10 Sci-Fi Movies Where Everyone Dies

Though it is doubtful Lars von Trier has seen, much less heard of Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World, his own apocalyptic film Melancholia is nonetheless the perfect counterpoint to it. Rather than getting hopped up on happies, redemption and human connection, von Trier does what he does best and delivers 135 minutes of slow, diluted misery.

Melancholia is the story of a dysfunctional family with Justine (Kirsten Dunst) at its centre, battling depression and a failed marriage on her sister Claire's (Charlotte Gainsbourg) grand estate.

But, of course, things can never be that simple. There is a rogue planet aptly named Melancholia, causing strange anomalies, electrical instability and possibly even clairvoyance as it loops around the Earth. Like the relation of Justine's depression to her family, Melancholia grows more visible as it is drawn in by Earth's gravity and enters its orbit.

Given Melancholia is a Lars von Trier film, several deaths and an unhappy ending are all but guaranteed and, though the suicide of Claire's husband John (Kiefer Sutherland) kicks off the casualties, it is the planetary collision at the film's conclusion that really brings in the body count. Like Seeking A Friend, there is a vaporising wall of fire and bright light before all life is obliterated and the film cuts to black.