These movies cover every stage of the apocalypse, from the decline to the end itself, and beyond! The film follows a man and his son as they steadily make their way to the sea. It can be a tough watch, but the book is even more brutal, especially considering the scene that was too extreme for the final cut. And the director of 28 Days Later, Danny Boyle, doesn’t even consider it a zombie movie! There’s a lot of movies with “living dead” in the title, but when I say the Living Dead franchise, I’m specifically talking about George Romero’s movies: -Night of the Living Dead (1968)-Dawn of the Dead (1978)-Day of the Dead (1985)-Land of the Dead (2005)-Diary of the Dead (2007)-Survival of the Dead (2009) The rest of them are also great, and the most recent trilogy has been one of the best reboots of an old franchise ever. Throughout the franchise, humanity gets further and further away from sanity. But luckily, so do the set pieces. Shaun of the Dead takes place right at the start of a zombie outbreak, and it’s still one of the funniest and most creative horror movies ever. It’s bleak, depressing, and involves cannibalism — in other words, it’s a great apocalypse movie. In WALL-E, we abandon the Earth when we can’t be bothered to fix it. In The Hunger Games, they distract themselves with entertainment that comes at the cost of others suffering. It was directed by a man who specializes in end-of-the-world movies: Roland Emmerich. Emmerich also directed 2012, Independence Day, and Moonfall. A revolutionary movie that had people talking about everything from CGI to philosophy, The Matrix makes the end of the world feel like just the beginning. Things start out pretty grim, but Interstellar focuses on the idea that the childlike passion humans are capable of is what will save the world. As the main character says: “We used to look up at the sky and wonder about our place in the stars. Now, we just look down, and worry about our place in the dirt.” The book it was based on, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, has a lot to do with real versus fake animals (since most of the real ones were killed by the nukes). The movie isn’t as concerned with the animal subplot, so talk about nukes would’ve just been distracting. But still, it’s canon that the world of Blade Runner is set in a post-nuclear-war world. Both the original and the 2017 sequel are as stunning to look at as they are deeply moving stories about what is real and what is important to us, and whether they are always the same things. The main cast members play versions of themselves as they try to survive. It’s easily one of the best Jonah Hill performances ever, and Channing Tatum has a cameo that is surprising to say the least.
