It already feels like we’re living in the apocalypse, which is probably why Netflix seems hellbent on depicting the end times on film. Over the last few years, the streamer has delivered multiple movies based around the end-of-the-world, be it from an impending comet, zombie pandemic or some supernatural force that preys on the senses.  68323l

Some have enlisted casts so starry they warrant their own constellation (Don’t Look Up), while others have gone on to birth massive pop culture moments (Bird Box). Below, we’re sorting through the ten most notable end-of-the-world movies on Netflix, ranked from worst to best. The end times are nigh!    

IO 2vi3a

Margaret Qualley stars as a scientist who, despite the earth’s increasing toxicity, remains on the planet to find a solution. While others have jetted off to colonize IO, one of Jupiter’s moons, she stays behind to research an earth-saving miracle and encounters a man just two days away from leaving earth. IO has a great concept that it sometimes fails to execute, but it’s a very fun watch.

The Silence 6r4k6m

Given that it was released around the same period and its plot involved sound-hunting monsters, The Silence couldn’t help but draw immediate comparisons to A Quiet Place. While it’s certainly not as good as the latter film, The Silence earns points for its deeper dive into horror conventions with a cult subplot and eerie sound design. Oh, it also stars Stanley Tucci, which is always a major plus point.  

The Midnight Sky 196y3m

The end times stretch all the way to the Arctic in The Midnight Sky, a quieter apocalyptic film starring George Clooney as a researcher finding other hospitable planets. Directed by Clooney himself, the film features breathtaking visuals and a third-act twist that throws a spanner in the works.  

White Noise 49ig

When a nearby chemical leak causes an airborne toxic event, Professor Jack Gladney (played by Adam Driver) must evacuate with his family in tow. Directed by Noah Baumbach and starring his wife Greta Gerwig, White Noise offers an absurdist and comedic take on the apocalypse and clear parallels to the COVID-19 pandemic. It might not have had the Oscar-worthiness some had hoped for, but it’s certainly a memorable entry into the genre. 

#Alive 95x6t

If urban parkour was a sport riddled by zombies, #Alive would be the training ground. The 2020 South Korean film follows a video game live streamer trapped in his apartment when an undead apocalypse breaks out. Claustrophobic but still packed with gore, horror, and action, #Alive feels like the spiritual cousin of Train To Busan in all the best ways. 

Cargo 20656y

It’s rare for a zombie film to have heart, but 2017’s Cargo delivers on all the feels as Martin Lawrence’s character searches for a home amid an undead outbreak. Fans of the genre’s more thrilling aspects will find plenty to love, too, but Cargo is at its core a film about parenthood. Who said zombies can’t be family-friendly?

Bird Box 1z1g6t

Audiences were swept up in Bird Box mania in 2018, when Netflix premiered the Sandra Bullock-starring film to widespread fanfare. Bullock stars as a woman surviving an apocalypse in which a mysterious entity compels people to suicide, battling hysterical fellow survivors and a perilous trip to a safe haven along the way. The film was watched by more than 45 million s and enjoyed the best opening week for a Netflix film in the streamer’s history.  

Army of the Dead 4m513z

Following his acclaimed Dawn of the Dead remake in 2004, director Zack Snyder had much to prove upon the release of his fellow zombie movie, Army of the Dead. Thankfully, the apocalyptic movie delivered on much of its promise, with stylish set design, a totally game cast including Dave Bautista AND Yellowjackets’ Ella Purnell, and a fresh take on the genre with a heist twist.

Don’t Look Up 4rl16

Memorable for its A-list cast that includes Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill and Cate Blanchett, Don’t Look Up is Netflix’s starriest apocalyptic movie. It follows two scientists who discover that an extinction-level comet is headed towards Earth, and their attempt (and failure) to alert the public to the imminent threat. Director Adam McKay has fun with the clear parallels to the climate crisis, and scored an Oscar nomination for Best Picture.   

