How will the world end? Human beings are fascinated with watching films about our annihilation regularly. Movies about the Apocalypse are considered some of the cinema's most excellent entertainment. While there are more thoughtful versions of how the human race will meet its demise en masse, generally, the biggest hits and most remembered films are the ones where the Earth dies in flames, and people scurry around looking for safety.
Is this some morbid fascination with death, or is it something else? It might be a way for humans to reckon with their mortality by watching a version of the story where no one makes it. Okay, if just a few people make it, we all imagine ourselves among the survivors. Usually, these are serious dramas, sometimes warning us about a real danger, like climate change, an accident, the work of God, alien life from outer space, fungus, a rogue planet, or sometimes just zombies. We love zombies.
1. This Is the End
During a party filled with some of Hollywood's most recognizable comedians, suddenly, the Apocalypse begins as people fly into the sky as part of the Rapture. This film is one of the rarest types of Apocalyptic cinema, a comedy. This Is The End is the brainchild of two Canadian comedians, Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg, that stars James Franco, Jonah Hill, Rogan, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson, Michael Cera, and Emma Watson. The film has the Earth cracking open and literal demons and cannibals roaming the land. You'll notice that, amusingly, it took almost no time for people to turn cannibal.
In the film, it's as if you were watching the worst versions of what you imagine insensitive celebrities behave as they inadvertently destroy themselves with their bad behavior. But the film has a strangely moral lesson, even though at least one pot-smoking Canadian made it. It's a smaller-scale Apocalypse, but you learn the value of friendship, unselfishness, and staying away from cannibals and self-absorbed people. It also includes demonic possession and an appearance from Satan. But don't worry. There's Heaven too.
2. Threads
Threads was a British and Australian coproduction and a TV movie, but don't let the fact it is a TV movie make you think that it isn't a heart-rending gut punch because it is. Directed by Mick Jackson on a $400,000 budget, this portrait of two families in Sheffield, England, during and in the aftermath of a nuclear war is amazingly compelling. As one person said, “This film ruined my day.”
This film is the warning that the world needs and is utterly fascinating. Threads came out around the same time as two other nuclear war films, The Day After and Testament, but neither of those films has the depth of detail in the lead-up to the nuclear exchange, the individual deaths, and the consequences of the attack on everyday people. They certainly don't end ten years into a future England sunken into the darkness of a Medieval-like state with such a hopeless final frame. Terrifying and highly recommended whenever someone might think that using a nuclear warhead is a good idea.
3. The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
The Day After Tomorrow (2004), directed by Roland Emmerich, is popcorn entertainment that also warns about the dangers of climate change. The movie is based on the book The Coming Global Superstorm by Art Bell and Whitley Streiber, which projects what could happen if global warming escalates to a point where it causes sudden and dramatic climate change. It's haunting, and Emmerich uses the familiar tactics of watching the destruction of monuments and symbols of our modern world to thrill and draws us into the ruin. It's thrilling and well done, with pointed barbs and emotional connections to doomed characters based on location.
Of Emmerich's disaster films, this is the most heartfelt. As the ice caps melt, this is an Apocalyptic scenario that seems all the more plausible and scary by the day. The Day After Tomorrow stars Dennis Quaid, Sela Ward, Jake Gyllenhall, and Emmy Rossum. A forum member said, “This movie granted me the glory of my first existential crisis at 12, maybe?
4. Invasion of The Body Snatchers (1956), (1978), Body Snatchers (1993)
A strange invasion of pods that imitate and steal the identities of individualistic Americans makes for one of the most haunting versions of Apocalypse. Technically, everything looks the same, but what makes people who they are is leeched out of them by weird plants from outer space. The plants are delivered to them by their former loved ones who want to be one. Creepy.
There are three separate versions of this story from the book by Jack Finney, directed by Don Siegel, Philip Kaufman, and Abel Ferrara, respectively. Ferrara's version is called Body Snatchers. All are amazing in their own ways. The distinctive qualities of each era are all over the screen, giving such character and pathos to the struggle of the characters to retain their humanity against an implacable enemy. The most significant danger is our need to sleep, a compelling plot device used again in the A Nightmare On Elm Street series. It's as if the Apocalypse came, and only some people noticed, only for a short time.
5. Train to Busan
The Zombie Apocalypse is one of cinema's favorite ways to end the world. Since George Romero revolutionized the zombie subgenre, countless films and TV shows have hit theatres, but rarely is one as emotionally poignant to a worldwide audience as Train To Busan. This zombie film is one that people openly admitted to loving and having strong emotional reactions to it. People told stories of crying in the movie theatre while watching it.
South Korean director Yeon Sang-ho scored a massive hit, revitalized the ailing Zombie Apocalypse genre, and led the way for different types of zombie storytelling, like more emotional stories, other kinds of zombies capable of even more vicious violence, and tales from around the world. Most of all, the deep reverence for the film's deeply passionate, sentimental, and moral storytelling was apparent after the film's release.
