(Photo by Warner Bros./ courtesy Everett Collection)
Combining spectacle with human drama, disaster movies are some of the largest, most epic canvases filmmakers can work on. And now we’re ranking some of the best and worst disaster movies, from Certified Fresh to Fresh to Rotten movies, all ranging from earthquakes (San Andreas), asteroids (Deep Impact), tsunamis (The Impossible), airplanes (Airport), fires (The Towering Inferno), boats (Titanic), and just about everything mother nature can throw at us (2012).
And now, the latest weather report: Twisters has gone Certified Fresh, just as we’ve re-visited the the 1996 original’s disaster zone and added as many new reviews as we could. Hit F5 on the Twister movie page and you’ll encounter over 70 reviews added recently!
So put on a helmet, wear a lifejacket, and hunker down in your fallout shelter as brace for the disaster movies ranked!
#1
Adjusted Score: 106888%
Critics Consensus: A mostly unqualified triumph for James Cameron, who offers a dizzying blend of spectacular visuals and old-fashioned melodrama.
#2
Adjusted Score: 96526%
Critics Consensus: Tense, tightly plotted, and bolstered by a stellar cast, Contagion is an exceptionally smart — and scary — disaster movie.
#3
Adjusted Score: 87749%
Critics Consensus: Well-acted and blessed with a refreshingly humanistic focus, The Wave is a disaster film that makes uncommonly smart use of disaster film clichés.
#4
Adjusted Score: 94674%
Critics Consensus: Deepwater Horizon makes effective use of its titular man-made disaster to deliver an uncommonly serious — yet still suitably gripping — action thriller.
#5
Adjusted Score: 91569%
Critics Consensus: The screenplay isn’t quite as powerful as the direction or the acting, but with such an astonishing real-life story at its center, The Impossible is never less than compelling.
#6
Adjusted Score: 87141%
Critics Consensus: Black Sea may not be particularly deep, but thanks to Kevin Macdonald’s judicious direction and a magnetic performance from Jude Law, it remains an efficiently well-crafted thriller.
#7
Adjusted Score: 86872%
Critics Consensus: Beware, comets of Greenland: Gerard Butler is here to protect Earth — and show audiences an improbably entertaining time.
#8
Adjusted Score: 86629%
Critics Consensus: Summoning a storm of spectacle and carried along by the gale force winds of Glen Powell’s charisma, Twisters‘ forecast is splendid with a high chance of thrills.
#9
Adjusted Score: 102550%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#10
Adjusted Score: 86631%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#11
Adjusted Score: 83645%
Critics Consensus: The Poseidon Adventure exemplifies the disaster film done right, going down smoothly with ratcheting tension and a terrific ensemble to give the peril a distressingly human dimension.
#12
Adjusted Score: 77106%
Critics Consensus: Proudly, shamelessly, and gloriously brainless, Sharknado redefines “so bad it’s good” for a new generation.
#13
Adjusted Score: 76419%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#14
Adjusted Score: 74000%
Critics Consensus: The Burning Sea falls back on disaster movie formula, but the end results are gripping enough to satisfy.
#15
Adjusted Score: 76243%
Critics Consensus: Snakes on a Plane lives up to its title, featuring snakes on a plane. It isn’t perfect, but then again, it doesn’t need to be.
#16
Adjusted Score: 71707%
Critics Consensus: Although it is not consistently engaging enough to fully justify its towering runtime, The Towering Inferno is a blustery spectacle that executes its disaster premise with flair.
#17
Adjusted Score: 75739%
Critics Consensus: A high-concept blockbuster that emphasizes special effects over three-dimensional characters, Twister‘s visceral thrills are often offset by the film’s generic plot.
#18
Adjusted Score: 42358%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#19
Adjusted Score: 63430%
Critics Consensus: A frustratingly uneven all-star disaster drama, Outbreak ultimately proves only mildly contagious and leaves few lasting side effects.
#20
Adjusted Score: 58966%
Critics Consensus: Though it gets occasionally bogged down by touchy-feely sentiment, White Squall benefits greatly from Jeff Bridges’ assured lead performance and Ridley Scott’s visceral, exciting direction.
#21
Adjusted Score: 57149%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#22
Adjusted Score: 70598%
Critics Consensus: Don’t Look Up aims too high for its scattershot barbs to consistently land, but Adam McKay’s star-studded satire hits its target of collective denial square on.