Leave The World Behind 4e363f

Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke star as a married couple in Leave The World Behind, an apocalyptic thriller chronicling the onset of a mysterious blackout, environmental oddities and a civil war. The film is based on the 2020 novel of the same name, and makes fascinating commentary on society’s penchant for in-fighting when faced with a foreign threat. There’s also plenty of eerie deer symbolism, and a Friends cameo.

Netflix has long since established itself as the queen of awful decisions — pioneering such practices as that heinous -sharing crackdown and being rather liberal with the big red cancellation button on beloved fantasy shows and animation. So, it was only a matter of time before it ed its contemporaries in removing streamer-exclusive content from the platform, thereby casting it into nigh-inaccessible oblivion for the foreseeable future; the art of the double-down is strong with Netflix.

Elsewhere, the Barbenheimer phenomenon is proving to be having quite the effect on a few of Netflix’s more interesting roster , the streamer’s answer to the MCU makes its own special mark on the box office, and viewers are rediscovering a legendary filmmaker’s last gasp that he probably doesn’t want you to see.

With Barbenheimer weekend having come and gone, let’s not forget the Netflix original that captured the essence of both films 4t1969

It’s been seven months since White Noise, the absurdist dramedy from Barbie co-scribe Noah Baumbach, first landed in Netflix queues everywhere. Similarly, it wasn’t long after that everyone seemed to immediately forget about it.

Starring Barbie mastermind Greta Gerwig and Adam Driver, the film follows the turbulent life of a family who is forced to evacuate their home after a toxic environmental disaster threatens their neighborhood, shortly after which they return home and plunge straight into existential dread, shady medicine-induced affairs, and general absurdity that only Baumbach could wield so deftly.

White Noise‘s evocation of the Barbenheimer trend is marked, given that it involves two of the most important players in the creation of Barbie, an enormous explosion as a key plot point, and overarching strokes of existentialism. It’s a shame it didn’t linger in audiences’ minds nearly as long as it deserved, but perhaps a resurgence is on the cards now that its spiritual successors are the talk of the town.

A family-friendly superhero franchise tees itself up as Netflix’s next champion with a promising box-office run 5l3e67

Its apparent aim at younger demographics may turn off some viewers, but those wise enough to have tuned in to any of Netflix’s Ladybug & Cat Noir content have since been pleasantly surprised by the heart, eccentricity, and surprisingly high-octane ethos of the streamer’s answer to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Of course, calling anything an answer to the MCU is a bold statement, and the sentiment is especially true here; after Ladybug & Cat Noir: The Movie made a nevertheless respectable box-office pull of just over $10 million prior to its release on the streaming service, those viewership numbers are going to have to shoot beyond the stars to the shared universe conversation the way it may want to.

Still, with a fandom as ionate as Ladybug & Cat Noir‘s, this is one franchise that probably won’t be losing significant steam anytime soon.

For those of you still itching to watch the live-action Bleach movie, time is running out j5b3w

Just when you thought Netflix’s business practices couldn’t get any more despicable, they take a card right out of the Disney Plus playbook and banish once-exclusive content to the great beyond, quite possibly never to be seen again.

Let’s put aside the fact that the live-action Bleach movie might not be missed by a whole lot of people; the principle of the practice spells a chilling horizon for the future of entertainment, which only seems to be growing worse by the day. Indeed, if fabricated scarcity becomes the norm for streamer-exclusive shows and movies, who’s to say how that might affect viewership manipulation and increasingly shady cost-cutting practices?

Farewell, Bleach; here’s hoping your sacrifice won’t be in vain.

It may have done wonders for the box office, but Barbenheimer proved to be quite inconvenient for They Cloned Tyrone 4k1u1g

Among all the internet hype, ticket sales, pink-and-black cosplays, and general moviegoing of dubious sincerity, few entities outside of Barbie or Oppenheimer had much space in the public eye, and that’s a shame because Netflix just released one of its best-ever exclusive features this past weekend.

