The Earthโs (or another planetโs) society is falling or has already collapsed in apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, a subgenre of science fiction, science fantasy, dystopia, and horror.
1. What are Apocalyptic Movies?
Imagining how the world may appear after being pushed through the ringer is horrifying. The list of inconceivable calamities that could threaten civilization as we know it is endless; just a few examples include global warming, nuclear war, the Cold War, the Cuban missile crisis, and possibly even a general moral deterioration.
However, watching post-apocalyptic movies and horror films might become fairly addictive. Looking at imagined character drama ruins might not seem healthy at first, but it may be a good activity because it gives us a glimpse of what might be and gives us the confidence to stop ourselves from moving in those dire directions.
The apocalyptic movies gives a way to deal with world movie scenarios from the comfort of the couch, while the horror film allows viewers to confront death head-on.
Apocalyptic movies cross genre boundaries. This category includes melodramas, action thrillers, science fiction, and dark comedies. They are, therefore, endlessly creative in their attempts to foretell how mankind will die.
On the other hand, the television show Black Mirror isnโt solely a post-apocalyptic movie in the sense of genre. Still, it is excellent in its explorations of worlds. It has a hilarious story that either resembles our own or is just slightly beyond the limit of our addiction to technology. Fiction serves several purposes: to give us a glimpse of the consequences of our current deeds.
In this way, post-apocalyptic movies and apocalyptic sci-fi movies arenโt just grim images whose main appeal comes from shocking and upsetting the audience. These must-watch movies represent our fear and worry in and of themselves.
The top post-apocalyptic movies streaming are realistic, unabashedly pessimistic, and occasionally overburdened by the weight of ideology on human survivors and the entire human race.
Although the term โeye-openingโ should not be used lightly, especially in the context of art, a few items on this list may fit the bill.
Given the wide range of ways the human race has perished on the silver screen, a quick glossary may be necessary here.
Given how pervasive (and current) they have become in culture, it seems only fair that world movies get their rating. On the other hand, many outstanding movies have world-ending disasters but arenโt always described as post-apocalyptic.
Ultimately, apocalypse cinema is most effective when it can nail a certain tone and make an emotional impact.
These movies successfully convey a sense of impending doom and hopelessness, leaving us feeling deeply upset and troubled while simultaneously feeling strangely relieved to be back in this strange film and brilliant world where we are all still alive and full of potential, at least for the moment.
2. Setting the Standards
Before we begin, letโs quickly establish a few ground rules.
The degree to which the worldโs end scenario is incorporated into the plot will matter because these movies will be rated based on their overall quality as a contribution to the canon of post-apocalyptic cinema.
Additionally, we will score each movie based on how well the film tells a story, makes a movie, and creates a post-apocalyptic environment.
Itโs critical to distinguish between post-apocalyptic and dystopian movies because the two sub-genres are sometimes confused or lumped together.
A dystopian film depicts an undesired society that, despite being terrible, is still operating to some extent. There is scant evidence of what would be called a functional society in post-apocalyptic movies.
Many zombie films also serve as post-apocalyptic movies.
2.1) Apocalypse Movies
The top end-of-the-world films ever ranked.
Apocalypse movies and doomsday movies are included in this list of films about the end of the world.
With the spreading pandemic, the end of the world is imminent. You need to look to the countless great apocalypse films to improve your experience. Filmmakers and directorโs cut have explored every worst-case scenario, from nuclear Armageddon to invisible monsters that commit suicide to bloody cannibalism.
From 1916โs appropriately named The End of the World (which itself highlighted anxieties about the recent Halleyโs Comet), it only makes sense that cinema, the most sensory-stimulating artistic medium, would embrace the genre as a method to express modern fears and concerns.
The end of the world is more on everyoneโs mind than ever due to worldwide pandemics and the catastrophic impacts of climate change, so it only seems sense to list the top 10 movie apocalypses.
3. Best 10 Apocalypse Movies
Suggest the following two-hour apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic films because it can be enlightening to see how other peopleโs lives are portrayed in media.
1) Wall-e
Wall-E is the best option for an optimistic post-apocalyptic film. The 2008 Pixar classic imagines a time where mankind has completely abandoned planet Earth due to the accumulation of garbage, trash, and waste.
It may seem odd to choose an animated childrenโs movie as a great work of post-apocalyptic fiction, but it is one of the best films. While Pixar has never shied away from expressing tragedy and despair (the start of Up, the conclusion of Toy Story 3), they have never gone as far as they do here: greedy corporations and complacent idiots have turned the earth into a massive garbage dump haunted by robots who, sadly, seem more human than anyone else in the movie.
