ESSENTIAL PREPPING MOVIE LIST
Everyday Essential Watching for Preppers
This list of movies covering aspects of prepping, homesteading and self-sufficiency. A lot of these are about dystopian futures (past & presents too), tyrannical governments, as well as survival and SHTF aspects.
Most have something useful if you are looking for it, even the more fantasy or hollywood type movies listed. There is of course the appropriate number of zombie movies here as well.
These are all movies we have watched and enjoyed for different reasons and as we find more we will keep adding to this list so check back for updates.
1. Red Dawn
From writer-director John Milius comes the tale of what-could-have-happened if the Cold War had gone another way.
In an alternate 1980s, the United States stands alone as Communism grows stronger. When Soviet soldiers invade a small Colorado town, brothers Jed (Patrick Swayze) and Matt Eckert (Charlie Sheen) escape with friends to the forest. With their father, Tom (Harry Dean Stanton), a prisoner of the invading army, the children decide to fight against the Soviets.
As the country comes under increasing attack, the group calling themselves “Wolverines”, after their school football team, joins forces with Lt. Col. Andrew Tanner (Powers Boothe) to take back their town.
DIRECTOR
John Milius
CAST
Patrick Swayze
C. Thomas Howell
Charlie Sheen
YEAR
1984
DIRECTOR
John Hillcoat
CAST
Viggo Mortensen
Robert Duvall
Charlize Theron
YEAR
2010
2. The Road
In this epic post-apocalyptic tale of the survival of a father (Mortensen) and his young son (Smit-McPhee) as they journey across a barren America that was destroyed by a mysterious cataclysm.
The Road boldly imagines a future in which men are pushed to the worst and the best that they are capable of – a future in which a father and his son are sustained by love.
From Cormac McCarthy, author of “No Country For Old Men,” this is an adaptation of the best-selling and Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Road.
3. Children of Men
Alfonso Cuaron, who later directed the 2018 Best Picture winner, created this beautiful film that is still considered a Big Deal some fifteen years later.
Not really much about prepping, but an interesting take on what societal collapse could look like in the near future, especially with a decline in population around the world happening.
DIRECTOR
Alfonso Cuaron
CAST
Clive Owen
Julianne Moore
Michael Caine
YEAR
1984
DIRECTOR
James McTeigue
CAST
Hugo Weaving
Natalie Portman
Rupert Graves
YEAR
2005
4. V for Vendetta
Remember, Remember the 5th of November, the gun powder treason and plot. I know of no reason why the gun powder treason should ever be forgot.”
Great Britain has become a fascist state. Now, a shadowy freedom fighter known only as “V” (Hugo Weaving) begins a violent guerrilla campaign to destroy those who have embraced totalitarianism. In his quest to liberate England from its oppressive ideological chains, “V” recruits a young woman (Natalie Portman) he rescued from the secret police to join him on an epic adventure to execute a seemingly impossible task.
5. 1984
In a rubble-strewn surveillance state where an endless overseas war props up the repressive regime of the all-seeing Big Brother, and all dissent is promptly squashed, a profoundly alienated citizen, Winston Smith (John Hurt), risks everything for an illicit affair with the rebellious Julia (Suzanna Hamilton), defiantly asserting his humanity in the face of soul-crushing conformity.
1984 conjures a bleak vision of postwar Britain as fascistic nightmare — a world all too recognizable as our own.
DIRECTOR
Michael Radford
CAST
John Hurt
Richard Burton
Suzanna Hamilton
YEAR
1984
DIRECTOR
Albert & Allen Hughes
CAST
Denzel Washington
Mila Kunis
Gary Oldman
YEAR
2010
6. The Book of Eli
The story revolves around Eli, a nomad in a post-apocalyptic world who seeks to deliver his copy of a mysterious book to a safe location on the West Coast of the United States.
The Book of Eli is an American post-apocalyptic neo-Western action film directed by the Hughes Brothers, written by Gary Whitta, and starring Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman, Mila Kunis, Ray Stevenson, and Jennifer Beals.
7. I Am Legend
Robert Neville (Will Smith), a brilliant scientist, is a survivor of a man-made plague that transforms humans into bloodthirsty mutants. He wanders alone through New York City, calling out for other possible survivors, and works on finding a cure for the plague using his own immune blood.
Neville is driven by only one remaining mission: to find a way to reverse the effects of the virus using his own immune blood. But he knows he is outnumbered – and quickly running out of time.
DIRECTOR
Francis Lawrence
CAST
Will Smith
Alice Braga
Charlie Tahan
YEAR
2007
DIRECTOR
Ruben Fleischer
CAST
Woody Harrelson
Jesse Eisenberg
Emma Stone
YEAR
2009
8. Zombieland
Nerdy college student Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) has survived the plague that has turned mankind into flesh-devouring zombies because he’s scared of just about everything.
Gun-toting, Twinkie-loving Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) has no fears. Together, they are about to stare down their most horrifying challenge yet: each other’s company.
Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin co-star in this double-hitting, head-smashing comedy.