Indeed, They Cloned Tyrone proved to be every bit as delectable as its many illustrious pieces suggested; it’s unfortunate, then, that it happened to coincide with one of the most unprecedented box-office booms of our time, effectively sentencing it to a quieter debut than it may have been hoping for.

Nevertheless, finding yourself amongst the Top 10 in 28 different countries is no measly feat, either, and now that Barbenheimer weekend has wrapped up, perhaps folks will be making up for lost They Cloned Tyrone time in the coming days.

As Netflix viewers have discovered, lying to the FBI wasn’t the worst of John McTiernan’s sins c6523

In 2003, illustrious action filmmaker John McTiernan‘s final film, Basic, released to theaters. The movie’s title is more or less all you need to know about how that went.

Of course, when you’re the mastermind of such films as Die Hard and The Hunt for Red October, going off on a sour note such as this isn’t exactly a death sentence — and especially when it’s proven capable of showing signs of life two decades on, perhaps it wasn’t even a total loss.

Indeed, for whatever reason, Basic has found itself among the Top 20 most-watched films on Netflix at the moment, so whatever value viewers are managing to scrape out of this star-studded mess, there’s apparently quite a bit to go around.

Regardless of whether you find the unquenchable Barbenheimer discourse to be exciting or exhausting, one of the more fascinating parallels to be drawn has done the unimaginable and dragged one of Netflix’s biggest-ever and most quickly-forgotten flops back from the brink of obscurity.

It’s perfectly okay if you don’t , but it was only on December 30 of last year that White Noise hit the streaming service, with the absurdist comedy drama carrying a reported price tag of around $100 million. Quite frankly, that’s a ridiculous amount of money for a dramedy, but it’s the people and premise behind it that’s seen it finally become relevant once again.

White Noise only spent two weeks in the global Top 10 before vanishing without a trace, but the fact it was written and directed by Barbie co-scribe Noah Baumbach – as well as featuring director of the $337 million phenomenon and real-life partner Greta Gerwig in a major role – drags it right into the thick of the Barbenheimer conversation on of the film’s signature set piece being a massive Oppenheimer-esque explosion, not to mention one of its recurring themes being the ever-present fear of total annihilation.

It’s a curious string of coincidences to say the least, but White Noise cratered so hard and so fast among Netflix subscribers that it’s incredibly easy to either have had it slip your mind or been completely unaware from the get-go that the team responsible for Barbie dropped a big budget original focused on the prospective end of all humankind as we know it less than seven months ago, inadvertently channeling the spirit of Baumbach and Gerwig’s next – and greatest – cinematic rival in the process.

One of the most infuriating things about Netflix is that the streaming service will cancel effects-heavy fantasy shows on a regular basis to ignite the fury of their respective fandoms, but continue to funnel mountains of cash into projects that don’t need to cost anywhere near as much as they do, with Noah Baumbach’s White Noise the latest example.

An adaptation of Don DeLillo’s novel of the same name, the story finds a college professor and his family’s idyllic suburban life into chaos when a chemical leak causes what’s dubbed “The Airborne Toxic Event,” forcing the clan to evacuate their home and embark on an increasingly absurd journey into the world of conflict, love, death, and shady survivalists.

It doesn’t sound like an expensive movie to make, but for some reason, White Noise‘s production budget has been listed at an eye-watering $80 million, although some reports claimed it could be as high as $120 million. Was it worth it in the end? Well, star Adam Driver did land a Golden Globe nomination in the Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy category, but the answer is almost surely a resounding no.

A 62 percent Rotten Tomatoes score is barely above the Fresh threshold, but a 43 percent rating shows that subscribers haven’t been won over by the film’s particular charms. More telling is that White Noise has debuted solidly rather than spectacularly on the platform’s global charts, so it may not even have legs to hang around the upper echelons for very long.

