End-of-the-world dramas make for ideal fictional settings, and filmmakers have been mining such territory for decades. While some post-apocalyptic films are funny (think The Fifth Element), every once in a while a film comes along that's unsettling, eerie, and downright troubling.
Whether it's the too-close-to-home threat of nuclear armageddon in The Day After to the ultra-depressing world of The Road, what happens after civilization dies can be a fertile storytelling ground but it can also be so heavy that even the hardiest of movie fans have to steel themselves for repeat viewings.
The Road Warrior (1981)
Before quotable Mad Max film franchise, it was easily the most visceral film of the entire series.
Sure, it had its share of marauders in bondage gear, but the characters whom Max decides to help are desperate people, clinging to the barest threads of hope. While successful in his efforts, the titular hero ends the film exactly where he began it: alone, wandering the wastelands of a future that holds little hope and all but certain death.
The Day After (1983)
Released at the height of the Cold War, The Day After traumatized a generation of kids who watched it air on ABC and wondered when, exactly, the impending nuclear holocaust would occur. What it would look like, however, was never in question thanks to The Day After, a horrific made-for-TV movie in which the fortunate perished in city-destroying fireballs, and the unlucky died slowly of cancer due to exposure to radiation.
Network television has long been a place where fictional stories receive happy endings, but this particular movie offered nothing but dread. From the ruins of the Kansas countryside to the final scenes in which a survivor tries to the outside world only to receive no response, it was one of the most depressing post-apocalyptic films of the decade.
12 Monkeys (1995)
A quarter-century before COVID-19, the deadly virus at the heart of Terry Gilliam's brilliant and mind-bending sci-fi take has killed 5 billion people. Bruce Willis plays a time traveler sent back to stop its release, and while most of the film is spent in the present day, the glimpses of his future are truly disturbing.
Humanity lives underground, packed in sardine-like bunks. Those who venture topside find a barren world that's been surrendered back to nature. Words don't do the forlorn and desolate wasteland of 12 Monkeys justice, but it was enough to inspire a 12 Monkeys TV series and a mention as worthy post-apocalyptic fare.
The Matrix (1999)
While much of the film was spent inside The Matrix itself, the scenes set in the real world, where red-pilled denizens of the artificial construct spent their days on the run from killer robots, are a doozy. Waking up in a vat of goo, wires running out of various artificial ports throughout the body, they were then given the bad news: The machines were using them as batteries.
From the gruel served aboard the Nebuchadnezzar to the standard post-apocalyptic frayed-and-bleached outfits to the ever-present fear of discovery by the mechanical servants of The Matrix, Neo and his compatriots have it rough. That they manage to survive for the sequels doesn't mean the world in which they live is easy; it simply means that as fictional heroes, they rise above circumstances that would make mere mortals want to give up.
28 Days Later (2002)
When Cillian Murphy's Jim awakens from a coma, it first appears as if the rest of humanity has vanished. Staggering through a ravaged London, his cries of "hello?" echoing off of buildings, the mood is one of lonely unease, but that changes quickly.
Rarely has a 28 Days Later, because those infected by the Rage Virus aren't the slow, shambling creatures of undead lore. They're fast, they're practically unstoppable, and they make the film's post-apocalyptic landscape a place that ranks near the top of end-of-the-world scenarios viewers hope they don't survive.
I Am Legend (2007)
Fans of the Richard Matheson novella upon which I Am Legend is based were dismayed at how much was changed from the source text, but the filmmakers managed to cobble together something that's equally gritty. Alone (save for his canine companion) in a New York City populated by vampire-like creatures, Will Smith's Robert Neville is a man on the edge.
The scene in which a mannequin he's positioned to serve as a token of familiarity is moved by his adversaries is visceral in the way it pulls at the threads of Neville's sanity. A short time later, when he's forced to euthanize his only friend, the sheer weight of such a bleak existence makes for a heavy cinematic experience.
The Road (2009)
Writer Cormac McCarthy never specified what cataclysmic event set the stage for his 2006 novel, but director John Hillcoat got several of The Road's elements right, even if it wasn't a completely faithful adaptation. Regardless, few films appropriately capture the horror of a desolate landscape where fire, food, and the avoidance of cannibals more than this one.
The cinematography is awash in browns and grays, the world of the film bleached off any color that might be life-affirming. The actors, including lead Viggo Mortensen, are made up to reflect the lack of hygiene and dental care. And the brutality of a society where people are a food source is a terrifying depiction of survival that makes The Road one of the darkest post-apocalyptic offerings around.
Terminator Salvation (2009)
The previous films in the franchise gave movie-goers a glimpse of just how stark the future under Skynet rule might be, but it was McG as the director of Terminator Salvation who fully realized it. From the moment Sam Worthington's Marcus Wright wanders into what's left of Los Angeles, McG takes the opportunity to build a bleak vision of what's left of the world.
It's a place of rubble, ruin, and robots that open fire without a second thought, where the few remaining humans are herded like cattle and used for experimentation. John Connor and the Resistance aren't fighting to restore anything; they're simply trying to survive, which makes Terminator Salvation a brutal future indeed.
Snowpiercer (2013)
The socio-political undertones of classism may be a little on the nose, but the conditions in the back of the Snowpiercer train carrying the last of humanity through a frozen wasteland are compelling in a way that's horrifying to behold but mesmerizing at the same time.
Case in point: The punishment meted out in which of the lower caste are forced to watch one of their own expose his gel-smeared arm to the outside elements, after which it's shattered by a mallet. It's a scene that borders on torture porn, but it hammers home the point that life aboard Snowpiercer is not for the faint of heart.
Bird Box (2018)
Susanne Bier's film, based on the novel Bird Box by Josh Malerman, is a masterful exercise in the power of imagination. Creatures appear that are so horrible to behold, they drive viewers to take their own lives but they're never actually shown on screen.
What we get instead is the sickening dread as the film's heroine, Malorie, works to avert her eyes while those around her sacrifice themselves for the survival of her and her children. In a world where survivors are unable to see, and those who survive after they do are murderously insane, to travel to rumored safety is to court death, and arrival guarantees precious little.
