Essentialist of… End of the World Movies – Disease

With the possibility of apocalypse by contagion so prominent in everyone’s minds right now, I thought it might be timely to offer up an essentialist that delved into films about the end of the the world. However, the big screen really loves a disaster and worldwide threat… so there are a lot. Seriously, there are bucket-loads. As such, this will be the first in a series of posts which cover the Earth’s impending or past doom by disease, aliens and disaster, whether they be classic, animated or comedy.

First (or perhaps last) stop – disease. Here’s my essentialist of world-ending pandemic and virus films I’d recommend, and a few I’d warn against. So yes, expect a few zombies.

Outbreak (1995)

We all remember this Wolfgang Peterson classic. An illegally imported monkey is released in the US, transmitting a virus that within twenty-four hours liquefies the insides of any victim unlucky enough to come into contact with it. The virus quickly mutates, becoming airborne and spreading at an alarming rate. Dustin Hoffman and Rene Russo are the biological disease experts, and estranged husband and wife, who race against time and an over-zealous military to stop it.

REC (2009)

The first zombie-based outbreak of the list, this Spanish horror film is gritty and visceral. Found-footage relates the story of a reporter and cameraman filming a segment for a reality TV show and on a ride-along with a team of firemen in Barcelona. Responding to a routine distress call in an apartment building the firemen are attacked by a blood-covered old woman. Retreating to the lobby the crew find that the building has been quarantined by the police and they are trapped. The team soon realise what kind of trouble they are in as bitten victims rapidly turn into zombies and the viscera begins to hit the fan. REC is a ferocious, gory, shakey-cam zombie scare-fest.

Children of Men (2006)

Set in 2027, it has been two decades since the last human child was born and society is on the brink of collapse. The UK is a gloomy, anti-immigrant, fascist state and low-level bureaucrat Clive Owen is as bleak as the country he belongs to. His outlook changes slowly after he is approached by his ex-wife Julianne Moore, now part of the resistance, and is asked to help a young immigrant; the first girl to become pregnant since the crisis began. He must get her out of the city, across the violent countryside and through a huge, war-torn internment camp so that he can deliver her into the hands of a group of scientists working on a cure. Alfonso Cuaron’s critically-acclaimed dystopia is beautifully, bleakly filmed and compelling viewing throughout.

12 Monkeys (1995)

Institutionalised patient Bruce Willis is trying to convince his psychiatric board panel that he is not insane but rather a time traveler from 2035, sent on a mission to find a cure to a pandemic disease that has ravaged the population and driven humanity underground. Drugged and bewildered, his pleas are dismissed as the babbled ranting they sound like. The problem is, he’s telling the truth. After escaping with help from a wonderfully deranged Brad Pitt, he sets out to try and locate the infamous Twelve Monkeys environmental resistance group who are believed to have started the pandemic. Terry Gilliam masterfully delivers this dizzying treatise on hope, madness and the immutability of time.

28 Days Later (2002)

Cillian Murphy awakes from a coma, alone in a hospital. In scenes reminiscent of lockdown London today, he finds the streets of the capitol empty and deserted. Old newspapers tell of a virus outbreak that has caused humanity to wipe itself out. Murphy soon finds out how, as he is attacked by the infected zombies that the virus turns people into. Danny Boyle‘s afflicted are not technically zombies but have been infected by a man-made contagion, the Rage virus which turns them violently animalistic in twenty seconds. As they are also still alive, they are fast and nimble, unlike the typical, lurching undead of most zombie films. A bit of a cheat, but it does make 28 Days Later a fast-paced, frantic film experience.

