While researching post-apocalyptic movies, I couldn’t find a comprehensive list online of the major motion pictures on the theme.
Many lists included movies showing dystopian futures or an approaching apocalypse. I wanted a clean list. I wanted a list of movies that showed the aftermath of the apocalypse and people trying to survive.
Compiling such a list is subjective. For instance, my list includes “Terminator Salvation” (2009), but not the other movies from the “Terminator” series, which take place before the apocalypse. The same thing goes for the “Mad Max” and “Planet of the Apes” series. Also, while some movies on this list deal primarily with apocalyptic events, they do provide at least a glimpse of the world after such tragedies. Plus, I left off a number of crappy super low-budget movies.
For the movies I haven’t seen, I used plot synopses on IMDb and Wikipedia.
So, without further ado, here’s my list of major motion pictures that depict life on Earth after nuclear war, plagues, alien invasion, climate change or other devastation.
Updated Dec. 15, 2013.
1951 Five
1952 Captive Women (also known as “1000 Years From Now” and “3000 A.D.”)
1953 The War of the Worlds
1955 Day the World Ended
1956 World Without End
1959 On the Beach
1959 The World, the Flesh and the Devil
1960 Beyond the Time Barrier
1960 Last Woman on Earth
1960 The Time Machine
1961 The Day the Earth Caught Fire
1962 Panic in Year Zero!
1963 The Day of the Triffids
1964 The Earth Dies Screaming
1964 Last Man on Earth
1964 The Time Travelers
1966 The End of August at the Hotel Ozone (Czechoslovakia)
1968 Planet of the Apes
1969 The Seed of Man (Italy)
1970 Beneath the Planet of the Apes
1970 No Blade of Grass
1971 Glen and Randa
1971 Omega Man
1973 Battle for the Planet of the Apes
1973 Idaho Transfer
1974 Zardoz
1975 A Boy and His Dog
1975 The Noah
1975 The Ultimate Warrior
1977 Damnation Alley
1978 Dawn of the Dead
1978 Deathsport
1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers
1979 Quintet
1979 Ravagers
1980 Day of Resurrection (Japan)
1981 The Road Warrior
1982 The Aftermath
1982 She
1983 2019: After the Fall of New York
1983 The Day After
1983 Le Dernier Combat, aka The Last Battle (France)
1983 Stryker
1983 Testament
1984 Night of the Comet
1984 Warriors of the Wasteland, aka The New Barbarians
1985 City Limits
1985 Day of the Dead
1985 Def-Con 4
1985 Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
1985 The Quiet Earth
1985 Warrior of the Lost World
1986 Radioactive Dreams
1987 Cherry 2000
1987 Creepozoids
1987 Hell Comes to Frogtown
1987 Steel Dawn
1988 World Gone Wild
1988 She-Wolves of the Wasteland
1989 The Blood of Heroes
1989 Cyborg
1989 Slipstream
1990 Hardware
1990 Robot Jox
1991 Delicatessen (France)
1991 The Rapture
1993 Body Snatchers
1994 American Cyborg: Steel Warrior
1995 The Postman
1995 Tank Girl
1995 Twelve Monkeys
1995 Waterworld
1998 Six-String Samurai
1999 The Matrix
2000 Battlefield Earth
2001 Ever Since the World Ended
2001 Pulse (Japan)
2002 Reign of Fire
2002 The Time Machine
2003 The Matrix Reloaded
2003 The Matrix Revolutions
2003 Time of the Wolf (France)
2004 Dawn of the Dead
2004 The Day After Tomorrow
2004 Resident Evil: Apocalypse
2005 Land of the Dead
2005 War of the Worlds
2007 I Am Legend
2007 Resident Evil: Extinction
2008 Blindness
2008 City of Ember
2008 Day of the Dead
2008 The Happening
2008 Wall-E
2009 Carriers
2009 The Road
2009 Survival of the Dead
2009 Terminator Salvation
2009 Zombieland
2010 Book of Eli
2010 Daybreakers
2010 Resident Evil: Afterlife
2010 Skyline
2010 Stake Land
2010 Vanishing on 7th Street
2011 The Darkest Hour
2011 The Divide
2011 Hell (Germany)
2011 Priest
2012 The Battery
2012 The Day
2012 Resident Evil: Retribution
2013 The Colony
2013 Oblivion
2013 Rapture-Palooza
2013 This Is the End
2013 Warm Bodies
2013 World War Z
2013 Goodbye World
Let me know if you think I should make some additions or deletions.
Dec. 15, 2013, update:
I’ve probably doubled the number of movies on this list since I originally posted this article.
I found a lot of post-apocalyptic movies that I wasn’t familiar with by reviewing lists on IMDb. However, these user lists included many movies I wouldn’t classify as post-apocalyptic or were terrible low-budget movies that never received much distribution or recognition.
The IMDb lists I found most helpful were by Marco Mancosu of PostApocalypticA , Justin Ulmer and MixerBOS.
Those IMDb lists were criticized in their comments sections for including too many movies that were not post-apocalyptic in nature. They were muddied with sci-fi movies about dystopian futures and a lot of lousy made-for-TV or direct-to-video movies.
My list includes only theatrical movies that were significant enough to merit a Wikipedia entry and be reviewed on Rotten Tomatoes.
My definition of an apocalyptic event is one that causes mass deaths and affects the whole world.
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