The 31 Best Movies About the End of the World

Sure, the nightly news might already feel like an end-of-the-world movie. But if it is, it’s a B-movie. You can do better. There aren’t too many better genres to binge away the weekend than apocalypse cinema, so we've got you covered.

What makes an apocalypse movie ... apocalyptic? Does the world have to literally end or can it just be, ya know, threatened? And if it’s the latter, doesn’t that make, like, every Marvel movie an apocalypse movie? These are harder questions than you might think.

For the point of this list, we’re going to assume both—that is: movies after the end of the world and movies in which the world is either actively ending or has a probable threat against its existence. (Do Marvel movies every really put us in doubt about the world’s salvation? No.)

But we’re also cutting out films that better represent other genres. So “dystopia” fiction—though sometimes set after an apocalypse event—might not be as concerned with the end of the world as it is with other themes.

Therefore, films like Sunshine, Children of Men, 12 Monkeys, Akira, and Snowpiercer we’ve classified as science-fiction (and put them into their own ranking). We felt those films’ themes and motifs were more clear expressions of that other genre. So there.

Now let’s get down to the real end-of-the-world centric end of the world movies. Here are the 31 best apocalypse films ever.