8 Best Movies To Watch If You Love The Day After Tomorrow

After 22 years, The Day After Tomorrow is back in streaming charts, and there are several other disaster and sci-fi thriller films that capture that same energy. Directed by disaster movie legend Roland Emmerich and co-written by Emmerich and Jeffrey Nachmanoff, based on Art Bell and Whitley Strieber's 1999 book The Coming Global Superstorm, The Day After Tomorrow depicts catastrophic climate events that ravage human civilization. Despite mixed early reviews, it persists as one of the most beloved disaster movies in history.

The Day After Tomorrow was released in May 2004, and now, 22 years later, it's back in the number one spot in the streaming charts on Netflix. The epic disaster movie's renewed popularity could also benefit other similar movies that explore major climate disasters, isolated yet tragic incidents, dramatic, science-based adventures, and even adaptations of real-world events that need to be seen to be believed. These eight movies are the perfect companion pieces to The Day After Tomorrow.

2012 & The Day After Tomorrow Both Explore Global Climate Collapse

Five years after The Day After Tomorrow, Roland Emmerich delivered yet another global-scale disaster movie, this time inspired by anxieties surrounding the possible end of the world in 2012. 2012, released in November 2009, dramatized the events coinciding with the end date of a 5,126-year cycle in the Mayan calendar, told from the perspective of struggling science-fiction writer Jackson Curtis (John Cusack) and his family. Exploring complete planetary climate collapse, 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow are perfect companions.

While The Day After Tomorrow explores a catastrophic global freeze, 2012 heads in the opposite direction to overheat the Earth's core, destabilizing the crust. The Day After Tomorrow follows a rather intimate story despite its global events, and 2012 does something similar, though it globe-trots the Curtis family as they seek means of survival on epic arks. 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow both primarily follow single family units, making their worldwide events more relatable, believable, and emotionally resonant.

Greenland & The Day After Tomorrow Both Follow Flawed Protagonists

2020's Greenland once again explores an epic global event, but this time the danger is not something happening within the Earth, but an interstellar comet named Clarke. Clarke was originally thought to be making a near-pass of the Earth, but it soon becomes clear that impact will be made, though the Garrity family (Gerard Butler, Morena Baccarin, Roger Dale Floyd) are selected to survive the extinction-level event in a safe bunker. Greenland crucially shows the ordinary human reaction to a disastrous event.

Conversely, The Day After Tomorrow primarily follows scientists and officials, including paleoclimatologist Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid). These different perspectives offer separate viewing experiences that make The Day After Tomorrow and Greenland perfect structural mirrors and fantastic companion pieces. Just as Jack Hall is a flawed protagonist, so is John Garrity, but in both instances, the global apocalypse serves as a crucible that burns away domestic resentment and forces characters back together through sheer survival instinct.

Similarly to fathers Jack Hall, Jackson Curtis, and John Garrity, who attempt to protect their families during major disasters, so does LAPD rescue helicopter pilot Raymond "Ray" Gaines (Dwayne Johnson) in 2015's San Andreas. When a monstrous earthquake devastates the San Andreas Fault, Ray's daughter Blake (Alexandra Daddario) becomes trapped in San Francisco, leading her father and his estranged wife (Carla Gugino) to try and save her. This means San Andreas shares a narrative blueprint with The Day After Tomorrow.

Both The Day After Tomorrow and San Andreas explore the concept of a destructive disaster reconnecting estranged families, just like in 2012 and even in Greenland. Both also include the disaster movie trope of a character predicting the movie's events and failing in their attempts to warn authorities—Jack Hall in The Day After Tomorrow and Lawrence Hayes (Paul Giamatti) in San Andreas. The Day After Tomorrow may be quieter and more gradual in comparison to San Andreas' action-packed story, but they share DNA.

The Perfect Storm & The Day After Tomorrow Released Around the Same Time

Starring the likes of George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, John C. Reilly, and more, 2000's The Perfect Storm is a star-studded live-action adaptation of the events that took down the real Andrea Gail fishing vessel during the Perfect Storm nor'easter of 1991. The Perfect Storm and The Day After Tomorrow both pit their protagonists against deadly torrents of water while representing the two extremes of the human vs. nature conflict. The Day After Tomorrow explores a global event, while The Perfect Storm is far more insular.