Per FlixPatrol, Baumbach’s first feature that isn’t based on an original story he came up with has entered the Top 10 in 45 countries, but failed to reach number one in any of them. Another $80 million down the drain, then, so you best get worried about your favorite fantasy series right about now.

White Noise was adapted for the screen by Noah Baumbach from the 1985 book by Don DeLillo — one of America’s greatest living novelists — and hits Netflix Dec. 30.

In a career spanning over fifty years, this post-modernist has dissected cultural pre-occupations through era-defining literature including Libra (1988), which centered on the Kennedy assassination, as well as Underworld (1997) — a Pulitzer Prize finalist for fiction which many consider to be his masterpiece. 

With a narrative that centers on Jack Gladney (Adam Driver) and his wife Babette (Greta Gerwig), White Noise never really works as entertainment. From the outset, Gladney, a professor of Hitler studies, who seems incapable of learning German, obsesses over death while his family pays no attention to each other bandying media preoccupations around like ping-pong balls. 

Technology, personal data collection, and the influence of government on individual choices define this film as Jack worries over America’s fascination with consumer culture. His friend and colleague Murray Jay Siskind (Don Cheadle), lectures on people of iconic importance such as Elvis, which makes for one of the film’s more bizarre scenes – as Jack and Murray speak simultaneously on Hitler and The King.   

Noah Baumbach employs his camera to circle both men as they intellectually joust, bouncing competing theories back and forth, until Murray acquiesces and Jack takes plaudits from the gathered student body. This is just one example where Adam Driver dominates proceedings, while his equally gifted co-star plays a pivotal part in elevating the material. 

Written in the 80s when consumerism ran rampant, television advertising pushed products as an answer to every ill, and AIDS terrified everyone, White Noise was considered a literary call to arms. Today this prophetic breakout piece foreshadows a contemporary culture that is solely reliant upon technology and defines people through personal data. 

This is why this film should not only be an effective critique of modern living, with our home office workplaces, social media simulations, and reality-altering applications but should also feel savagely satirical. Instead, it is an airborne toxic event that kicks things up a notch, as the Gladney clan is forced to evacuate their home following a chemical spill. 

On the road to no place in particular, conversations rebound around the car concerning the well-being of other drivers. They serve no purpose, aside from seeking to distract audiences, who at this point have probably given up pinning down any definable structure. Being forced to pull in for gas as the toxic cloud looms large, Jack finds himself outside and exposed to these dangerous gases. As his family waits inside anxiously, he fills up the car and gets in without a word.  

Like many things in White Noise, this action in itself seems to serve no purpose until the Gladney clan reaches an evacuation center. When asked to submit his personal information for security purposes, Jack is told his exposure to the cloud may have been deadly. The uncertainty of that statement briefly turns this intellectual piece into a satire, as the absurdity of that indecision underpins this whole operation. 

However, that is about as straightforward as White Noise ever gets, because Noah Baumbach struggles to wrangle Don DeLillo’s themes into a cohesive whole. His ideas concerning the influence of media and our preoccupations with mortality in a world shaped by personal data simply fail to translate.  

That has nothing to do with any of the ensemble cast, who gallantly tackle these expansive concepts laid out through some thought-provoking dialogue, but instead sit somewhere within these intangible topics themselves. Driver and Cheadle may do some great character work here, but ultimately White Noise feels more like an intellectual oddity rather than anything else. 

There is no denying that this adaptation tries to tackle the central themes, but for some reason, it never really comes together in a way that genuinely satisfies. All too often, audiences may struggle to make sense of what Jack, Murray, and Babette are doing as each do battle with their own anxieties. In many ways, this Netflix effort diminishes the impact of its source material, as much of the humor is lost and as a result, it ceases to be entertaining.  

However, for audiences still intent on diving into White Noise when it hits Netflix, might we suggest a prudent purchase of the Cliff Notes which should be consumed as a standard prior to any screening.

The combined talents of Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, and Noah Baumbach are an unstoppable force, and the surety of our satisfaction, nay, our bliss, from such a union is the accompanying unmovable object.

