20 of the best post-apocalyptic movies

We're starting with some levity in the post-apocalypse. When a pale schlub wakes up and groggily strolls to the store, he doesn't realize the zombie apocalypse unfolding around him. Hysterically, ironically, and mornonically, this movie about losers who are so out-of-the-loop they might as well be zombies finds notes of humor amidst the bone-crunching horror.

A road with no end is hardly worth taking when every stop is rife with cannibals, creatures, and interminable grey, but the father-son at the center of this movie have no choice but to move forward. When the planet has become a shopping cart with no food inside — just a steel cage with nothing savory to give it a purpose — the movie becomes a bleak but intriguing stroll down suffering lane. 

They couldn't just retitle this movie Two Days From Now? The profound title might make you think this will be some intellectual treatise on the end of the planet, but it's really just a dumb popcorn flick with some fun action. Explosions, tidal waves, earthquakes, and bad acting ensue in The Day After Tomorrow.

This might be the worst ad for Plan B ever made. When women are no longer able to give birth, the people begin to panic, knowing there is no future worth living for. A bleak yet profoundly poetic spectacle with incredible cinematography and production design, the movie birthed an entire generation of post-apocalyptic movies. 

Get out your thinking caps, it's an Andrei Tarkovsky film. The director, perhaps better than anyone, is able to bury you not only into the layers of his atmosphere on screen but the inner depths of the human mind. In this lyrical, dazzlingly shot, and slow-moving film about a group who enter a zone that may or may not give you powers, the action comes from the dialogue, and the dialogue comes from his troubled soul.

Remember when Disney made original movies? It seems like decades ago, probably because it was, but there was an era when Pixar was churning out some of the most original animated movies ever made. In this post-apocalyptic comedy, a robot picks up trash on our planet while everyone else stares at phones in space. It's funny, horrific, heartwarming, and in a tip of the Chaplin hat, it's a bouquet of flowers in the mounting pile of trash that is Disney's recent ouvre.

What if zombies didn't just meander but could sprint? That was the genius concept of Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later — not only do you gotta worry about scavenging for food, but you gotta look for running shoes as well. 

There's either aliens outside or there aren't: That's the premise of this film about a mother-daughter duo who hide in a creepy old man's bunker. It's terrifyingly tense for a movie that pretty much takes place in a single location.

Everyone imagines the post-apocalypse differently. Maybe there are zombies. Maybe there's a plague. Maybe there's a monster. Or, for George Miller, maybe there's a car chase in the desert with flying motorcycles, exploding gas tanks, sexy female models, creepy face-painted activists, almost no water but an endless well of bullets, flame throwers, and carnage. Mad Max: Fury Road turns the post-apocalypse into an opera of glorious carnage.

The post-apocalypse is either taking place in real life or on a computer in The Matrix, but either way, this movie is an ethereal trip into a space of bullet-bending, mind-bending action that makes you question reality. The post-apocalyptic world in The Matrix is actually quite enjoyable to watch.

A short film that lingers in your mind decades after you've seen it, La Jetée is a movie comprised almost entirely of stills that still manages to dazzle. With its creepy imagery, a story about the post-apocalypse and people studying each other's brains, the power of memory and imagery, La Jatee is a movie you can never forget.

An allegory for climate change that's actually fun to watch, Princess Mononoke sees the forest being chopped down by a city, and the wolves attempt to save it. Visually gorgeous and emotionally profound, the film is further proof that Hayao Miyazaki is animation's greatest director.

The new Planet of the Apes are good, but they just can't top the mindblowing ending of the original Planet of the Apes. The Planet of the Apes post-apocalyptic run by apes is a monument of post-apocalyptic films.

It occasionally sounds like a Lincoln commercial with all the laughable whispering about the planet and what life is all about, but that doesn't stop Interstellar from being one of the best science-fiction movies this century. Directed by Christopher Nolan, this story of a dust bowl that wipes out food, the search for life in space, and more importantly, the connection between a father and daughter contains a universe of emotions in a single film.

The Terminator would be back in future movies, but none of them can match Terminator 2. A near-perfect mix of action, emotion, paranoia, and post-apocalyptic atmosphere, Terminator 2 is a near-perfect movie.

Ponyo may be the cutest post-apocalyptic movie ever made. When a fish washes up on shore and becomes human, her wizard parents try to save her, which causes mass flooding across this small town. Lyrical, poetic, swimming with gorgeous imagery and the romance between the fish and the little boy, Ponyo is a climate change metaphor that stays afloat with genuine human emotion.

The majority of Soylent Green is pretty mediocre, to be honest, but the ending is jaw-dropping. Soylent Green gives you a lot to chew on when thinking about overpopulation.

A flock of killer birds paints the town white and red in Alfred Hitchcock's post-apocalyptic classic. In terms of suspense, the movie is incredibly effective. How do you kill a flock of killer birds? You can only hide from the feathered monsters in the movie Birds.

It's Apocalypse Now mixed with a satire on movies, and it's hilarious. Tropic Thunder tells the story of actors being thrown into a war movie that turns out to be a real war. It's not exactly the post-apocalypse, but Tropic Thunder is Apocalypse Now with real laughs.

More Miyazaki! This wonderful film sees animation's greatest director pull off one of the great post-apocalyptic movies. When a hoard of crazed monsters run through the small towns, only one woman can stop them. It's a gorgeous, mysterious, and profound movie that turns the post-apocalypse into a dazzling display of creativity that is Nausicaa the movie.