The most threatening post-apocalyptic movie worlds, rated by whether or not I’d want to live in them
I love post-apocalyptic worlds because they allow for a large amount of conflict in a movie to come from the setting itself, rather than just the characters as most settings do. The world isn’t just a backdrop for the main story, it’s a huge part of it.
More conflict = more dramatic stakes = better story potential.
So, here’ s a list of movies that take place in a post-apocalyptic world and my take on whether or not they were threatening enough so as to be effectively terrifying. The more threatening the world, the less likely I would want to live there.
I repeat: I’m not talking about whether or not a movie is good or bad here, but rather whether it’s setting is effectively terrifying or not.
Mad Max: Fury Road — Oooh, shiny and chrome!
Being a slave to a morbidly obese man who sleeps with all the beautiful women isn’t great. Neither is the exposure to radiation and a concerning lack of drinking water.
However! The gearhead-Viking hybrid culture George Miller created is a way too fun opportunity to pass up. Where else can you live the rock-n-roll life of a steampunk kid just to die and live again in Valhalla? (Which, by the way, sounds like a legit upgrade to me. Death, where is thy sting?)
Before you kick the bucket, you get to fly across desert sands in the most over-the-top rat rods ever shooting flamethrowers and performing acrobatic pole vaulting between vehicles. Hardcore.
This is Cirque-du-Soleil at Burning Man. Intrigued? I thought so. If I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die historic on the fury road.
The Happening — Kinda scary, kinda not
Wind-induced suicide is no laughing matter. Let’s get that on the table. It’s really easy to die in this world.
But if you don’t die, you have the pick of the litter as far as real estate goes. Exotic mansions around the world!
And sure, there is the risk of nature going postal again someday. Admittedly, Shyamalan never told us a specific number of people Earth is willing to tolerate before it whips up a wicked wind again. That’s why I’m undecided on this one. High risk, high reward decision.
I Am Legend — A solid NO.
Robert Neville is set up in a beautiful Manhattan apartment I could only dream of, has free, unlimited movie rentals (heaven?) at the local video store, golfs atop an aircraft carrier, and has a handsome, smart dog as a companion. It only really gets dangerous at night when he has to snuff the lights and be completely quiet.
And yet I still find myself yearning for some other wasteland, because this one is majorly lonely 100% of the time. It’s so bad that Robert has transported mannequins all over the city to interact with.
It’s clear that solitude has driven him mad, and not in a happy, ignorant-to-the-darkness-in-the-world kind of mad that I might be okay with. No, this is the kind of mad that makes you sleep in a tiny, hard bathtub at night with your dog and a shotgun, even when you have a perfectly comfortable bed in the next room. I need my beauty rest.
But in all seriousness, the scariest thing about this world is the utter feeling of loneliness. So, for this reason alone (wink wink), I’m out.
Interstellar — Nope.
Everything is trying to kill you in this world created by Christopher and Jonathan Nolan.
The earth is killing you with blight, the other planets you hope will be a new home for the human race try to kill you with giant waves, poisonous gases and frozen clouds of ice, and also the forces of the universe are trying to kill everyone else but you by using gravity and time dilation to make them age much quicker than you.
But the greatest tragedy about this world is that you spend your entire life traveling in a large spaceship that might as well be a hybrid airport/airplane. You have to fight with the entire population of Earth over the outlets, share public restrooms with them indefinitely (oh boy, the smell!), and endure the inevitably outrageous price hikes at the terminal Chipotle and McDonald's.
Besides, isn’t space always cold and dark outside? Oh wait, there’s no going outside at all. Huge bummer.
If you think flying in coach on a 15-hour international flight is rough, you’re going to have a bad time with interstellar travel.
Wall-E — everybody’s fat and I’m okay with that.
Earth is a dump, but we live in a luxury resort in space. This is a really different premise than the flying airport of Interstellar. This one has personal rooms and private bathrooms. This one has everything consumers could ever want, and seemingly for free. The biggest drawbacks are keeping your glut and your gut at bay and not being able to go outside. Outside has mosquitos though, so I can deal with that if I get everything else I want.
Lightning Round — I’d live there:
Waterworld — Oceanfront property as far as the eye can see. This is literally my dream.
Terminator — All of humanity is united in a worthy cause to fight killer robots? Sounds like a meaningful job where you like all your co-workers.
Reign of Fire — Dragons. I’ll gladly take a step down the animal kingdom ladder in order to witness these majestic, fantastic beasts in real life. Besides, who's to say that we couldn’t figure out a way to feed them large game in order to create an alliance with them? How to train my dragon, y’all!
Lightning Round — You wouldn’t catch me dead here:
A Quiet Place — I’m not giving up the ghost because I couldn’t stifle flatulence.
Zombieland — Although this feels awesome in a wild-west, lawless kind of way, I just couldn’t bring myself to baseball bat the brains of the walking dead.
The Matrix — So you’re telling me I have to fight robots (and probably die in the process) in order to gain control of the real world and then restore a level of comfort and prosperity already achieved in the virtual world? Where do I get my VR headset?
Judge Dredd — Nope. The cops are judge, jury, and executioner? What happened to due process? The real villain in this world is Dredd.
28 Days Later — Heck. No.