The film is the only animated film to get six Academy Award nominations with Beauty and the Beast. Wall-E was used as an example of how human life and society should be criticized for how we abuse the environment.
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.
2)ย Mad Max: Fury Road
Mad Max: Fury Road is a โcomfort watchโ during these tough times. It is set in a future where humanity has nuked itself to shit and a cruel ruler rules the planet. Fury Road, though, is a high-octane cathartic release, pure and simple.
The probably-mad George Miller, who directed the first three Mad Max movies as well as Happy Feet, simply drove a load of 18-wheelers and rally cars into the desert and set them on fire.
A one-armed warrior lady played by Charlize Theron topples a despotโs government. Tom Hardy is unreservedly tossed around the entire time. When you canโt actually go, watching Mad Max: Fury Road once raises your pulse rate to the same level as jumping a go-kart over a gorge.
Director: George Miller
Writers: George Miller, Brendan McCarthy, Nico Lathouris
Cast: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Hugh Keays-Whiteley
3) This Is the End
Seth Rogen and Evan Goldbergโs flawless horror-comedy This Is the End satirizes how the biggest personalities in Hollywood would respond to the literal end of the world.
As in real life, the response is โVery Poorly.โ Rogen, Jay Baruchel, Jonah Hill, James Franco, Danny McBride, and Craig Robinsonโall actors portraying themselvesโfind themselves cooped up in Francoโs Los Angeles mansion as the end of the world approaches and demons emerge from the earth.
This pandemic has taught us that celebs are not โjust like us,โ but at least This Is the End makes light of the situation rather hilariously.
Writer-Director: Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg
Cast: Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, Jonah Hill, James Franco, Danny McBride, and Craig Robinson
4. The Day after Tomorrow
The Day After Tomorrow by Roland Emmerich isnโt awful if you enjoy your post-apocalyptic films with a healthy dose of bombast.
Notably, Emmerichโs 2012 is not included on this list because it is a terrible movie. But even while The Day After Tomorrow occasionally veers into the corny and clumsy, it still succeeds. The $125 million movie is a cautionary tale about climate changeโs impacts.
The film follows an American paleo climatologist (Dennis Quaid), his coworkers, and his son as they attempt to alert the government of a coming disruption in the North Atlantic Ocean circulation. Government representatives refuse to note what the experts predicted would occur, and all welcome a new Ice Age.
Here, the visual effects are rather impressive. Emmerich does a great job of maintaining tension while illustrating the damage that a major weather event might have to New York City.
Director: Roland Emmerich
Writer: Roland Emmerich
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Dennis Quaid, Ian Holm, Emmy Rossum, and Sela Ward
5. World War Z
Despite the fact that zombie movies are becoming more and more popular, this one is among the best. World War Z, a 2013 zombie film directed by Marc Forster, is about a zombie invasion. The movie will excite and chill you because it is so scary.
The movie was described as the โmost exhilarating action spectacular in yearsโ by David Denby of The New Yorker. Another end-of-the-world film is this one.
Director: Marc Forster
Writers: Matthew Michael Carnahan (screenplay), Drew Goddard.
Cast: Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, and Daniella Kertesz
6. The Mitchells vs. The Machines
A 2D and 3D animated Netflix original film, The Mitchells vs. the Machines, is included. The movie provides a novel story about a day when excessively clever mobile phones decide to end civilization forever.
The Mitchells are a dysfunctional family in the movie, with a daughter named Katie who wants to be a filmmaker and a father named Rick who is down to earth and who has never been able to get along. The entire family is forced to save Earth from a robot revolt while traveling while trying to rekindle their relationship on Katieโs trip to college. Now, based on that absurd premise, it appears that two disparate films are in conflict with one another. The movieโs main theme is how overly dependent people have grown on technology in modern society, therefore this other thread ultimately saves and even elevates the otherwise mundane storyline of a family working through their disagreements.
Additionally, it tells a humorous family narrative (in which the mom is a first-grade teacher and her daughter). The family is humanityโs last remaining beacon of hope on Earth. This is a novel approach to technologically-based end-of-the-world movies.
Director: Michael Rianda
Writer: Chris Miller, Danny McBride, Phil Lord
Cast: Alex Hirsch, Abbi Jacobson, Michael Rianda
7. Dawn of the Dead
Many factors are working against this movie. They have quick zombies. Zack โIโm Grim And Hate Funโ Snyder is the filmโs director. Itโs an attempt to recreate a revered zombie classic by George Romero, the master of the genre. And yet, it succeeds despite all odds.
