Some say the world will end in marshmallow men, some say gremlins, but from what we have tasted of monster films, it would be a lot cooler if it were graboids. There is no shortage of visions of the end of the world in cinema. Most of the time, whether aliens are attacking, an asteroid is on a path for Earth or the moon is falling out of orbit, everything works out in the end, Bruce Willis saves the day, and they live happily ever after. But there is a breed of apocalyptic movies without a John McClane. The world is ending or has ended, and there will be no reset. Civilization will not be dusting itself off and making a comeback. In these movies, Earth does not get shot in the shoulder and wake up in the hospital with a bandage and on the way to a full recovery. The writers of these movies aimed for the head.
We all know the Earth will not last forever. If we do not blow ourselves up, the sun will eventually do it for us. Humanity is a unique species on Earth, other than the aliens apparently hiding under the ocean, who are aware of the mortality of their species.
All of our religions tell us the destroyer will come. The movies on this list imagine seven ways for our civilization to die. Nuclear apocalypse happens in three, twice it is zombies, twice it is aliens, once it is a polar meltdown, once a cosmic impact, once it is vampires, once it is dragons, and the most meta of all, in one version of the apocalypse, it is a movie that destroys humanity.
The Road Warrior (1981)
The Road Warrior, the sequel to Mad Max, changed our vision of the world after this world ends. Its mad wasteland has defined post-apocalyptic worlds for decades since in the serious and the slimy: The Last of Us, The Walking Dead; Hell Comes to Frogtown.
Civilization has collapsed, oil and gas are in short supply, and the survivors of the old world are scavenging and murdering for the last drop of it to keep from losing their mastery over the soil of the Earth on four wheels.
And the worst is yet to come between the second and third films in the Mad Max series, when the remnants of the world’s militaries, still hiding in their bunkers somewhere during The Road Warrior, launch their nuclear missiles and burn what is left of the world to the ground and poison the waters.
The Book of Eli (2010)
Like the desert wasteland of The Road Warrior, the world in The Book of Eli is the product of a nuclear war. Eli, played by Denzel Washington, is the Western archetypal man from nowhere. He is in possession of a Bible that he is transporting to a library on the West coast. The Book of Eli turns expectations of conflict in the post apocalypse upside down. Books are as rare as green grass, and in them is knowledge to rebuild the world.
In the book that Eli carries, there is something to bring peace to the soul, understanding of the nature of the universe, but it also contains the power to control – to make uncivilized men into obedient servants. Gary Oldman plays the villain, Carnegie, who wants the book Eli carries, but when Carnegie finally gets the book, he makes a shocking discovery that alters the entire movie.
Planet of the Apes (1968)
Charlton Heston stars in the most surreal post-apocalypse in all apocalyptic movies. He plays George Taylor, an astronaut whose spaceship has undergone time-dilation during its journey, and he and his crew return to Earth over 2000 years in the future, following a nuclear war. Instead of facing raiders in dune buggies, they face humanoid apes that walk on two legs, carry rifles, and ride horses.
Taylor is the only one of the crew who survives their encounter with the apes. The story of Planet of the Apes becomes an inverse of the civil rights movement of the 1960s for Taylor. He is stripped of his clothes, caged, sprayed with a fire hose, and receives an injury to the throat that renders him voiceless and unable to speak against his treatment.
10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)
Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays Michelle, a woman who is in a car accident and wakes up in a concrete bunker with two men. The bunker belongs to one of the most disturbing villains in all of these apocalypses, Howard, played by John Goodman. The other man, Emmet, is played by John Gallagher Jr. Aliens have invaded and Howard claims the air is toxic outside and that they must all three remain in the bunker.
Michelle is convinced of the story about the air safety, but she is suspicious that Howard was the cause of her wreck and took her captive before this invasion occurred. Michelle and Emmet plot to escape, but when Howard discovers their intentions, their fears of his nature are confirmed.
A Quiet Place (2018)
In this alien apocalypse, meteorites crash to Earth, and from them come ravenous monsters that are blind and use sound to locate prey. The beasts are covered in strong exoskeletons that are difficult to pierce. According to John Krasinski, who directed, starred in, and helped write A Quiet Place, the creatures hitchhiked through deep space, frozen in the ice of a comet or burrowed into the rock of an asteroid from their exploded home world.
