When you can tell where a movie is going, it's always tempting to skip to the end. The same it seems can be said of humanity as a whole. Given the recent preponderance of cinematic doomsdays - from This Is The End to The World's End to World War Z to Oblivion to After Earth - I find myself, like Buffy, needing to know the plural of "apocalypse" (it's just "apocalypses", go figure). Still, with so many world-ending catastrophes cluttering up the silver screen and video shelves, now might a good time to run through the 10 stock scenarios most likely to put pay to the filmic human race. If you're the type of film fan who likes their destruction on a vast scale and their popcorn marinaded in the blood of billions, you might recognize a few, such as:
10. The Zombie Apocalypse
Could have it have been any other? Ravenous hordes of the undead and the end of the world go together as well as The Walking Dead's Carl Grimes and bad life choices. Perhaps the most personally agonising of all the apocalypses, this doomsday scenario forces you to watch as your loved ones are reduced to mindless flesh-hungry ghouls. The concept of the zombie may stem from voodoo, but it was George Romero who popularized it in 1968's Night of the Living Dead. Since then the eponymous living dead have undergone a number of evolutions - from slow and shambling to terrifyingly fast in Danny Boyle's 28 ... Later series and as a swarming hive in the recently released World War Z adaptation - but the basic rules have remained the same: to put 'em down you've got to shoot them in the head and if you get bit you turn. Some films have chosen to place the responsibility for the infection on mankind, while others have presented it as a natural occurrence; many leave the cause ambiguous. But, one thing for certain, no matter what you aspiring zombie slayers out there might think, if it ever happens in real life, we're all pretty much done for.