10 Essential Disaster Movies, Ranked
The Impossible, Contagion, and The Poseidon Adventure are all among the best and most essential movies in the disaster genre.
Disaster movies have long been a staple of Hollywood. The first disaster film dates back to 1912 with a movie recounting the tragedy of Titanic. The genre really became popular in the 1970s with movies like Airport and The Towering Inferno, with their star-studded ensemble casts. The genre saw a resurgence in the 1990s as director Roland Emmerich came to play with his alien invasion spectacle Independence Day. Even when the films are decades apart, these films tap into our fascination with nature’s fury and humanity’s resilience as well as the thrills of watching spectacles on screen.
