20 Post-Apocalyptic Movies You Must See Before You Die

3. Twelve Monkeys (1995)

A truly crazy time travel movie about one man's attempt to prevent the apocalypse (after it has already happened), Twelve Monkeys is the sort of weird and brilliant meditation on the end of the world that only Terry Gilliam could render on the big screen with such aplomb. After the survivors of a world-ending plague are doomed to live in underground whilst animals rule the icy surface, Bruce Willis' unlikely hero, James, finds himself selected to go back in time in order to prevent the whole mess from ever happening. What follows is a manic attempt to discover what, exactly, lead to the end of the world, as James encounters a slew of unsavoury characters who may or may not be responsible (the most memorable of whom is played by an unhinged Brad Pitt). Twelve Monkeys projects a bleak and ruinous vision of the future, but it also manages to inject a sense of the blackly comic into proceedings (not to mention its plot is brilliantly clever and twisty).