Ty Burrell gives one of the โsarcastic comic reliefโ performances in recent memory, and Mekhi Phifer and Inna Korobkina give a genuinely invested, touching, and menacing take on what can happen to a family experiencing the zombie apocalypse. It manages to have both a sense of humor and a sense of genuine emotional stakes.
Long live the Richard Cheese โhaving fun in the mallโ montage! It plays with the originalโs consumerist satire themes without exactly copying them. One of my favorite zombie kills comes from a lengthy, uninterrupted view of a totally fake head being impaled, and honey, does Snyder sell it?
Its action-horror moments are fierce and shockingly realistic. While making sure that his characters come first, James Gunnโs screenplay moves at an unusual pace, and Sarah Polley dominates her starring part with toughness and sensitivity.
Director: Zack Snyder
Writer: James Gunn
Cast: Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, Jake Weber, Mekhi Phifer
8. Take Shelter
Donโt rule out Jeff Nichols and Michael Shannon as the greatest actor-director combinations; the two have worked together on five movies over the years, none of which is more powerful than Take Shelter from 2011.
Shannon plays a husband and father plagued by visions of terrifying apocalyptic storms, wherein deadly cyclones surge forward from the sea and black rain falls from the sky like oil.
These visions make him a source of terror to his wife (Jessica Chastain), as well as a source of ridicule to the town, as he spends an increasing amount of time obsessively building storm shelters for an impending end the world.
Nichols has created one of the greatest films not only about the primeval fear of the end of everything but also about the numerous ways that all-pervasive terror comes home, from unsure mental health to the collapse of the farm.
9. Zombieland
Since a few years ago, the market has been overrun with grim, depressing tales of the zombie apocalypse. But Zombieland is a happy place. In the film, Jesse Eisenbergโs character, Columbus, tells us his principles for surviving the zombie apocalypse, including the value of exercise, wearing a seatbelt and packing little.
Then Columbus encounters Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), a more โfly by the seat of your pantsโ type of character who would much rather just enjoy killing zombies as creatively and savagely as possible. To put it mildly, itโs a strange and delightful dynamic.
Then, add sisters Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) and Wichita (Emma Stone), and you have a tremendously endearing unusual family. The issue about Zombieland is that itโs not really about the twists and turns of predicting the worldโs end.
The trio becomes a likable ensemble that you canโt get enough of in this fun adventure that continually embraces genre conventions. The sequel benefits greatly from the success Ruben Fleischer, and his crew found in that regard.
Even though that movie doesnโt achieve anything novel, it does show that spending time in Little Rock, Tallahassee, Columbus, and Tallahassee is worthwhile.
Director: Ruben Fleischer
Writers: Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Woody Harrelson, Abigail Breslin
10. 28 Days Later
28 Days Later, an epic pursuit movie set in a post-apocalyptic London, has always made me feel nervous since it looks and feels so real. With a story by Alex Garland (Ex Machina), one of our best directors, Danny Boyle, excels in this uncommon genre project.
Itโs not a zombie movie, but itโs about a virus called Rage that transforms those who contract it into zombie-like creatures that donโt act like zombies typically do in films. They move, and they move quickly. Jim, played by Cillian Murphy, awakens from a coma to discover London abandoned.
Christopher Eccleston, who starred in Boyleโs Shallow Grave, is brilliant as Major West, the character who makes the decisions in the final act. Murphy perfectly captures Jimโs terror and his frantic aggression.
Anthony Dod Mantleโs cinematography has a frenetic intensity, John Murphyโs score is brilliantly powerful, and the use of Godspeed You Black Emperorโ East !โs Hastingsโ is utterly terrifying.
Garlandโs writing, influenced by zombie movies from the 1970s, the Resident Evil video game franchise, and vintage British science fiction, never lets up. Its relentless pacing lays the way for a genuine game-changer that will leave you terrified.
Director: Danny Boyle
Writer:ย Alex Garland
Cast:ย Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Brendan Gleeson, Megan Burns, Christopher Eccleston
You might notice that you ponder the worldโs end more frequently than usual in these uncertain times.
Thatโs not to say the world will end, but a pandemic would swiftly alter your perspective.
And while some people might discover that the kinds of movies they want to see right now are dramas or action flicks and zombie virusesโsomething to take their minds off every dayโothers might want to go the other way. They simply immerse themselves in films that depict the world we are currently living in or one we are moving toward. A lesson about preserving the future is frequently taught in apocalyptic movies, and society needs to heed this lesson more than ever. Since the beginning of civilization, the post-apocalyptic myth has played a significant role in cultural consciousness.
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Last Updated on by Sathi
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