The 12 Best Post-Apocalyptic Movies We’ve Ever Seen

These are the 13 best post-apocalyptic movies we’ve ever seen. How accurate are they? We hope we never find out.

But First, What Makes a Movie a Post-Apocalyptic Movie?

A post-apocalyptic movie is any movie that takes place after the fall of civilization — due to a nuclear war, another event that wipes out much of humanity, or any other cataclysmic event.

There are different flavors of post-apocalyptic movies, from sci fi horror stories to silly comedies. Many of those totally rip even if they aren’t high art. Others, though, tend to be philosophical, perhaps even odes to the human spirit.

One way or another, these 12 post-apocalyptic movies resonate with us.

The Matrix (1999)

The premise of The Matrix feels realer every day: Robots have created a fantasy world to distract humans from the real world. (Our only quibble with that notion is that the robots are using humans as power sources, and... why? Wouldn't electricity work better?)

Be it the bullet-time special effects or the reinvention of Keanu Reeves, The Matrix was monumental. A lot of the action stuff still holds up, and there are fun moments to be found in the computer simulation of it all.

One of the coolest things about The Matrix, like a few other films on this list, is that it doesn't immediately reveal itself to be a post-apocalyptic movie. Neo's world looks a lot like our own... at first.

12 Monkeys (1995)

It’s impressive to turn an adaptation of an experimental French short film into a hit sci-fi movie, but Terry Gilliam did it. You might say, “Sure, but he had Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt!” Yes, but this was just at the beginning of Pitt’s prominence. This is one of the films that broke him through into the mainstream.

In 12 Monkeys, a widespread pandemic has wiped out most of human civilization. Humans have access to time travel, though, so they send a convict back in time. Crucially, they don't try to change the future — that’s not possible. They simply want to be able to mitigate the death going forward.

Sadly, then they send Willis’ prisoner back too early, and everything gets messed up.

A Quiet Place (2018)

A Quiet Place takes the unique frame of just focusing on a family, and notes that children are, well, the only hope for the future.

John Krasinski starred alongside his wife Emily Blunt, and also directed. This is the first full-on horror film on this list, but horror and the apocalypse go hand in hand.

Aliens have come to Earth with a taste for humans. However, their senses are poor, including being effectively blind, but have a tremendous sense of hearing. Survival means being quiet. Silent even. Sure, that makes it easy to ratchet up the tension, but you have to execute. A Quiet Place definitely does that.

Children of Men (2006)

What if the apocalyptic event was anodyne and slow moving? It’s not a shark biting you in half, but a boa constrictor slowly squeezing the life out of you. For two decades, no new children have been born. This has caused society to slowly unravel. The youngest humans have become celebrities. The world is ceasing to function, and falling into war.

Clive Owen plays a man who, you’ll never believe this, has grown cynical. Then, he finds out something remarkable. There is a pregnant woman.

Now, there is almost nothing he won’t do to save her and her unborn child. Directed by the acclaimed, Oscar-winning Alfonso Cuaron, Children of Men is high-quality filmmaking.

Night of the Comet (1984)

We figured a cult classic should be in the mix, and Night of the Comet is our choice. It’s the kind of movie that has Mary Woronov in a supporting role. If that sentence means anything to you, well, you’ve probably already seen Night of the Comet, or at the very least are running out to watch it. It’s kind of comedic in the way it winks at sci-fi disaster movies of yore.

A comet’s fly-by proves fatal, turning the vast majority of people into dust. Some are left dying more slowly, becoming almost crazed zombies. Thanks to the protection of solid steel, though, two Valley girl sisters survive, as does a truck driver.

Now they have to try and survive. What’s impressive is that Night of the Comet manages to wink without feeling wink-y, you know? Also, Catherine Mary Stewart is a delight as one of the leads.

WALL-E (2008)

A masterpiece of show-don't-tell filmmaking. WALL-E is also the gentlest movie on this list by a wide margin. WALL-E is a sweet movie about a couple of lonesome robots who just might be able to resurrect a long-trash planet Earth.