#23
Adjusted Score: 61325%
Critics Consensus: San Andreas has a great cast and outstanding special effects, but amidst all the senses-shattering destruction, the movie’s characters and plot prove less than structurally sound.
#24
Adjusted Score: 51666%
Critics Consensus: Volcano‘s prodigious pyrotechnics and Tommy Lee Jones’ crotchety sneers at lava aren’t quite enough to save this routine disaster film.
#25
Adjusted Score: 55206%
Critics Consensus: The 33 offers an appropriately inspirational account of real-life heroism, but its stirring story and solid performances are undermined by a flawed focus and an overreliance on formula.
#26
Adjusted Score: 49515%
Critics Consensus: The Hurricane Heist is a throwback to the overblown action thrillers of yesteryear — and a thoroughly middling example of why they don’t make ’em like this anymore.
#27
Adjusted Score: 51302%
Critics Consensus: While the special effects are well done and quite impressive, this film suffers from any actual drama or characterization. The end result is a film that offers nifty eye-candy and nothing else.
#28
Adjusted Score: 46736%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#29
Adjusted Score: 52331%
Critics Consensus: The Day After Tomorrow is a ludicrous popcorn thriller filled with clunky dialogue, but spectacular visuals save it from being a total disaster.
#30
Adjusted Score: 50790%
Critics Consensus: A tidal wave of melodrama sinks Deep Impact‘s chance at being the memorable disaster flick it aspires to be.
#31
Adjusted Score: 47071%
Critics Consensus: The destruction of Los Angeles is always a welcome sight, but Earthquake offers little besides big actors slumming through crumbling sets.
#32
Adjusted Score: 54389%
Critics Consensus: Lovely to look at but about as intelligent as the asteroid that serves as the movie’s antagonist, Armageddon slickly sums up the cinematic legacies of producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Michael Bay.
#33
Adjusted Score: 42784%
Critics Consensus: Aftershock hints at an inventive twist on horror tropes, but ultimately settles for another round of mind-numbing depravity that may alternately bore and revolt all but the most ardent gore enthusiasts.
#34
Adjusted Score: 48916%
Critics Consensus: Roland Emmerich’s 2012 provides plenty of visual thrills, but lacks a strong enough script to support its massive scope and inflated length.
#35
Adjusted Score: 44373%
Critics Consensus: A B-movie with its tongue planted firmly in cheek, The Core is so unintentionally (intentionally?) bad that it’s a hoot.
#36
Adjusted Score: 35753%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#37
Adjusted Score: 36320%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#38
Adjusted Score: 46713%
Critics Consensus: Whether Moonfall is so bad it’s good or simply bad will depend on your tolerance for B-movie cheese — but either way, this is an Emmerich disaster thriller through and through.
#39
Adjusted Score: 36290%
Critics Consensus: Hard Rain is an implausible heist movie soaked in disaster movie trappings.
#40
Adjusted Score: 41342%
Critics Consensus: This remake of The Poseidon Adventure delivers dazzling special effects. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that any of the budget was left over to devote to the script.
#41
Adjusted Score: 33015%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#42
Adjusted Score: 32015%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#43
Adjusted Score: 29496%
Critics Consensus: The movie works when things are on fire, but everything else – from dialogue to characters – is scathingly bad.
#44
Adjusted Score: 34685%
Critics Consensus: This big-budget sword-and-sandal adventure lacks the energy and storytelling heft to amount to more than a guilty pleasure.
#45
Adjusted Score: 28366%
Critics Consensus: The opening’s got a great fiery explosion and Stallone puts in another earnest, sympathetic performance, but all else in Daylight feels designed to annoy the audience into submission.
#46
Adjusted Score: 28169%
Critics Consensus: Clumsily scripted and populated with forgettable characters, Into the Storm has little to offer beyond its admittedly thrilling special effects.
#47
Adjusted Score: 22680%
Critics Consensus: Lacking impressive visuals, well-written characters, or involving drama, Geostorm aims for epic disaster-movie spectacle but ends up simply being a disaster of a movie.
#48
Adjusted Score: 6482%
Critics Consensus: Meteor is a flimsy flick with too much boring dialogue and not enough destruction. At least the pinball game is decent.
#49
Adjusted Score: 10756%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#50
Adjusted Score: 16%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.