The post-apocalypse lays waste to civilization, sparing the dismal outskirts for survivors. They are the remnants of society. They are pregnant with hope and greed, waiting for a tomorrow that may not arrive. Days become moments of sameness, indistinguishable from the people they used to be. Efforts to keep their morale and identities alive raise speculations and unwarranted power struggles against each other. Though these be cautionary tales unrealized, the surrealist picture of a world they paint is close to becoming reality.
Books safely depict the post-apocalypse on the page. The imagination runs wild with the imagery of painstaking and dire situations. Movies show off the nuances and cruelty of the dangers that befall those in this existence. Film adaptations either match the dark scope of the novel or derail the aim of the story. As readers become viewers, they either lend a critical eye or cast a blind eye to hold the source material in high regard.
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10 The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
Centropolis Entertainment
Natural disasters plague the Earth leaving the unprepared dead or barely living in The Day After Tomorrow. The film is based on the novel The Coming Global Superstorm by Art Bell and Whitley Strieber, which predicts that global warming will lead to climate change, causing irreversible damage to the environment. Citizens in New York deal with extreme weather, including tornadoes, floods, and a new ice age. Scientific inaccuracies also plague the movie (wolves being the only other animal to survive), but its motivation to build back a better society is timely.
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MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
9 Blindness (2008)
Fox Film do Brasil
Based on the novel of the same by Portuguese and Nobel Prize-winning author José Saramago, Blindness shows the effects of an epidemic with people suffering from sudden blindness. As culture itself crumbles beneath them, the government intervenes only to corral the blind into concentration camps. Those that can see are deemed in control, coming to the blind’s aid or tricking them to fend for themselves. Despite the adaptation being truncated, Blindness plays into a cruel irony: discerning what it means to look versus see.
8 Battle Royale (2000)
Toei Company
Battle Royale is based on the controversial novel by Koushun Takami. In near-future Japan, the country is dealt with high unemployment rates and economic stagnation. As a result, juvenile delinquency reaches incredible numbers. To combat this, the government sends a random group of delinquent students to face off in a game of Battle Royale. You know society is royally screwed when it has teenagers killing each other, which unfortunately has come to pass in real life. For better or worse, the movie has inspired similar post-apocalyptic media such as The Squid Game, the Fortnite video game, and The Hunger Games young adult novel and film series.
7 Never Let Me Go (2010)
DNA Films
Never Let Me Go is an adaptation of the self-titled novel by Kazuo Ishiguro where boarding school students learn that they were born as organ donors. They must live to die and must die before adulthood in the style of Logan’s Run. A love triangle complicates their clinical fate in a future where the life expectancy is extended by 100 years thanks to their recycled existence as clones. The novel and film question the ideas of what humanity is and the greater good.
6 The Hunger Games (2012)
Lionsgate
The Hunger Games pits volunteers or “tributes” from different factions of society called Districts against each other. The annual event entertains millions of viewers in a televised Roman Colosseum battle to the death. The self-titled novel by Suzanne Collins explores the perspective of treating life like it was a game or popularity contest. This isn’t too different from the reality TV shows, social media personas, and celebrity worship. Dying, living, and even killing for them have unfortunate, sometimes irreversible, consequences.
5 The Quiet Earth (1985)
A flash of light turns the world into a cold, silent, and empty vessel. Scientist Zac Hobson suspects that his work on a global energy project for the military is responsible for the absence of living things. He is forced to retrace his steps and calculate the reason behind the unfortunate outcome he theorized that is now true. Craig Harrison’s science fiction novel and the adapted The Quiet Earth puts the viewer in the shoes of a man seemingly alone and begs the question: what would you do if you couldn’t find anyone?
4 World War Z (2013)
Paramount Pictures
Written by Max Brooks, the son of Mel Brooks, World War Z is a modernized zombie apocalypse in which Brad Pitt plays Gerry Lane, a retired United Nations investigator goes in search of a cure to the pandemic. The film was a revival of the zombie genre with a realistic scope of how human nature reacts in effective and destructive ways during times of crisis.
3 I Am Legend (2007)
Village Roadshow Pictures
The Richard Matheson novel of the same name has been adapted thrice, first as The Last Man on Earth and second as The Omega Man. Will Smith plays virologist Dr. Robert Neville, who was a part of making a cure for cancer that instead became a virus, wiping out the population. He is immune, but those infected have suffered from vampirism and zombie-like qualities. The alternate ending stays true to the book, expressing the guilt and damage Neville has caused millions of people.
2 Children of Men (2006)
Universal Pictures
The Children of Men by P.D. James and its adaptation take place in 2020s United Kingdom. Society is left infertile and war has only expedited human extinction. Immigrants seeking asylum by His Majesty’s Government have been detained or killed on the spot. One of the British government’s bureaucrats has decided to safeguard the world’s only pregnant woman find the cure to the widespread infertility before they use her baby as a political tool for a revolution.
1 The Road (2009)
Dimension Films
The Road is also the self-titled Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Cormac McCarthy, in which nuclear winter has devastated virtually all life on Earth. A father and son must survive in a hopeless world filled with cannibals, rapists, gangs, and thieves. Memories are slowly being forgotten, food and shelter are dwindling, and death is the last form of currency traded without hesitation. Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee give heartbreaking performances that make you appreciate the bare necessities before they’re gone.
