Total Recall: Post-Apocalyptic Movies
With Oblivion hitting theaters, we take a look at some memorable movies set after the end of the world as we know it.
In this weekend's Oblivion, only one man stands between the last remnants of the human race and utter extinction! Fortunately, that man is Tom Cruise, so everything is probably going to work out just fine in the end, but Joseph Kosinski's latest big-budget sci-fi outing got us thinking about other movies that imagine a dim future for humanity, and the next thing we knew, we had a list full of post-apocalyptic flicks. Given the size and scope of the genre, there was no way of covering them all, but after spinning a few dials on the Tomatometer, we feel like we came up with a pretty good cross-section of the cream of the crop, including entries tinged with horror, action, animation, and even some truly classic cinema. Climb down into your backyard bunker and dip into your emergency stores of food and water, because it's time to Total Recall like there's no tomorrow!
Children of Men
93%
Grappling with some heavy issues -- most notably, the idea that human hope is tied inexorably to our ability to reproduce -- while moving with Bourne-like speed and intensity, bounding from one white-knuckle set piece to another (and packing some truly incredible cinematography as it goes, courtesy of Emmanuel Luzbecki), Children of Men let viewers peer into a world in which civilization has been upended because human women have simply up and quit having babies. Director Alfonso Cuarón wasn't shy about loading his adaptation of the P.D. James novel with visual statements on man's cruelty to man and the folly of governing through fear, but he didn't linger on them; instead, he trusted his audience to absorb the story's subtext, and rewarded them with one of the most rip-roaring dystopian sci-fi films you're ever likely to see. It deserved the heaps of praise it received from critics like the St. George Spectrum's Bruce Bennett, who called it "an apocalyptic thrill ride that is as gritty as it is gripping, with a dark terror outgunned only by its daring humanity."
Dawn of the Dead
94%
We're only making room for one zombiepocalypse movie on this list, so we had to make it count: George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead, the classic sequel to Night of the Living Dead that took his 1968 original's undead-strewn landscape and expanded it to include not only bigger, nastier (and better-lit) zombie hordes, but also a bit of smart social commentary. Comparing zombies to American consumers is a gambit that has doomed a fair number of filmmakers to unsubtlety, but Romero pulled it off here with aplomb; as Rob Humanick put it for Projection Booth, "Romero's framing of social ills via his rotting, walking metaphors is ingenious but it's the more subtle, unspoken statements that register with the greatest force."
Day of the Triffids
78%
Most of the movies on our list deal with the aftermaths of man-made disasters, but 1963's Day of the Triffids -- adapted from the book by John Wyndham -- imagines a harrowing apocalypse of alien origin, starting with a meteor shower whose punishingly bright light manages to blind the majority of the human race. And that's when things start to get really bad, on account of the meteor-borne spores that start sprouting into carnivorous plant creatures, forcing the last few sighted folks to band together in a last-ditch effort to drive out our unwanted visitors. It's decidedly B-movie stuff, but it's also -- as the Chicago Reader's Dave Kehr put it -- "a sci-fi thriller that sticks in the mind, thanks to deft pacing and a vividly paranoid premise."
Delicatessen
88%
Darkly funny and visually distinctive, Delicatessen drops viewers into a post-apocalyptic France whose larger setting (including its timeframe and whatever caused society's downfall) is deliberately shrouded from view; in fact, unlike a lot of the movies in this category, it's really more of a character piece -- albeit one whose characters are driven to messy cannibalism due to catastrophic food shortages. While certainly not for the squeamish, Delicatessen is admirable for its inventive premise and barbed wit; as Keith Breese wrote for Filmcritic, "Sure, it's funny, it's gross, it's diabolically, unabashedly idiosyncratic, but it's also an epic ode to that most fundamental expression of human endeavor -- creativity."
La Jetee
92%
It clocks in at just under half an hour -- and consists mainly of still frames -- but 1962's La Jetée is still one of the greatest, and most influential films of its generation; in fact, this hard-to-shake meditation on time travel, nuclear war, and our attachment to memory formed the basis for Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys -- a modern post-apocalyptic classic in its own right. Starring Davos Hanich as a prisoner hurled across time "to call past and future to the rescue of the present," La Jetée uses its rich setup as a springboard to explore a number of thought-provoking topics during its abbreviated running time, concluding on a haunting final note that helped move Film Threat's Phil Hall to pronounce it "One of the greatest films ever made."
Janson Jinnistan
Great list. Love seeing "Delicatessan" on here. Just a few others: Blade Runner, A Boy and His Dog, The Omega Man, Things to Come, The Road, Book of Eli, Escape from New York.
Apr 17 - 02:40 PM
David Spencer
I wouldn't really consider Blade Runner as "Post-apocalyptic," it seems much more of a dystopian future. There hasn't been some world-altering event that could conceivably destroy everyone.
Apr 18 - 08:44 AM
Janson Jinnistan
Fair enough. Maybe it wasn't an "apocalyptic" event, but it's clear that something very bad has happened on the planet, causing the ceaseless rain and darkness, and forcing well-to-do people offworld (as we see in so many ads).
Apr 18 - 12:40 PM
Gabe DeLang
The book does a better job of explaining things. Basically, the governments pretty much forced everyone to immigrate to offworld colonies because Earth was pretty toxic (nearly all the animals died for one thing). The only people left on Earth were those who had some kind of medical issue that prevented them from being eligible for moving off world (Sebastian) or people who needed to stay on Earth because of their job.
Apr 20 - 05:42 PM
Ted Murphy
Matrix trilogy
Apr 18 - 12:13 PM
Janson Jinnistan
It's on the list.
Apr 18 - 12:41 PM