15 Best Disaster Movies of All Time

Someone sent me an article the other day that says an asteroid has like a 2.5% chance of hitting Earth in 2031. That got me thinking about how much I love a good disaster movie.

See, disaster movies are a really special lot. They can kind of fit into any genre. You can have comedy, drama, and horror all wrapped up in a story about a disaster.

They’re usually larger-scale stories and are best viewed on the big screen.

Today, I want to go over some of the best disaster movies and give you a list of my favorites.

Let’s dive in.

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1. Titanic

Director: James Cameron

Writer: James Cameron

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Billy Zane, Kathy Bates, Frances Fisher, Gloria Stuart

Hard to beat such a romantic epic that captures one of the most famous disasters in world history. It’s so easy to get swept away.

2. Armageddon

Director: Michael Bay

Writers: Jonathan Hensleigh, J.J. Abrams, Tony Gilroy, Shane Salerno, Robert Roy Pool

Cast: Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Liv Tyler, Ben Affleck, Will Patton, Steve Buscemi

I have a soft spot for this Michael Bay epic. It’s just so fun, and I love the Men on a Mission movie mixed with a good disaster. Plus, the Goo Goo Dolls and Aerosmith songs in pivotal moments.

3. The Poseidon Adventure

Director: Ronald Neame

Writers: Stirling Silliphant (screenplay), Wendell Mayes (screenplay), Paul Gallico (novel)

Cast: Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Red Buttons, Carol Lynley, Roddy McDowall, Stella Stevens

Another fun movie, it has that high-concept idea of what would happen if a cruise boat flipped upside down and takes a motley crew of people who are trying to survive it.

4. Twister

Director: Jan de Bont

Writers: Michael Crichton, Anne-Marie Martin

Cast: Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton, Jami Gertz, Cary Elwes, Philip Seymour Hoffman

This was such a huge movie for me in the 90s as a kid. Everyone went to see it, and it felt like it was all we talked about for a summer.

5. Greenland

Director: Ric Roman Waugh

Writer: Chris Sparling

Cast: Gerard Butler, Morena Baccarin, David Harbour, Hope Davis

We had the awesome Chris Sparling on the podcast, where we chatted about this spec that became a huge hit. It’s very rewatchable, and I feel like gets its intensity from how real it feels.

6. 2012

Director: Roland Emmerich

Writers: Roland Emmerich, Harald Kloser

Cast: John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Woody Harrelson, Thandie Newton

Roland Emmerich is the master of these kinds of movies. When I saw a giraffe being suspended from a helicopter in the trailer, I knew this would be one of my favorites.

7. Contagion

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Writer: Scott Z. Burns

Cast: Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard

Man, during 2020, this movie got a lot of play. It really screwed with my head and it’s hard for me to watch it now because it feels like we lived it.

8. The Towering Inferno

Directors: John Guillermin, Irwin Allen

Writers: Stirling Silliphant (screenplay), Wendell Mayes (screenplay), Richard Martin Stern (novel), Thomas N. Scortia (novel), Frank M. Robinson (novel)

Cast: Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Fred Astaire

Another classic, this movie gave me a visceral fear of tall buildings for a while, this skyscraper on fire movie is full of stars.

9. Gravity

Director: Alfonso Cuarón

Writers: Alfonso Cuarón, Jonás Cuarón

Cast: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney

The scale of this movie is huge, but you really only see two human beings during it, or 8 billion if you count the POV from earth. Because this is a character-driven movie, it makes the scope even more exciting.

10. The Impossible

Director: J. A. Bayona

Writer: Sergio G. Sánchez

Cast: Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor, Tom Holland

A harrowing tale of a tsunami that devastated Asia, this movie is really emotional. There’s an inherent joy in seeing humanity persevere under the harshest conditions.

11. Deepwater Horizon

Director: Peter Berg

Writers: Matthew Sand, Matthew Michael Carnahan, Brian Chumney, Joshua Zetumer

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Kurt Russell, John Malkovich, Gina Rodriguez, Dylan O’Brien, Kate Hudson

A disaster off the coast that felt like it never should have happened in the first place. I’m not sure I understood how bad things were until I saw this movie and got the bravery of all the people involved.

12. Melancholia

Director: Lars von Trier

Writer: Lars von Trier

Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland, Stellan Skarsgård, Alexander Skarsgård

Any time I have the chance to recommend a Lars von Trier movie, I do because he’s truly a singular filmmaker whose personality can be off-putting but who makes provocative art.

13. San Andreas

Director: Brad Peyton

Writers: Carlton Cuse, Andre Fabrizio, Jeremy Passmore, Allan Loeb, Carey Hayes, Chad Hayes

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Carla Gugino, Alexandra Daddario, Ioan Gruffudd, Archie Panjabi

The Rock has been in a few disaster movies, but this one is the best. I live in Los Angeles, so this taps into a visceral fear of “the big one.”

14. Dante’s Peak

Director: Roger Donaldson

Writers: Leslie Bohem

Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Linda Hamilton

As a kid, I loved this movie. And I recently revisited it, and it’s still pretty fun. That grandma dying of acid scarred me as a child, and even now, I think it’s such a brutal way to go.

15. Thirteen Lives

Director: Ron Howard

Writer: William Nicholson

Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Colin Farrell, Joel Edgerton, Tom Bateman

A newer entry on this list, this was one of the best movies of the year when it came out. It told a passionate and heroic story of people risking everything they had to save kids stuck in a Thai cave.

Summing Up the 15 Best Disaster Movies of All Time

That’s my list of my favorite disaster movies, but I bet you know of a bunch that I have not seen. I want to hear about them so I can close the gap and watch as many as possible.

Let me know what you think in the comments.