Contagion (2011)

Contagion is one of the most watched films on Netflix since the Covid-19 lockdown began and it’s easy to see why. The film begins with a cough, then Gwyneth Paltrow talking to an extra-marital sexual partner on the phone before coughing and getting on a plane. Next, a seemingly disparate selection of people from a number of world cities going about their lives. A card is passed and swiped, a bus rail is grabbed, a sweaty sick person goes to work and puts a folder on a table, a glass is passed to a customer. Contagion! These are the fears we are all living through now. We all get it (hopefully not) and the rest of the film is predictable; the effect on society and the search for a cure. Luckily Matt Damon is immune though so…

Doomsday (2008)

Doomsday is pretty ridiculous. Scotland, after contracting cases of the deadly Reaper virus, has been locked down, quarantined and cut off from all communications for twenty years. However, the shady UK government has had reports of survivors and, with virus cases appearing in London, an unlikely team of specialists is sent north of the border to investigate. They are attacked early on by a knight in full armour (seriously) and discover a cannibalistic survivor society. Descending rapidly into farce, overacting Mad Macs begin killing off the group and any semblance of story arc fades away. I like dystopian nonsense, loved director Ian Marshall’s Dog Soldiers and The Descent but this film is just preposterous. Do watch it though.

World War Z (2013)

As a huge fan of Max Brooks’s book I have serious issues with this film. The book was an amazing collection of individual accounts that detailed how the world had fallen to a zombie outbreak. It was serious, wonderfully constructed and chilling through its use of fragmented oral history. The film decided to keep the name and change everything else, inserting Brad Pitt as the protagonist, a former UN something or other, who flies via South Korea and Jerusalem to Wales, supposedly chasing a cure but ostensibly trying to get back to his family. His journey brings ruin to each place he visits before he finds the cure. It’s drivel really, but the pre-Game of Thrones, super-paced, swarming zombie devastation is kind of fun to watch.

The Andromeda Strain (1971)

An absolute classic of the pandemic film genre, adapted from the book by Michael Crichton. After a satellite crashes in Piedmont, New Mexico almost everyone in the town dies, either immediately or taking their own lives in a state of madness. Two government agents are sent to recover the satellite but are also struck down. A team of specialist scientists are sent in to investigate, finding that the biological contaminant has turned all the victim’s blood to powder, and only two people had survived. The Andromeda Strain is filmed in a vivid style and explores many themes that have since become canon for the genre, such as the dangers of science, biological warfare, governmental military overreach and man’s hubris.

Dawn Of The Dead (1978)

My absolute favourite Romero zombie movie. It’s a brutal, bleak, survival film and a wonderful indictment of American consumerism. Two National Guardsmen are working to clear a tenement building before their squad is overrun and they decide to escape. They meet up with two other survivors and try to find a safe place to hide from the crisis, finally finding a mall that has been abandoned, apart from by the dead, who still flock to it instinctively; worshiping it beyond even their own mortality. Working together they clear out the mall, barricade it and make it their home, for a while enjoying all the fruits of a consumerist society. Ruin and death however, whether at the hands of zombies or worse, other people, is inevitable.

The Maze Runner (2014)

Thomas wakes up in a cage, with no memory of who he is or his previous life. He has been deposited in a glade, inhabited by a group of teenage boys. So far, so Lord of the Flies but that’s as far as the William Golding analogy goes as the boys have all woken up there in the same amnesiac state and are surrounded by a giant, imposing maze. I really enjoyed The Maze Runner. The ‘runners’ who venture into and explore the labyrinthine structure that encompasses their home must avoid monstrous spider-like creatures who, if they catch them, inject and change them. The arrival of a girl, ‘the last one’ and the removal of their glade’s protection from the beasts, forces the group to attempt escape, and find out the real reason for their internment.

I Am Legend (2007)

One man and his dog… went to mow down vampires. Will Smith is the last man standing in Manhattan, three years after New York was evacuated due to a virus having converted its inhabitants into vampires, or zombies; powered-up, pasty, bald monsters however you look at them. Smith spends his time working on a cure, golfing on the deserted streets, picking corn in Central Park and (unsuccessfully) hunting deer. Time however, and the need for a comfortable Hollywood third act, is against him. He is soon forced into upsetting his routine to help a woman and child (who have arrived, inexplicably, on the bridge-less Manhattan) get to Vermont. I just spend the whole film desperately hoping ‘please don’t let the dog die!’.

Upcoming End Of The World Essentialists

So that was planetary doom by disease. Also in this series are epic disaster and comedic armageddon movies. Still to come will be aliens, classic and animated.