There’s something about human nature that seems to be forever fascinated with the end of things. Endings, in any form, control how we experience things so completely that it can often be detrimental. If something bad happens at the end of a concert, or a day trip, we remember the experience according to the ending, not what had happened up until that point. We seem to be hard wired to focus on the way things close, looking forever towards the end of things. We use cinema as a way of acting out our ending fantasies, of supposing what might happen without ever having to go through it. Disaster movies allow us to take control of our own fates, to wipe the slate clean and end everything in the most dramatic of ways.
Cinema allows us to see into the future when we don’t have the power to do so. Our preoccupation with disaster movies enables us to connect to a time to which we will have little or no connection. We join the history books and are able to witness it, too. In disaster movie fare, of course, there are many different categories and whether you’re interested in viral infections, universal malfunctions or monsters, there’s something for everyone.
Kiss Me Deadly is primarily a film noir. When a private detective decides to pick up a hitchhiker one evening, his entire world is turned upside down. He is soon led down a series of ever darkening paths, moving closer and closer towards utter disaster. Filmed in the 1950s, Kiss Me Deadly is as much a film about cold war paranoia as it is about the end of things. Whilst the ending is not explicitly atomic, it features a huge and deadly explosion, offering no sense of cinematic closure. The film obviously represents anxieties at the time of filming but remains equally relevant today. With the threat of an insidious outside presence looming, the themes of Kiss Me Deadly are as much on our minds as they were 60 years ago.
Sometimes, however, disaster films reenact events which have already happened, enabling us to gauge an element of understanding. A Night to Remember is the less-seen and arguably better version of the Titanic story. Unlike James Cameron’s Titanic, A Night to Remember is void of a schmaltzy love story, told primarily through the second officer’s eyes. From this perspective, events seem uncomfortably real and in the final disaster, there is no sense of acceptance. A Night to Remember reminds us that a disaster doesn’t have to be global to have huge, lasting effects.
Where disaster films fare, we seem to have a lasting obsession with the viral disaster movie, in which a large chunk of the population is taken out in one deadly illness. Perhaps it’s due to the rocketing global population but living in such crowded confines have driven us a little loopy and we have started to think that anyone could be the harbourer of a deadly virus. Films like Contagion tap into this very fear, using globalisation as a way of accelerating the end: Our need for and reliance upon travel is the very thing which will trip us up in the end.
Some films, however, take an entirely different approach, piling everything into a hypothetical disaster, putting everything out with an almighty bang. Whilst The Cabin in the Woods is initially a mock-horror film, it ends in universal disaster. If you haven’t seen the film, don’t read on; it’s impossible to talk about the movie without revealing major plot twists. What starts off as a typical teen horror twists into something entirely different and soon, we discover that the fate of humanity rests on the sacrificial killings of a group of teenagers. The Cabin in the Woods, whilst completely playful and mocking, plays equally into our fear of the end, highlighting how our apparent thirst for horror merely covers up our deep fear of our own demise. By watching bad things happen to others, we displace our own fear; by letting others die, we put them in our own place.
Of course, there are just films which rely on big monsters to do the dirty work. Cloverfield’s premise is delightfully simple, introducing an alien monster invasion to end all humanity. The film is, inevitably, set around a fledgling romance and whilst we may revel in the increasingly disgusting demises of the cast, it is the budding relationship that keeps us watching. The alien’s growing presence intensifies the emotional attachment of the central characters; whilst we anticipate their end, it is with mixed emotions. Cloverfield plays into our fear of missing out, of worrying about the incidental to the detriment of the things which matter. There’s nothing quite like imminent death to force you to realise how you feel about someone.
Disaster films tend to be gloomy fare, reminding us over and again that we are all, essentially, doomed. It takes something special, then, to flip the situation and remind us that disasters don’t always spell the end of things. WALL-E is set, initially, on earth, ruined by pollution and lack of human care. All of the humans have upped and left and are floating somewhere in deep space, waiting for an army of robots to clean up their mess. Except, we know that the robots have all but disappeared. Save one lone, robot, the earth is desolate. The premise for Pixar’s film is pretty downbeat and it could be hard to understand how they will turn it around. Of course, inevitably, they pull it off and then some. The beauty of WALL-E is that it uncovers the drive in humans to survive. In the midst of the fatalistic work of other disaster films, it shows how the very worst situation can inspire humanity to make a change, to alter the way they live. Disaster can be the bridge between two moments in time, it doesn’t always have to be the end of the end.