10 Movies To Watch If You Liked World War Z

In 2013, Marc Forster (Monster’s Ball) directed the adaptation of Max Brooks’ novel World War Z. The book was not made as something that could easily translate into a movie. Brooks, whose dad was comedy film director Mel Brooks, wrote his book as a journal of individual accounts of people researching the global zombie plague as they searched for a cure.

What resulted was a movie that starred Brad Pitt as he set out on a journey as a former UN investigator searching for a way to stop the zombie pandemic. The movie was a mix of zombie movies and contagion films, and while the movie was a financial success, it received only middling reviews.

10 28 Days Later (2002)

In 2002, Danny Boyle created the “zombie” movie 28 Days Later. The truth is that this is not technically a zombie movie because no one ever calls them zombies.

The people here are infected crazies, similar to the movie The Crazies, which means it is more a contagion movie that drives the infected insane. It takes place in the U.K., which is different than most zombie movies and is a good companion piece to anyone who liked the idea that World War Z was about infection and not just about monsters.

9 Contagion (2011)

For people looking for contagion movies similar to World War Z, where it is all about discovering the cause and a possible cure, look at the movie Contagion from 2011. Directed by Stephen Soderbergh, the movie focuses on a global pandemic and the struggles to contain the virus while social order breaks down worldwide.

Contagion is probably not a movie for anyone under duress in today’s world to watch. However, it is very similar to World War Z in maintaining a world after an outbreak.

8 Doomsday (2008)

For people who want to look at a world where an outbreak caused the entire fracturing of society, without the worries of real-life terrors, check out the 2008 film Doomsday. This film is directed by Neil Marshall (The Descent) and takes place in Scotland, which was quarantined due to a deadly virus.

When the virus makes its way to London, the country sends a team to find a possible cure. When they arrive, they realize Scotland has turned into a land ruled by two types — marauders and medieval knights.

7 Outbreak (1995)

Another contagion film was released in 1995 with an all-star cast. This was Outbreak, directed by Wolfgang Petersen (Das Boot). The film is based on the nonfiction book from 1994 titled The Hot Zone, which told the story of the origins and outbreaks of the Ebola virus, among others.

The movie stars Dustin Hoffman, Morgan Freeman, Donald Sutherland, Rene Russo, Kevin Spacey, and more, as the United States deals with an outbreak. The film shows how far military and civilian agencies would go to contain it.

6 12 Monkeys (1995)

World War Z was not the only post-apo9calyptic movie that Brad Pitt starred in. Pitt took on one of his more shocking roles in the Terry Gilliam movie 12 Monkeys. In this movie, a chemical attack has taken out the world and made it almost inhabitable to almost all humankind.

Scientists from the future, living underground, send a prisoner back in time to find the origins of the attack so they can send back a team to stop it. While there, he finds a mystery that leads him to the suspected terrorist, a wealthy scientist’s son, played by Pitt.

5 Children of Men (2006)

Children of Men is about a very different kind of post-apocalyptic contagion. Something happened in the world that caused all pregnancies to abort, and no woman had gotten pregnant in two decades.

However, when a woman suddenly becomes pregnant, several different groups want to capture her for their own purposes, with very few ethical or for the betterment of humankind. Clive Owen stars as a man sent to find the woman and take her to safety, where scientists can try to figure out how they can save the planet’s future.

4 Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes (2014)

Heading into the realm of science-fiction, the revival of the Planet of the Apes franchise showed a world where the post-apocalypse looks very different. This had nothing to do with a virus or disease or raging zombies. This was a world where apes learned how to think and survive for themselves, and humans decided they wanted them dead as a result.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes was the second movie in the trilogy. The first movie saw the rise of the apes and the humans’ actions that made them aggressive. The third movie was about the overall war between humans and apes. However, this middle movie was about some humans trying to figure out what was happening and fixing things.

3 Train To Busan (2016)

The zombie movie genre was played out by the time Train to Busan arrived. Thanks to everything from The Walking Dead to several other TV shows and movies, fans seemed to tire of the rising dead. Train to Busan changed that by releasing something that brought a different spin to the genre.

This South Korean zombie movie is about a father taking his daughter to a train station to send her to her mother when the zombie apocalypse occurred, and the two trying to survive together.

2 I Am Legend (2007)

I Am Legend is a post-apocalyptic horror tale that brings in a very different kind of monster. In this movie, based on Richard Matheson’s story of the same name, vampires have conquered the world.

Will Smith plays a man who lives alone with his dog while his old neighbors torment him every night from outside his house. During the day, he sets out to hunt and kill sleeping vampires. The film has a different ending than the book, as Smith sets out to find a group that might have a cure.

1 Dawn Of The Dead (1978)

If a person loves World War Z because of its new fresh take on the zombie genre, they should go back and watch the movie that defines everything the zombie genre stands for today. George Romero created the modern-day zombie in Night of the Living Dead, but he created his masterpiece a decade later with Dawn of the Dead.

In this movie, a group of survivors sets up shop in a shopping mall while the zombies exist outside. It is a perfect movie that blasts consumerism, which is at heart, the true antithesis of the modern-day zombies.

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