968 primate prize-winner (John Chambers’ Oscar winning makeup effects are still mightily impressive over 40 years later. too). Charlton Heston as the bright-eyed astronaut, Taylor, is stranded and ensnared amongst the likes of Roddy McDowall and Maurice Evans, prompting his memorable line: “Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!” A classic.
11. This is the End (2013)
Who says that global catastrophe can’t be foolishly funny? This self-aware send-up of celebrity is one of the most brassy showbiz parodies ever, with a game cast of A-listers gleefully lauding bad behaviour and obnoxious entitlement. Jay Baruchel stars as a pasquinade version of himself, visiting his more successful buddy, fellow Canadian actor Seth Rogan in his Los Angeles digs. Rogen eventually dupes Baruchel, who has social anxiety, into attending James Franco’s housewarming party. Crass cameos aggregate as apocalyptic events resolve, wrecking the party, piss-taking aplenty (and even more amusing than the who’s who of New Hollywood being party-crazed pariahs is watching their numerous and many macabre deaths), unleashing demons (though none so delightful, destructive, and uproarious as Danny McBride) and championing mock-heroics and a stoner ethos.
This is the End is a ceaseless parade of depraved setups and subterfuge that might not work for the uptight but for the rest of us, this film needs to be seen more than once as the off-the-cuff comedy and rapid-fire one-liners are unremitting.
The best gag? When the intertitle “The Exorcism of Jonah Hill” appears, the jokes escalate astronomically. “Are you compelling me, Jay? Is that what you’re doing? Are you compelling me right, now?”
10. Delicatessen (1991)
The genius of Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro (they also co-directed 1995’s The City of Lost Children together, with similarly startling results) was never more obvious than in this disturbed and delirious post-apocalyptic comedic farce, Delicatessen. Its pleasures are manifold, not least of all being the slapstick physicality of it’s mulch-protagonist cast (standouts include Dominique Pinon and Karin Viard), inspired production design (Milijen Kljakovic deservedly won a million or so awards for his work on the film), accelerated editing, continuously roving camera, and more. The escalation of eye-rhyme gags and clever storytelling devices makes this world-gone-wrong adventure, set in a corrupt and collapsing housing complex of the post-nuclear war future, an ironic odyssey that doubles as a fairytale love story. This movie has it all, and the comic destruction of the last third or so of the film is some of the best mobocracy this side of the Marx Brothers. Indispensable viewing for the end of days, hands down.
9. Miracle Mile (1988)
I was still wet behind the ears when I first rented a VHS copy of Miracle Mile back in ’88 or ’89, and after re-watching it again recently I’m mightily impressed how well this ‘End is Nigh’ thriller plays out. Starring Anthony Edwards — and this was years before his turn on ER so audiences only knew him as the lovable loser from Revenge of the Nerds — as Harry Washello, another lovable loser (typecast much?), who just met the love of his life, Julie Peters (Mare Winningham) on the same night that he mistakenly answers a pay phone and intercepts a cryptic message warning of a nuclear war that’s only seventy minutes away. Most of the film is played out in what feels like real time, and many Hitchcockian curve balls get tossed at the audience as we wonder, amongst other things, was the phone call legit? Will Harry rescue Julie? And how big a budget does this movie have?
Miracle Mile is incredibly effective for its small scale, several sequences of riotous havoc and mayhem are visually arresting and show no indication of a two-bit budget. The sometimes perverse plot twists and turns are engaging, and, wisely, the question of doubt and disbelief are left to linger until the last minute as a will-it-or-won’t-it white-knuckle conclusion, uh, blows up.
8. A Boy and His Dog (1975)
The joyfully detouring shaggy dog (sorry) narratives in this curious cult classic sci-fi spectacle were written by the legendary scribe Harlan Ellison (“Love Ain’t Nothing But Sex Misspelled”, “Deathbird Stories”), drawn largely from his 1969 novel of the same name. Now, depending who you ask, A Boy and His Dog is often thought to be the first post-apocalyptic genre film and may well have been responsible for the deluge of similarly themed films that flooded out afterwards (George Miller cites it as an influence on his Mad Max films, so there’s that, too).
Directed with an offbeat and eccentric sensibility by L.Q. Jones (Hang ’Em High), this pitch-black comedy concerns Vic (a baby-faced Don Johnson), a horny teenager and now shady scavenger out to survive in the dangerous post-apocalyptic wastes of what’s left of the Southern United States. Keeping him company is Blood, his telepathic dog, voiced by Tim McIntire. When our unlikely duo stumble upon the sexy and suspicious Quilla June (Susanne Benton), a member of an underground society deep below the earth’s surface, Vic follows her down into the strangely surreal depths. A Boy and His Dog is a strange and singular doomsday fable for fans of adventurous and strange cinema.