9. The Day
In a terrifying post-apocalyptic future, war ravages humanity, destroying civilization and most of life on earth. A group of five survivors armed with shotguns, axes, and machetes wander the back roads of a decimated landscape looking for refuge.
Lost, starving, and exhausted, they unwittingly set off a trap signaling to their ruthless predators lying in wait. With food and ammunition dwindling, the group must make a desperate final stand over 24 hours, battling for their ultimate survival.
DIRECTOR
Douglas Aarniokoski
CAST
Shawn Ashmore
Brianna Barnes
Ashley Bell
YEAR
2011
DIRECTOR
Mike P Nelson
CAST
Kate Bosworth
Tyler Hoechlin
YEAR
2018
10. The Domestics
In a post-apocalyptic world, the country is inhabited by murderous gangs divided into deadly factions. Nina and Mark race across the lawless countryside in search of safety.
As one depraved group narrows their search for the couple, they must work together as they are pushed to the breaking point to survive.
11. Bushwick
Bushwick tells the story of twenty year old Lucy (Snow) and war veteran Stupe (Bautista). Texas, and other states (mostly Southern) are trying to secede from the U.S., and NYC is being used as a negotiation tool.
Lucy meets Stupe after a military invasion of Brooklyn. Together they decide to cross the treacherous five blocks of Bushwick – littered with looters, local militias and the invading forces, in order to get home and be reunited with Lucy’s grandmother.
DIRECTOR
Jonathon Milott
Cary Murnion
CAST
Dave Bautista
Brittany Snow
YEAR
2017
DIRECTOR
Steven Soderbergh
CAST
Marion Cotillard
Matt Damon
Laurence Fishburne
Jude Law
Gwyneth Paltrow
YEAR
2012
12. Contagion
When Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) returns to Minnesota from a Hong Kong business trip, she blames on jet lag. However, two days later, Beth is dead, and doctors tell her shocked husband (Matt Damon) that they have no idea what killed her.
Soon, many others start to exhibit the same symptoms, and a global pandemic explodes. Doctors try to contain the lethal microbe, but society begins to collapse as a blogger (Jude Law) fans the flames of paranoia.
13. The Survivalist
In a kill-or-be-killed world where starvation is rife and strangers are always dangerous, The Survivalist lives off the grid, and by his wits.
When a starving woman and her teenage daughter discover his forest refuge, his loneliness drives him to overcome his suspicion and strike a bargain with them in return for bed and board. The exchange however, becomes an uneasy, ongoing arrangement which threatens not only his carefully constructed world but also his life.
DIRECTOR
Stephen Fingleton
CAST
Martin McCann
Mia Goth
Olwen Fouere
YEAR
2015
DIRECTOR
Trey Edward Shults
CAST
Joel Edgerton
Riley Keough
Christopher Abbot
YEAR
2017
14. It Comes At Night
As the world collapses, a family in a remote home creates procedures for quarantine, how to protect themselves while scouting for supplies and how to interact with strangers.
Touches on a core prepper question: whether to help random people or not, when a desperate family turns up at the door? Feeling backed into a corner, the man allows the family to join his own, but the forced cohabitation rapidly gives way to paranoia and distrust.
15. Rambo First Blood
Sylvester Stallone stars as war hero John Rambo. An ex-Green Beret haunted by memories of Vietnam, he was once the perfect killing machine. Now he’s searching for peace, but finds instead an over-zealous, small-town sheriff who’s spoiling for a fight.
All hell breaks loose when an unjustly imprisoned Rambo escapes and becomes the target of a massive manhunt. Now he must use all his cunning, combat skills and weapons training to stay alive and outwit his pursuers.
DIRECTOR
Ted Kotcheff
CAST
Sylvester Stallone
Brian Dennehy
David Caruso
YEAR
1982
DIRECTOR
Ric Roman Waugh
CAST
Gerard Butler
Morena Baccarin
YEAR
2020
16. Greenland
A family fights for survival as a planet-killing comet races toward Earth. John Garrity (Gerard Butler), his estranged wife Allison (Morena Baccarin), and young son Nathan make a perilous journey to their only hope for sanctuary.
Amid terrifying news accounts of cities around the world being leveled by the comet’s fragments, the Garritys experience the best and worst in humanity while they battle the increasing panic and lawlessness surrounding them.
17. Threads
Set in a 1984 UK industrial-suburbia, as the cold war gets hot, we follow regular people in their daily lives and how they prepare for the coming apocalypse.
Barry Hines and Mick Jackson explains and shows us how the world is interconnected and woven together, each strand in this web is dependent on the others and when the threads start to break, the webbing that hold society together, unravel and we are quickly left with hardship and irreparable loss.
With the lingering pollution from the war, there is only one way human kind can go from there.
What we are left with, is most likely one of the bleakest, grimmest and most depressing film, that everyone needs to see at least once.
DIRECTOR
Mick Jackson
CAST
Paul Vaughan
Karen Meagher
Reece Dinsdale
David Brierley
YEAR
1984
