by Billy Russell

Streaming TV and movies during the era of COVID-19 has me thinking of apocalyptic movies and, brother, I have run the gamut in tone all over the place during this crazy lockdown stuff. So join me on my tour of the entire spectrum of emotions as lensed through “end of the world” flicks.

If you want to cry, Testament, which appears periodically for free on streaming sites like Amazon (and is available to rent and worth every penny) is a thoughtful, hopeful look at an utterly hopeless situation. After nuclear war breaks out between the U.S. and another country which is never named--because it doesn’t matter--a mother takes care of her children in a small coastal California town as everyone around her dies from radiation poisoning. Testament is grim, relentless and beautiful. A movie wouldn’t have such a gut-punch if it didn’t love humanity so damned much.

From there, you can trot on over to Netflix and watch Outbreak, the virus movie with the monkey and Dustin Hoffman. It’s a well-made, very Hollywood thriller that serves as escapism that’s sort of grounded in what we’re going through, dialed up to its maximum logical conclusion. It’s both silly and terrifying. It somehow manages to have it both ways.

Hulu’s got Contagion, which is sort of like Outbreak’s more somber, serious, and realistic counterpart, taking a look at a massive spread of a deadly virus. This one, you should only watch if COVID doesn’t have you feeling the worst anxiety of your life. Steven Soderbergh crafts an utterly terrifying look at a situation spiraling disastrously out of control.

Shaun of the Dead is also on Hulu. I feel exactly like I’m in Shaun of the Dead, the way I keep talking about “when this whole thing blows over” only to see the situation getting worse and worse every time I read the news. When this whole thing does blow over, you better believe I’m going to be drinking from a mug that has “cool” written over it a hundred different times.

If you feel like watching the good guys win against the apocalypse, Michael Bay’s Armageddon is available on HBOGo until April 5. However you remember Armageddon, you’re correct, because it’s half a great action movie and half a terrible Michael Bay movie. This was before Bruce Willis stopped giving a shit, so he turns in a fun performance in a shittily-written role. Steve Buscemi is doing his, “It’s the 90s, so here I am stealing the show!” thing and it works really well! Whenever the movie gets lovey-dovey it works a lot less well, but the whole uneven thing is a lot of fun.

Also courtesy of HBO is Chernobyl, which is about a catastrophic event made even worse by a government that refuses to admit that anything is even the matter. The good people who want to contain a radioactive disaster slowly die from the inside out, while the people who caused the incident shrug their shoulders and consider it a small price to pay. This sounds familiar, right?

If this whole goddamned thing has been a bit grim for you, let’s cheer things up a little by going to one of the more obscure streaming sites like Vudu and Tubi and check out Wristcutters: A Love Story. No, this movie isn’t about the apocalypse. It’s about the afterlife reserved for people who’ve died by suicide, and the landscape looks drab and dull and brown like some Mad Max clone, but contains an unexpected amount of genuine love and pathos. It’s a great little movie that sounds like the exact kind of thing I’d hate, but it’s so charming, I can’t resist it.

And to cap it all off, if you feel like renting something, you can rent Miracle Mile, which I consider to be the perfect end of the world movie. Tangerine Dream’s surreal score pulses on as our two lovers, played by Anthony Edward and Mare Winningham, meet each other and fall head over heels for each other on the night that the world is supposed to end. The last scene is as intense, brutal and horrifying as it is sweet and wonderful.

When this is all over, let’s get some pizza. Until then, follow the links in the article to go to the Letterboxd page for each title and see where it is currently available.