6. The Girl With All The Gifts
The Girl With All The Gifts is more of a sleeper film directed by Colm McCarthy. It goes from a quiet, more reflective character study of a highly intelligent young hungry, the film's name for a zombie infected by fungus, and unexpectedly bursts into scenes of Apocalyptic violence.
The film's most significant assets are the cast, led by young actress Sennia Nanua as Melanie and Gemma Arterton as Helen Justineau, a kind and understanding teacher who is also like the best mom a neglected child could want. Much like Train To Busan, the emotional connection between the characters and the different ideas within The Girl With All The Gifts make this a marvelous success. It also stars a stern Glenn Close and likable Paddy Considine. The cast is terrific as an ensemble. Even the bad guys are still human and relatable. Newer zombie films are borrowing from it even now.
7. 28 Days Later
While this Danny Boyle-directed film is concerned more with the post-Zombie Apocalypse events, it does have one of the all-time great opening scenes, which is frankly shocking in its violence, even now. 28 Days Later is another horror film that recognizes the importance of casting great actors to tell a compelling and emotional story rather than focusing on zombies attacking.
That said, the zombie violence in this film is horrifying and usually unexpected, with the fabulous work of the actors like Cillian Murphy, Brendon Gleeson, Christopher Eccleston, and Naomie Harris as the machete-wielding no-nonsense Selena making this Apocalypse machine run. Selena may have been the template for The Walking Dead's Michonne. 28 Days Later is another masterpiece that succeeds by putting emotion and human relationships first and then adding incredible frights to the mix to drive the audience mad with terror.
8. Night of the Living Dead Series
George Romero is the director of one of the most influential films of all time, Night Of The Living Dead. Without a doubt, it not only changed the game on nearly every level, but Romero's work changed how the archetype of the zombie as a monster was perceived forever. He destroyed the world quietly, relentlessly, yet in an utterly gruesome way. Night Of The Living Dead upped the stakes with violence, gore, brutality, and a central core of humanity simultaneously, and then he made Dawn Of The Dead.
Other films in the series focus on exploring the post-apocalyptic survival horror subgenre, but Night‘s sequel Dawn Of The Dead was in color and upped the ante in every way. Night's crisp black-and-white footage and Romero's production company's experience making documentaries made the film even more plausible, which is what made the film even more nightmarish. What makes Dawn Of The Dead equal in innovations to Night is that Romero added a grim sense of humor and absurdity and leaned into the subliminal American distrust of its institutions while skewering consumer culture. Whew, that's one heavy load for a film to carry, but Romero did it with ease.
The films set the template for the Zombie Apocalypse and spelled out the terms on which films made after their release would have to aspire. Great actors, realistic motivations and scenarios, and emotional resonance were all a big part of what made Romero's Living Dead films work so well and reach many people. The most successful Zombie Apocalypse and Apocalyptic films generally are wise when they work off of Romero's template and do their best to innovate as he did within the framework. George Romero has gone on record to say that his sympathy lies with the zombies, and creators in the genre would do well to remember his words.
9. The Sadness
The Sadness is one of the most disturbing Zombie Apocalypse films I have ever seen. I never thought anyone would make a film this intense with this subject matter. Make no mistake. The Sadness is a film that makes even people who are fans of horror cinema cringe and nope out. The concept is simple. A virus causing a mild pandemic suddenly mutates into a form that causes people to go on brutal and deranged sprees of disgusting acts of violence. These smiling maniacs visit every perversion you could imagine on any uninfected person they can grab.
Directed by Canadian transplant to Taiwan Rob Jabbaz, it looks great during the depths of the lockdown phase of the pandemic on a tight budget. Starring a magnificent cast, right down to the infected and gleeful extras, including Berent Zhu, Regina Lei, Ying Chen, and the dark God himself, Tzu-Chiang Wang, these characters evoke pity, anger, and, yes, sadness. The film is also a wildly funny satire, but at its core, it is a rumination on how love never dies. Based on such works on the Garth Ennis graphic novel series, The Crossed, Raccona Shelton's The Screwfly Solution, and, most strangely, Pee Wee's Big Adventure. I rate The Sadness as one of the best films of 2021. However, you have to know what you are getting into. It's distressing on multiple levels.
10. Zombieland
Just from a pure entertainment standpoint, Zombieland has part of this list. I could include such great Apocalypse films as The Mist or Dawn Of The Dead 2004. I would be remiss if I didn't include the movie I regularly quote in real life. Zombieland is notable because while it does have exciting actors turning in charismatic and touching performances, it's also laugh-out-loud funny. It repurposed the concept of The Rules as used in the Scream series. The movie had floating titles in scenes explicitly made to illustrate how the rules worked in the United States of Zombieland.
It may have originated the idea of dressing up like a zombie to ensure you don't get eaten when you go outside, and the Bill Murray storyline is a piece de resistance. But, similarly to Dawn of the Dead (2004), it has a spectacular opening sequence that is almost entertaining enough to be its mini-movie set to a scorching rock soundtrack. I must appreciate the work of director Ruben Fleischer, writers Rhett Reese, and Paul Wernick, and stars Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harralson, Emma Stone, and Abigail Breslin. I've watched Zombieland many times.
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