The 25 Best Disaster Movies of All Time

by malthe-tuxen | created - 19 Jan 2020 | updated - 4 months ago | Public

My 25 personal favorite disaster movies I have ever seen.

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1. Children of Men (2006)

R | 109 min | Action, Drama, Sci-Fi

84 Metascore

In 2027, in a chaotic world in which women have somehow become infertile, a former activist agrees to help transport a miraculously pregnant woman to a sanctuary at sea.

Director: Alfonso Cuarón | Stars: Julianne Moore, Clive Owen, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Caine

Votes: 529,259 | Gross: $35.55M

2. Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Not Rated | 96 min | Horror, Thriller

89 Metascore

A ragtag group of Pennsylvanians barricade themselves in an old farmhouse to remain safe from a horde of flesh-eating ghouls that are ravaging the Northeast of the United States.

Director: George A. Romero | Stars: Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea, Karl Hardman, Marilyn Eastman

Votes: 139,065 | Gross: $0.09M

3. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

PG | 115 min | Horror, Sci-Fi

75 Metascore

When strange seeds drift to earth from space, mysterious pods begin to grow and invade San Francisco, replicating the city's residents one body at a time.

Director: Philip Kaufman | Stars: Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Jeff Goldblum, Veronica Cartwright

Votes: 69,817 | Gross: $24.95M

4. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

G | 92 min | Drama, Sci-Fi

83 Metascore

An alien lands in Washington, D.C. and tells the people of Earth that they must live peacefully or be destroyed as a danger to other planets.

Director: Robert Wise | Stars: Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Hugh Marlowe, Sam Jaffe

Votes: 85,744

5. 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)

PG-13 | 103 min | Drama, Horror, Mystery

76 Metascore

A young woman is held in an underground bunker by a man who insists that a hostile event has left the surface of the Earth uninhabitable.

Director: Dan Trachtenberg | Stars: John Goodman, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Gallagher Jr., Douglas M. Griffin

Votes: 354,585 | Gross: $72.08M

6. 28 Days Later (2002)

R | 113 min | Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi

73 Metascore

Four weeks after a mysterious, incurable virus spreads throughout the UK, a handful of survivors try to find sanctuary.

Director: Danny Boyle | Stars: Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Christopher Eccleston, Alex Palmer

Votes: 445,457 | Gross: $45.06M

7. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

Approved | 80 min | Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi

92 Metascore

A small-town doctor learns that the population of his community is being replaced by emotionless alien duplicates.

Director: Don Siegel | Stars: Kevin McCarthy, Dana Wynter, Larry Gates, King Donovan

Votes: 54,728

8. The Impossible (2012)

PG-13 | 114 min | Drama, History, Thriller

73 Metascore

The story of a tourist family in Thailand caught in the destruction and chaotic aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

Director: J.A. Bayona | Stars: Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor, Tom Holland, Oaklee Pendergast

Votes: 243,991 | Gross: $19.02M

9. Sunshine (2007)

R | 107 min | Sci-Fi, Thriller

64 Metascore

A team of international astronauts is sent on a dangerous mission to reignite the dying Sun with a nuclear fission bomb in 2057.

Director: Danny Boyle | Stars: Cillian Murphy, Rose Byrne, Chris Evans, Cliff Curtis

Votes: 267,346 | Gross: $3.68M

10. Melancholia (2011)

R | 135 min | Drama, Sci-Fi

81 Metascore

Two sisters find their already strained relationship challenged as a mysterious new planet threatens to collide with Earth.

Director: Lars von Trier | Stars: Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland, Alexander Skarsgård

Votes: 195,823 | Gross: $3.03M

11. Airplane! (1980)

PG | 88 min | Comedy

78 Metascore

After the crew becomes sick with food poisoning, a neurotic ex-fighter pilot must safely land a commercial airplane full of passengers.

Directors: Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker | Stars: Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty, Leslie Nielsen, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Votes: 260,978 | Gross: $83.40M

12. Shaun of the Dead (2004)

R | 99 min | Comedy, Horror

76 Metascore

The uneventful, aimless lives of a London electronics salesman and his layabout roommate are disrupted by the zombie apocalypse.

Director: Edgar Wright | Stars: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Kate Ashfield, Lucy Davis

Votes: 593,762 | Gross: $13.54M

13. Jaws (1975)

PG | 124 min | Adventure, Mystery, Thriller

87 Metascore

When a killer shark unleashes chaos on a beach community off Cape Cod, it's up to a local sheriff, a marine biologist, and an old seafarer to hunt the beast down.

