And we thought last year was a year. We had no idea what was coming for 2020, did we?
It seems a bit irrelevant to talk about disaster movies when we’ve got several happening in real life, but if people can derive some pleasure from these films, or even just be distracted for a while, then we’re happy to help.
As with films in general, the output for disaster movies was way down for 2020. A total of 20 were released in 2018, and 17 in 2019, but only 8 came out in 2020. Not a huge sample size for analysis, let’s say.
The most successful in terms of box office was a Chinese film released in theaters back in January, The Rescue. This film from Dante Lam (Operation Red Sea), highlighting the exploits of the Chinese equivalent of the US Coast Guard, had a worldwide gross of nearly $60 million as of December 31 (on an estimated budget of $86.5 million). It was also the highest-rated disaster movie of the year according to IMdB, along with Russian director Aleksey Nuzhnyy’s Fire, which each had a score of 6.7 out of 10. It’s probably logical that films about first responders would do well this year of all years. The highest-IMdB-rated movie from the U.S. was Gerard Butler’s asteroid movie Greenland, with a score of 6.4.
One of the two highest-rated movies according to Rotten Tomatoes also came from outside the U.S.: #Alive, a zombie movie from South Korea, which scored a 88% Fresh rating. The other movie with an 88% rating was Save Yourselves!, a debut indie alien invasion comedy written and directed by Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson.
Appropriately enough, a movie related to the COVID-19 pandemic was the lowest-rated and lowest-grossing disaster movie of the year. The Michael Bay-produced Songbird has garnered a 4.4 on IMdB, a 27 on Metascore, and a whopping 10 on RottenTomatoes. According to BoxOfficeMojo, the movie has grossed $6595 to date (not a typo). But given that it wasn’t released until December 11 to premium video on demand, that might not end up being as horrible as it seems right now. The movie, which stars Craig Robinson, Bradley Whitford, Demi Moore and Paul Walter Hauser, has just been picked up for a theatrical run in Japan, so don’t count it out just yet.
Here is the complete list, in order of release date. For details of each movie, visit The Disaster Area’s list on IMdB or the individual links below. And here’s hoping that 2021 is a much more benign year for all of us.
The Rescue
Underwater
Fukushima 50
#Alive (#Saraitda)
Greenland
Five Women in the End
Save Yourselves!
Songbird
Fire
Calvin Powers says
Greenland is on my watch list for sure!