Disaster films are prolific, popular, and genre-spanning — whether it’s an action-comedy or outright horror, there’s a movie to suit everyone. City-based disaster films are especially popular as they capture the everyday experiences. There’s a morbid thrill for viewers watching people just like themselves get blasted, frozen, flooded, or consumed by monsters. Even better if it’s a city everybody recognizes (which is why New York so often cops it).

Apart from being good fun, disaster films can also indicate how generations have processed natural disasters and global threats, such as San Francisco detailing the horrific 1906 California earthquake. They also capture social fears — The Day After and Threads reflect the Cold War era’s terror of nuclear conflict, and — more recently — The Day After Tomorrow, the fear of climate change.

10 ‘2012’ (2009)

A plane flying through collapsing buildings in 2012
Image via Columbia Pictures

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 39%

Roland Emmerich’s dazzling, wildly over-the-top 2012 is based on the premise that the ancient Mayan Calendar was right — the world is doomed to end in 2012. A range of characters, including a geologist, a Russian oligarch, a family, and the First Daughter, must race against time as the planet crumbles around them.

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2012 includes a volcano erupting in Yellowstone National Park, multiple tsunamis, and a spectacular sequence of Los Angeles literally sliding into the ocean. Critics praised the film’s glorious special effects but lamented its weak script and story.

9 ‘Deep Impact’ (1998)

The tidal wave hits New York in Deep Impact
Image via Paramount Pictures

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 43%

A massive comet, discovered by high school student Leo (Elijah Wood), is set to collide with Earth and create a near extinction-level event. A journalist (Téa Leoni) uncovers the story as the US President (Morgan Freeman) deploys astronauts to try and nuke the asteroid. The asteroid is broken into two parts, one lands in the ocean and creates a massive tsunami that sweeps over New York City.

Deep Impact suffered from being released the same summer as Michael Bay’s Armageddon, which despite receiving poor reviews, beat Deep Impact thoroughly at the box office.

8 ‘The Day After Tomorrow' (2004)

Tsunami waves hitting NYC in The Day After Tomorrow.

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 45%

Accelerated climate change sparks a new global ice age. The Northern Hemisphere is beset with freezing storms, trapping Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal) and his friends in a now-flooded New York. An ensemble of characters, including politicians, scientists, love interests, and poor-doomed-shmucks, grapple to survive on the now-freezing planet.

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​​​​The Day After Tomorrow was an admirable attempt to address the dangers of climate change (although the sketchy science may have further confused people). The film was praised by critics for its visual effects and acting performances (although not for its storyline and dialogue).

7 ‘Volcano’ (1997)

Magma pours through the LA subway in Volcano
Image via Original Film

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 49%

What if there was a volcano underneath Los Angeles? This is the premise of Volcano, where an earthquake triggers a massive volcanic eruption deep beneath the city. Mike (Tommy Lee Jones) and Amy (Anne Heche) must work together to divert the deadly subway-lava into the ocean.

Volcano is big on flashy, thrilling spectacle (if low on actual science) and was one of two volcano-themed flicks to come out in 1997 (Dante’s Peak being the other). Critics found the film cheesy but good fun, but Volcano sadly didn't sizzle at the box office.

6 ‘Sharknado’ (2013)

A cyclone full of Sharks flies in Sharknado (2013)
Image via Syfy

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 74%

A hurricane from the ocean, laden with irate sharks, hits Los Angeles. Soon the city is flooded with seawater and killer sharks as surfer Fin and his friends battle for survival. The “sharknados” are finally vanquished with bombs dropped from a helicopter – but not before the toothy fiends latch on to the chopper for a final chomp.

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This made-for-TV horror-comedy received surprisingly positive reviews, with Rotten Tomatoes' Critics Consensus stating the film is “proudly, shamelessly, and gloriously brainless.” Sharknado has become a cult favorite and spawned five sequels.

5 ‘Cloverfield’ (2008)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 78%

Cloverfield is a found footage horror film following a group of young New Yorkers under attack from a giant, Godzilla-like monster. Framed as classified video recordings discovered by the military, the story follows Rob and his friends attempting to escape New York. The film ends with Rob and Beth in Central Park, just before the entire city is bombed by the military to kill the monster.

Critics praised Cloverfield as an original take on the monster movie with an effective, innovative use of the found footage genre. The film was a box office success, partly due to a savvy viral marketing campaign. Two more films set in the same universe as Cloverfield followed — 10 Cloverfield Lane and The Cloverfield Paradox. A fourth film in the franchise is in development.

4 ‘The Day After’ (1983)

Dr Oakes (Jason Robards) stares at the devestated Kansas City, in The Day After
Image via ABC

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 83%

The Day After is a made-for-TV film about a cataclysmic nuclear war and its effects on the citizens of Kansas City. In unflinching detail, the film follows a nuclear strike resulting in mass destruction and death, with millions injured or rapidly succumbing to radiation poisoning. Nearly all the film’s main characters are dead or dying by the end — with the rest of the world implied to be similarly afflicted.

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Over 100 million people watched The Day After on its first broadcast. President Ronald Reagan attributed the film to helping shift US policies away from nuclear warfare. The film was broadcast internationally, including on Soviet television in 1987.

3 ‘These Final Hours’ (2013)

thesefinalhours

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 85%

A catastrophic firestorm from an asteroid will reach Perth, Western Australia, in 12 hours. The population erupts into panic, despair, and hedonistic partying. James (Nathan Phillips), a self-absorbed young man, intends to join the party — but ends up helping a lost 10-year-old girl (Angourie Rice) find her family. James reunites with his girlfriend on the beach just before the firestorm arrives.

Perth, one of the most isolated big cities in the world, is the perfect setting for an apocalypse film. Critics praised the harsh, aggressive tone of These Final Hours as making it distinct from other disaster movies.

2 ‘San Francisco’ (1936)

The 1906 earthquake scene in San Francisco (1936), with Clark Gable
Image via MGM

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 92%

A nightclub singer is caught in a love triangle with a dashing saloon owner and a wealthy, respectable gentleman. The latter was conveniently killed off in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, a real event that killed over 3000 people and destroyed most of the city.

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While mostly a musical melodrama, San Francisco helped set the template for the modern disaster film — with big stars (Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, and Jeanette MacDonald), impressive special effects, and even a signature song. The earthquake sequence is surprisingly still thrilling to watch today, especially considering the film was made almost 90 years ago.

1 ‘Threads’ (1984)

The nuclear explosion, and 13 years later, in Threads
Image via the BBC

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100%

This British TV film is considered by many to be the most terrifying movie of all time. Threads, set in the Northern English city of Sheffield, was the UK’s sister film to The Day After. The film follows two ordinary families devastated by a nuclear war and the following agonizing decade of fallout, death, and decay. Our main character, Ruth (Karen Meagher), survives the blast but dies of malnutrition and cancer in a little more than a decade. Jane, her emotionally and intellectually stunted daughter, has a stillborn, deformed baby at 13.

Told in a pseudo-documentary style (like the earlier and equally controversial The War Game), Threads is unflinchingly bleak. The viewer watches Sheffield (and its residents) get blown to bits and then consumed by fire, fallout, and rats. No happy survival tropes exist in this cautionary disaster film, no heroes saving the day, no humanity — no hope.

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