Director: Steven Spielberg | Stars: Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary

Votes: 659,233 | Gross: $260.00M

14. The Thing (1982)

R | 109 min | Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi

57 Metascore

A research team in Antarctica is hunted by a shape-shifting alien that assumes the appearance of its victims.

Director: John Carpenter | Stars: Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley, Keith David, Richard Masur

Votes: 466,417 | Gross: $13.78M

15. The Birds (1963)

PG-13 | 119 min | Drama, Horror, Mystery

90 Metascore

A wealthy San Francisco socialite pursues a potential boyfriend to a small Northern California town that slowly takes a turn for the bizarre when birds of all kinds suddenly begin to attack people.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren, Jessica Tandy, Suzanne Pleshette

Votes: 204,438 | Gross: $11.40M

16. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

R | 137 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

75 Metascore

A cyborg, identical to the one who failed to kill Sarah Connor, must now protect her ten year old son John from an even more advanced and powerful cyborg.

Director: James Cameron | Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong, Robert Patrick

Votes: 1,173,599 | Gross: $204.84M

17. Gravity (2013)

PG-13 | 91 min | Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller

96 Metascore

Dr Ryan Stone, an engineer on her first time on a space mission, and Matt Kowalski, an astronaut on his final expedition, have to survive in space after they are hit by debris while spacewalking.

Director: Alfonso Cuarón | Stars: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney, Ed Harris, Orto Ignatiussen

Votes: 863,043 | Gross: $274.09M

18. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

R | 120 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

90 Metascore

In a post-apocalyptic wasteland, a woman rebels against a tyrannical ruler in search for her homeland with the aid of a group of female prisoners, a psychotic worshiper and a drifter named Max.

Director: George Miller | Stars: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Zoë Kravitz

Votes: 1,085,724 | Gross: $154.06M

19. The Mist (2007)

R | 126 min | Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller

58 Metascore

A freak storm unleashes a species of bloodthirsty creatures on a small town, where a small band of citizens hole up in a supermarket and fight for their lives.

Director: Frank Darabont | Stars: Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harden, Laurie Holden, Andre Braugher

Votes: 340,198 | Gross: $25.59M

20. Titanic (1997)

PG-13 | 194 min | Drama, Romance

75 Metascore

A seventeen-year-old aristocrat falls in love with a kind but poor artist aboard the luxurious, ill-fated R.M.S. Titanic.

Director: James Cameron | Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Billy Zane, Kathy Bates

Votes: 1,279,898 | Gross: $659.33M

21. Cloverfield (2008)

PG-13 | 85 min | Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller

64 Metascore

A group of friends venture deep into the streets of New York on a rescue mission during a rampaging monster attack.

Director: Matt Reeves | Stars: Mike Vogel, Jessica Lucas, Lizzy Caplan, T.J. Miller

Votes: 420,545 | Gross: $80.05M

22. Snowpiercer (2013)

R | 126 min | Action, Drama, Sci-Fi

84 Metascore

In a future where a failed climate change experiment has killed all life except for the survivors who boarded the Snowpiercer (a train that travels around the globe), a new class system emerges.

Director: Bong Joon Ho | Stars: Chris Evans, Jamie Bell, Tilda Swinton, Ed Harris

Votes: 388,890 | Gross: $4.56M

23. Jurassic Park (1993)

PG-13 | 127 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

68 Metascore

A pragmatic paleontologist touring an almost complete theme park on an island in Central America is tasked with protecting a couple of kids after a power failure causes the park's cloned dinosaurs to run loose.

Director: Steven Spielberg | Stars: Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough

Votes: 1,066,682 | Gross: $402.45M

24. The Martian (2015)

PG-13 | 144 min | Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi

80 Metascore

An astronaut becomes stranded on Mars after his team assume him dead, and must rely on his ingenuity to find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive and can survive until a potential rescue.

Director: Ridley Scott | Stars: Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Kate Mara

Votes: 924,825 | Gross: $228.43M

25. Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)

PG-13 | 105 min | Action, Drama, Sci-Fi

68 Metascore

A substance designed to help the brain repair itself gives advanced intelligence to a chimpanzee who leads an ape uprising.

Director: Rupert Wyatt | Stars: James Franco, Andy Serkis, Freida Pinto, Karin Konoval

Votes: 558,617 | Gross: $176.76M



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