Indeed, Baumbach is a common denominator for a healthy chunk of both Driver’s and Gerwig’s filmography, and he looks primed to combine the best of both of these worlds with White Noise, an black comedy film that just dropped a brand new trailer earlier today.

Based on Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel of the same name and starring Driver and Gerwig in the leading roles, White Noise follows the plight of Professor Jack Gladney, a Hitler studies expert, a husband to his wife Babette, and the father of four children. When a train accident pollutes the air in his hometown to uninhabitable levels, Jack is forced to pack up his family and face the aftermath of a harrowing micro-apocalypse and the equally strenuous task of contending with his emotionally erratic family and fellow evacuees. By the looks of its sharp cinematography, dialogue that only Baumbach could dream up, and a score composed by the quintessential Danny Elfman, White Noise seems to have all the tools necessary to combine the mundane and the cosmic into an absolute gem of a film.

Driver and Gerwig are ed by fellow Academy Award nominee Don Cheadle, alongside the likes of Raffey Cassidy, André Benjamin, Jodie Turner-Smith, and Lars Eidinger.

White Noise will begin a limited theatrical run on Nov. 25 before releasing to its permanent home on Netflix on December 30.

The Noah Baumbach-directed White Noise is making its mark by not only becoming the first Netflix film to open the Venice International Film Festival but receiving a three-minute standing ovation upon its initial screening.

Baumbach’s film, which is an adaptation of the postmodern novel of the same name by Don DeLillo, is receiving warm critical reception overall and particularly pointed cheers for star Adam Driver, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Driver portrays Jack Gladney in the film, a professor of “Hitler studies,” in the darkly satirical comedy-drama with apocalyptic overtones. The story centers around Jack’s life and blended family through both the ups and downs of everyday mundanity as well as grappling with an ominous bout of pollution that suddenly scorches the sky.

It’s still early on in of the critical response to the movie, but so far, it seems to lean positive. With eight reviews currently logged for White Noise on the review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes, the film currently has a 75 percent critical score as of press times (more reviews are surely flooding in as we speak).

Driver also physically transformed for the movie. Not only does he wear a specialized headpiece in order to convey a receding hairline, but Driver also reportedly put on enough weight for the role that a prosthetic stomach they had as a backup went unused.

The film also stars Greta Gerwig, who has starred in many of Baumbach’s films, as Jack’s wife, Babette. Gerwig is also Baumbach’s real-life partner, with the two often co-writing scripts together and sharing a child. When Baumbach decided in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic to re-read White Noise, which was originally published in 1985, Gerwig decided to re-read it also.

Not only did Baumbach indicate the White Noise novel felt as fresh as ever, but Gerwig said it also radiated a “performative quality” that made for attractive material from an acting standpoint, the Associated Press reported (via The Washington Post).

“It makes you, while you’re reading it, want to look up and say ‘listen to this.’ It had a performative quality to it. It seemed to be emotional and intellectually exciting,” Gerwig said at a press event for the film in Venice.

White Noise comes to theaters on Nov. 25 and hits the streaming service Netflix on December 30.

Adam Driver can now be mentioned in the same breath as Robert De Niro, Christian Bale, and Jared Leto as an actor who has successfully gained weight for a role; it was for film adaptation of Don DeLillo’s hugely influential 1985 novel White Noise, and Driver reportedly left a “backup stomach” that was almost used in the movie collecting dust, instead.

Driver plays Jack Gladney in the satirical comedy-drama, a professor who specializes in “Hitler studies,” as he navigates the various ups and downs of everyday life — as well as a quasi-apocalyptic event — with his wife, children, and step-children.

White Noise represents Driver reuniting with director Noah Bauchman, with his 2019 film Marriage Story generating Oscar nominations for both Driver and co-star Scarlett Johansson.

For this new film, Driver had to undergo physical transformations, such as wearing a wig that resembles a receding hairline and putting on weight for the role, according to the Associated Press (via The Washington Post).