The aliens are covered in strong exoskeletons that are difficult to pierce, and they are too fast and powerful for humanity to fight them. A year after the arrival of the beasts, only those who have adapted to a silent life have survived.
The Road (2009)
The cause of the apocalypse in The Road is never explicitly shown, but the lack of concern for radiation that would be associated with nuclear war is not present, which leaves one option: cosmic impact. Viggo Mortensen plays a father trying to keep his son alive as they travel the road in search of food and someplace where civilization has recovered. The world has fallen into a nuclear winter following the Earth’s collision with a large asteroid or comet.
Years after the event, the planet has not healed, the sky is constantly overcast, and the plants are dead. The father and son never find the civilization they are searching for. The film ends with the only hope being that eventually the winter will end and life will return to Earth.
Night of the Comet (1984)
Most of the world’s population has been disintegrated. The sky is stained red. Half the survivors have been turned into zombies, and women inherit the Earth; armed with fully-auto submachine guns. In the least serious but still totally doomed apocalypse on the list, a comet powders Earth with cosmic dust as it passes near the planet, and everyone who is outside during the flyby is vaporized.
Those who are sealed inside during the event without external ventilation are unharmed, but those who were beneath cover but still exposed to the air are turned to zombies. Night of the Comet is the perfect mix of zombie suspense and 1980s comedy.
Day of the Dead (1985)
Day of the Dead is the third film in the Night of the Living Dead franchise, released five years before the remake of the 1968 movie. A group of soldiers and doctors are hiding in Florida in a bunker following the onset of the zombie apocalypse seen in the first two entries. Of all three locations in the first three movies, this is the most secure shelter against the walking dead, but as always happens in the Dead movies, the zombie hoard finds a way in like a virus. The third Dead movie represents the fall of the last organs of the government.
The Omega Man (1971)
Charlton Heston is back for another apocalypse. Heston plays Neville, the last man on Earth. The world belongs to him. He rules the city by day, speeding through empty streets in a red convertible and taking whatever he wants for his lavishly decorated apartment, but at night, he retreats to his home to hide from the vampires. A virus has turned most of humanity into living vampires. They are sensitive to light and only come out at night.
Their skin, hair, and irises have turned pale. When Neville meets a woman who has escaped the infection, he becomes hopeful that they can escape the city together, but Neville’s need for other people leaves him vulnerable. The woman he meets succumbs to the infection, turns and betrays him.
Reign of Fire (2002)
Dragons, sleeping underground, are awakened by miners. The dragons multiply rapidly and their numbers rise into the millions. In a couple of decades, humanity is reduced to ashes. Christian Bale plays Quinn Abercromby, a man holding together a small community living in a castle in England, digging tunnels beneath it for shelter from the dragons like mice in a burrow and desperately trying to grow crops to stay alive.
The dragons have run out of food and have begun eating each other, but they still haunt the survivors. A team of American soldiers arrive at their subterranean refuge, led by Denton Van Zan, played by Matthew McConaughey. The Americans are dragon slayers, and they are hunting the alpha male.
Waterworld (1995)
In the distant future, by causes unknown (polar shift, solar changes, continental shift), the polar ice completely melts and floods the Earth. Waterworld is an ambitious, unique vision of a post-apocalyptic world that tries to be visually different from The Road Warrior but still is built around an isolated, hardened man who is making his way in the post-civilized world as an island unto himself.
Instead of a desert, there is an infinite ocean, and dirt, dredged from the ocean floor, is highly valued for planting fruits and vegetables. Kevin Costner plays a mutant with webbed toes and gills behind his ears, drawn into a quest to find a mythological landmass mapped on a girl’s back.
In the Mouth of Madness (1994)
In the Mouth of Madness stars Sam Neil as John Trent, an insurance fraud investigator hired by a book publisher to find their star author, Sutter Cane, who has gone missing. When Trent locates the author in a small town called Hobbs End, he discovers the author’s last book will release interdimensional monsters on Earth. Trent is ordered to return the finished book to Cane’s publisher.
Trent tries to destroy the book, but cannot escape the destiny that Cane has written for him. The book is published, and a movie adaptation is released. In the end, after the world has fallen into madness, Trent enters an empty theater, watches the movie and discovers it is the movie you just watched.