Released only four years apart from each other, it's clear that both The Perfect Storm and The Day After Tomorrow reflect early-noughties anxieties surrounding climate change and humanity's relationship with the environment. These shared themes make The Day After Tomorrow and Wolfgang Petersen's The Perfect Storm supreme companions. Based on a true story, The Perfect Storm treats weather as a harsh, realistic, and indifferent physical reality, while The Day After Tomorrow accelerates this into a sci-fi popcorn blockbuster.

Deepwater Horizon & The Day After Tomorrow Create a Harrowing Double Feature

Yet another terrifying movie based on a true story, Peter Berg's Deepwater Horizon adapted the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that caused the largest environmental disaster in United States history. It may seem strange to watch Deepwater Horizon and The Day After Tomorrow as a double feature, but the former examines the extraction of fossil fuels that is partly contributing to climate change, and the latter demonstrates the possible future impact of that very act.

Deepwater Horizon stars Mark Wahlberg as Chief Electronics Technician Mike Williams, who went to work trying to save his crewmates after the disaster. Aspects of Jack Hall can be seen in Williams, while both are also affected by short-sighted bureaucracy and corporate negligence, with the hubris of powerful men ignoring scientists and experts being a central theme in both movies. Deepwater Horizon is a harrowing watch, but one that pairs perfectly with The Day After Tomorrow's more extravagant, sci-fi concept.

The Wave Makes The Day After Tomorrow's Story More Intimate

Directed by Roar Uthaug, 2015's The Wave is a Norwegian disaster movie that takes a grounded, gritty, Nordic-noir approach to the genre. While this is quite different from the blockbuster sci-fi themes of The Day After Tomorrow, the story of both movies is actually similar. The Wave sees the Åkerneset crevice collapse, causing an avalanche and an 80-meter tsunami heading towards the small tourist village of Geiranger. Hollywood brought us a sweeping global spectacle, but The Wave grounds the same event in local realism.

This shrinking of the event makes the stakes of The Wave feel deeply intimate, while The Day After Tomorrow's events are more far-reaching. Similarly, The Day After Tomorrow uses sci-fi to make its disaster far greater, while The Wave feels terrifyingly possible, whether in a Norwegian fjord or elsewhere. Watching them together, however, offers a complete masterclass and education in movies creating ecological tension through the unbridled forces of water and ice.

Twister & The Day After Tomorrow Represent the Best of CGI-Driven Disaster Movies

The Day After Tomorrow and Jan de Bont's Twister form the ultimate disaster movie double feature by exploring the terrifying power of meteorology from two completely opposite, yet perfectly complementary, perspectives. Together, they represent the zenith of CGI-driven environmental spectacle, with The Day After Tomorrow covering cities in water and ice, and Twister pitting a human crew of storm-chasers and meteorologists, including Jo Thornton (Helen Hunt) and Bill Harding (Bill Paxton), against a series of increasingly large tornadoes.

Like other disaster movies in the same vein, The Day After Tomorrow and Twister both focus on isolated groups of individuals fighting for personal means. Jack is trying to reunite with his son (Jake Gyllenhaal) in the former, while Jo and Bill reignite their romance after their life-and-death experience in Twister. Watching them back-to-back creates a perfect narrative escalation—Twister puts us on the ground to chase the storms, while The Day After Tomorrow shows those localized weather patterns mutating into a global event.

The Impossible & The Day After Tomorrow Follow Families Trying to Reunite

Reflecting all the themes of The Day After Tomorrow in an even more heartfelt, emotionally resonant, and intimate story is The Impossible, directed by J.A. Bayona, and based on the experience of María Belón—Maria Bennett (Naomi Watts) in the movie—and her family during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The Impossible puts the Bennett family right at the heart of the disaster, just like the Hall family in The Day After Tomorrow, but depicts their struggles with more realism and a sharper sense of scale.

The structural narrative of both films revolves around a desperate father trying to reunite with his family. Jack Hall attempts to find his son in The Day After Tomorrow, while Henry Bennett (Ewan McGregor) and his two younger sons (Samuel Joslin and Oaklee Pendergast) become separated from his wife and older son (Tom Holland). Focusing on small family units makes both stories more accessible and relatable, while The Impossible is more moving and gut-wrenching given its on-the-ground, immersive disaster, which many actually remember.