It starts simply, with no dialogue: Humans have abandoned Earth because it has been polluted to the point of being uninhabitable. WALL-E has been left behind to clean up all the garbage. Then another robot, EVE, arrives. Thus begins a robotic love story, animated majestically.

When we finally meet the humans, fairly late in the film, they're not entirely impressive. But WALL-E and EVE rescue them anyway.

The Omega Man (1971)

Richard Matheson’s novel I Am Legend has been turned into a movie three times, and parodied in a Simpsons episode as well. Vincent Price was in The Last Man on Earth in 1964, and Will Smith starred in a 2007 version called I Am Legend, but The Omega Man is the best of the bunch.

This is the first Charlton Heston movie on our list, and he was no stranger to post-apocalyptic movies. His character has spent years believing he is alone. Well, alone other than some violent mutated plague survivors.

But what if he's not the last man on Earth? What if there is more left for him than isolation and killing mutants?

Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (Tie) (1984)

Hear us out: We'll grant you that much of the action in the Terminator movies takes place before the apocalypse. But the films also give us glimpses of Skynet’s assault on humankind, and the charred world that results from said attack.

We would be remiss not to include at least one Terminator film, given how often people worry about the possibility of a Skynet-like entity wiping out life on our planet.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)

Two film icons joined forces to make A.I. a reality. Stanley Kubrick worked on adapting “Supertoys Last All Summer Long” into a film for years. He felt like he needed technology to advance enough to make it.

Eventually, Kubrick realized he had gotten too old to work on it any longer, and in 1995 handed the project over to Steven Spielberg. When Kubrick died in 1999, Spielberg finally was able to get the project rolling.

Haley Joel Osment plays an android programmed to love who is acquired to replace a dead child. Unaccepted, he finds himself on a journey alongside other androids. Eventually it takes us far, far into a future beyond the existence of humanity.

At the time, A.I. was accepted a little tepidly. Now, many consider it a sci-fi classic.

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Pretty much every zombie movie is a post-apocalyptic movie, and the modern conception of the zombie movie began with Night of the Living Dead, which depicts the first hours of the end of civilization as we know it.

George A. Romero took a budget a little over $100,000 and skills learned working on industrial films and made a horror movie in his hometown of Pittsburgh. While the movie doesn’t use the word “zombie,” it so clearly is the progenitor of the zombie genre.

At the time, people didn’t know what to make of Night of the Living Dead. Now, it’s considered a seminal horror movie. Of course, it helped that due to an error in submitting the copyright it ended up in the public domain. Hey, that helped make it a cult classic, and Romero a horror movie icon.

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Fury Road is perhaps the antithesis of Night of the Living Dead. The latter is low-budget and simple. The former is one of the most bananas movies ever made, in a good way?

George Miller got his start with Mad Max, about a world barely clinging to civilization. By the events of Fury Road, most remnants of our world are long gone, save for a few salvaged weapons and vehicles. The result is perhaps the most-thrilling action extravaganza…ever?

Sure, there is some silliness to Miller’s Mad Max world, with some truly dark dystopian elements undercut by names like “Doof Warrior.” There’s nothing silly about the action, though. Relying largely on practical effects, Fury Road has to be seen to be believed. The car chases, the action, it’s all so riveting. By the way, not only was Fury Road a hit, but it won six Oscars.

Planet of the Apes (1968)

Planet of the Apes was not the first movie to have a twist ending. It certainly was not the last. But almost none have nailed it like Planet of the Apes. The film's final shot reveals why is belongs on this list.

Until that moment, you think Charlton Heston’s astronaut, George Taylor, has traveled through time and space to a planet where apelike creatures have advanced to human levels of intellect.

Then, well, it turns our the truth is much worse.

Liked This List of the 12 Best Post-Apocalyptic Movies We've Ever Seen?

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Main image: Linda Harrison as Nova in a promotional image for Planet of the Apes. 20th Century Fox.