The 10 scariest post-apocalyptic movies

Michael Bay would sneer at Michael Haneke’s post-apocalyptic vision, with nary a catastrophe in sight. But Isabelle Huppert, cutting her way through the unspoiled French countryside with flaming torch and two kids in tow, makes the whole enterprise absorbing—a primitive test of motherhood shorn of alarmist politics or moralizing.

Watch the little boy from Witness waste away from radiation sickness. Lynne Littman’s harrowing drama is about a suburb trying to keep up appearances after the bombs fall. Stubbornly, the residents cling to the vestiges of civilization, including a school play of “The Pied Piper,” which gets performed during a devastating climax.

Make sure your bunker has room for the title character—a crazy scientist who, nonetheless, has a plan to keep going. More than half a century after Stanley Kubrick unleashed his most perverse provocation, it’s amazing that we’re even here to enjoy it.

Chris Marker’s 28-minute short manages to tell a tale of nuclear holocaust, sci-fi time travel and heartbreaking romance using only still photographs and narration. The movie’s ideas are so poetic, so utterly radical, it was remade by Terry Gilliam into Twelve Monkeys.