post-apocalyptic

A zombie outbreak catches a father and daughter on the express service in Train to Busan, with nothing to do but move up the carriages. Mad Max: Fury Road runs a war rig across a desert nobody can drink. Threads stays in Sheffield after the warheads land. You watch people work out what Tuesday looks like now.

It is not a synonym for disaster, or for horror. Survival is the individual case — one body, the next day — and many films carry both, but a lone climber in a crevasse is only that term. A monster loose in a functioning society is horror; 28 Days Later, Train to Busan and A Quiet Place qualify because the society is gone, not because the creatures bite. The apocalypse has to be the premise, not the third act.