At the Venice International Film Festival, where the movie is set to premiere, Driver said he was “very satisfied” by his on-screen appearance as Jack. “We had a backup stomach. We didn’t need the backup stomach.”

White Noise will undoubtedly represent something of a tonal departure for Baumbach, who up until now has only directed films with original scripts he penned. Baumbach’s previous films, like The Squid And The Whale and Marriage Story, were decidedly grounded in realism, whereas the White Noise novel has a more surreal flavor to it.

White Noise is slated to hit cinemas on November 25 and it will premiere on the streaming service Netflix on December 30.

The Noah Baumbach-directed film White Noise will feature the debut of a new song by LCD Soundsystem — the first piece of music that has emerged from the band in five years.

Now, Baumbach has revealed the tune, called “New Body Rhumba,” was specifically composed with the theme of death in mind to go along with a scene in which characters dance in a supermarket, as the Associated Press reported (via The Washington Post).

James Murphy, the frontman for LCD Soundsystem — and arguably the band’s sole permanent member since its inception — was specifically instructed by Baumbach to “write a really catchy fun song about death,” in the spirit of the 1980s, when the film takes place, the director said in Venice, where White Noise is poised to kick off the Venice International Film Festival.

Based on the postmodern Don DeLillo novel of the same name, White Noise is a satirical comedy-drama centering on the ups and downs of Adam Driver’s Jack Gladney, a professor of “Hitler studies” at a nearby university, and his family during a quasi-apocalyptic version of America. Greta Gerwig plays Jack’s wife, Babette, who share a blended family together that includes Sam Nivola’s Heinrich, Raffey Cassidy’s Denise, and May Nivola’s Steffie. Don Cheadle also plays one of Jack’s university colleagues, Professor Murray Siskind.

According to Baumbach, White Noise‘s central theme has to do with accepting death as a part of life:

“The movie is about life and death and how we have to acknowledge that they’re the same, rather than exist as two separate things […] The movie is about how we create these rituals and strategies to hold off danger and death … and sometimes it comes for us and we don’t know how to react.”

In addition to the electronic-infused ironic sensibilities of LCD Soundsystem for a sole track, White Noise will also feature an original score by Danny Elfman. Bauchman reportedly encouraged Elfman to revisit his stylistic impulses for the 1988 comedy film he scored, Midnight Run.

White Noise comes to theaters on Nov. 25 and will then premiere on the streaming service Netflix the following month, on Dec, 30.

The trailer for White Noise is here, and it teases your typical American family faced with an ominous threat from director Noah Baumbach and starring Adam Driver.

Based on the classic postmodern novel by Don DeLillo, the story is part comedy, part drama, and part horror/mystery as it traces a year in the life of a midwestern college professor through the mundane — and sometimes extraordinary — ups and downs of modern life. The original novel intertwines themes such as academia, catastrophic pollution, chemical dependency, the nature of fame, and death, all seen through a darkly satirical lens.

The cast not only includes Baumbach’s Marriage Story star Driver as the professor, Jack Gladney, Greta Gerwig as his wife, Babbette, but also Don Cheadle, Raffey Cassidy, and even André 3000, in what can only be described as an all-star cast.

According to Netflix’s own synopsis, the film is paradoxically described as being “At once hilarious and horrifying, lyrical and absurd, ordinary and apocalyptic.”

“White Noise dramatizes a contemporary American family’s attempts to deal with the mundane conflicts of everyday life while grappling with the universal mysteries of love, death, and the possibility of happiness in an uncertain world.”

Baumbach adapted the film’s screenplay from DeLillo’s novel, which represents only the second time he has penned a script based on a book following a co-writing credit for the Wes Anderson film Fantastic Mr. Fox, based on Roald Dahl’s book of the same name, according to IMDb.

White Noise, which is currently not yet rated, is slated for release in select theaters and on Netflix “soon,” according to the trailer.