7. Time of the Wolf (2003)
To anyone familiar with Austrian iconoclast Michael Haneke (Funny Games, Caché), his reputation as a cinematic dissident and agent provocateur whose films are challenging, uncompromising, and combative, pay heed: Time of the Wolf (Le Temps du Loup in its mother tongue) is a ferocious and unforgettable film. Starring the epochal Isabelle Huppert (who was just as genius in Haneke’s similarly sadistic The Piano Teacher) as Anne Laurent, wife and mother, fleeing with her family into the country, seeking asylum and safety after an unspecified global exigency.
Artful and heartbreaking, Time of the Wolf overflows with strong performances, arrant imagery, and sneering contempt. At times chilling and maddeningly misanthropic — society degenerates into savages swiftly, and shocking scenes of violence and savagery will not be easy to shake off — Haneke seems to channel George Romero in his own way, making what is, effectively, a hyper-realistic zombie film devoid of any fast-fleeing zombies. The often mist-enshrouded and pitch-black anarchistic plague is provocative and honest-to-god authentic. It feels real and Haneke gives the viewer enough puzzle pieces to assemble an enduring and lasting lesson: let’s love one another right now, before it’s too late.
6. Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1992)
Egomaniacal creator James Cameron’s big-budget Arnold epic Terminator 2 is better than you remember it. Nostalgia lens aside (and c’mon, from the Guns N’ Roses riddled soundtrack to the once ubiquitous accent-heavy one-liners, T2 oozes unshakeable allure), Cameron, driven director and experienced storyteller that he is, delivers a strong, highly entertaining, and tactful cautionary tale.
In what is probably Schwarzenegger’s finest role (former California Governor aside), as an unemotional robot, void of tone, little more than a rippling mass of muscle, is classic as the future-sent killbot. This time around Arnie is sent naked and backwards through time to protect a young John Connor (Edward Furlong, remember him?), a lad fated to lead a future resistance against world-dominating machines. Linda Hamilton is inspired as Sarah Connor, John’s protective mother, who herself is more Terminator than child-bearer — in one of many philosophical conundrum-like queries scattered throughout the film. Robert Patrick is also unflinching as the baddie T-1000, whose liquid metal feats of severity and villainous venom, cutting-edge at the time, still pack a dangerous punch when viewed today.
T2 holds up remarkably well and is easily the best film in the Terminator franchise, with seminal apocalyptic visions recalling Hiroshima, and enough ideological stimulus to counter any mind-numbing action overtures your erudite pals might try to denounce it for — c’mon, guys, the big chase scenes and explosions in this film are all first-rate! It’s a landmark movie, brainier than most action pics, and it’s guaranteed to bring you back (re-read that last bit in a thick, barely discernible Austrian inflection for the full effect, please).
5. Road Warrior (1981)
No list of apocalyptic films would be worth a lick without having at least one of George Miller’s genre-defining mini-epics from his Mad Max franchise. And while we were very tempted to go with the fist-pumping excitation and polish of 2015’s Fury Road we opted for the similarly plotted and every bit as good (though it lacks Charlize Theron’s now iconic hero Imperator Furiosa) second entry, Road Warrior, which was originally titled Mad Max 2 for all you trivia hounds out there.
It can be hard to think back to a time before Mel Gibson wasn’t an extensively despised rage-aholic and outspoken anti-Semite, but back in the 1980’s especially, Gibson dominated the box-office and was everybody’s leading man du jour. It’s all the more awesome, and odd, I think, that Mad Mel’s rise to fame began in the subversive post-apocalyptic sub-genre as Mad Max, in the ironically titular role.
George Miller wrote and directed four Mad Max films, Road Warrior being the fan favourite, (at least until Fury Road detonated like an A-bomb — the “a” if for awesome, btw). Set in a time after nuclear annihilation where roving bands of BDSM-approving leather bondage-adorned biker gangs maraud and pillage the highways. Mad Max, a former member of the Main Force Patrol, now a tragic, nomadic figure, wanders the wastes, eventually befriending a community of settlers. With a wild comic book aesthetic, tight pacing, snappy editing, and colourful characters (mohawked meathead Wez and muscle-y, goalie mask-attired villain Humungus are both memorable and menacing) all add up to one violent, and rambunctiously visceral thrill ride.
4. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
In what’s defensibly Stanley Kubrick’s best film (or maybe a close second to 2001: A Space Odyssey), nuclear war is inevitable, comedic tragedy builds to ascension — thanks primarily to Peter Sellers in three uproarious roles — and the razor-sharp satire all but mushrooms (wait, it does that, too!). Loosely based on Peter George’s novel “Red Alert”, with a splendorous Terry Southern screenplay, this is one of the greatest black comedies ever filmed. Though not entirely a one man show for Sellers (but truthfully, his Holy Trinity turn as the titular Doctor, and as RAF Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, and last but never least, as befuddled American President Merkin Muffley, this is a Great Achievement), successful support from George C. Scott, Slim Pickens, and a savage Sterling Hayden blasts this film into metagalactic space.
This is the film that Roger Ebert said, “is the best political satire of the century; a film that pulled the rug out from under the Cold War by arguing that if a ‘nuclear deterrent’ destroys all life on Earth, it is hard to say exactly what it has deterred.” Let nothing deter you from seeing this film, your survival may stand unshakably upon it.
3. Melancholia (2011)
Whether one loves or hates Danish film firebrand Lars von Trier — whom I just so happen to adore, I mean, look no further than Breaking the Waves (1996) or Dancer in the Dark (2000) for evidence of his prowess — it’s still easy to admire the breathtaking beauty and visual splendour of this hypnagogic End of Times treatise. The opening reverie sequence, a slo-mo operatic montage that reaps maximum effect from Phantom HD Gold cameras depicting grand-scale destruction with savage grace and symmetry, is worth the price of admission alone.
Von Trier’s spring-loaded narrative, centring on newlyweds Michael (an excellent Alexander Skarsgård) and Justine (Kirsten Dunst in a chef-d’oeuvre performance) just as the world learns of the appearance of a rogue planet, the titular “Melancholia,” on a near-collision course with our own. Speculation, suspicions and fears reach a fever-pitch and the unfolding drama is a responsive rollercoaster. Despite its correct and cheerless title, Melancholia is not without black comedy (the very thought of Udo Kier as the wedding planner at a time of global annihilation is inspired, to say the least), and, as ever, von Trier’s social commentary is sublime.
For its formal elegance, luminous performances (Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg really deliver), and fearless science fiction imaginings, Melancholia should be thought of as a commendable and overcast treasure.
2. Children of Men (2006)
Forget about the oversold and emotionally manipulative genre exercise of Alfonso Cuarón’s 2013 blockbuster Gravity, his 2006 dystopian drama Children of Men is the genuine article. Adapted winningly from P.D. James’ 1992 novel, this is a brutal, bleak, technically dizzying marvel of misgiving and mental stress. Clive Owen leads a champion cast (which also includes Julianne Moore, Michael Caine, and Chiwetel Ejiofor) through the dying days of humanity in the year 2027. With the human race rendered infertile and with society crumbling, a derisive civil servant, Theo Faron (Owen) must escort a pregnant refugee (Clare-Hope Ashitey, admirable) through a chaotic and crumbling United Kingdom.
While the human drama is profound and believably confused, the award-winning cinematography (the always awesome Emmanuel Lubezki outdoes himself scene after scene) inundates and engulfs the viewer. A number of innovative and ingeniously choreographed single-shot action sequences catapults Children of Men into the stratosphere, cinching it’s status as a sci-fi staple and an exemplar of visual storytelling.
- La Jetée (1962)
The late great Chris Marker (A Grin Without a Cat, Sans Soleil) made his most emotionally resonant, artistically uncompromising — it’s told almost entirely in stunning still photos — and deeply discerning pièce de résistance with this 1962 time-travel obsessed post-nuclear war science-fiction mini-epic (it’s a 28 minute potboiler).
Set after the Third World War has decimated much of the planet, a man (Davos Hanich), a prisoner in a shell-shocked society on the brink of extinction, is subject to time travel experiments in the hopes of altering their doomed timeline. The mental anguish of time travel, memory obsession, and childhood trauma are many themes the film boldly and sublimely dissects, making for a harrowing and heartfelt viewing experience. More than just stirring science fiction, La Jetée is a high-water mark for metaphysical study, as well as being hugely repercussive on the genre (12 Monkeys was a direct remake and films as diverse as The Time Traveller’s Wife and Back to the Future owe Marker a great due). Pauline Kael called La Jetée “very possibly the greatest science-fiction movie yet made” while noted film historian and author David Thomson went one further saying that La Jetée “[could be] the one essential movie that’s ever been made.” What is certain when it comes to Marker’s masterpiece is its enduring imagination and its high-minded, monumental heart.
