The Top 15 Virus Outbreak and Pandemic Films Ranked by Metacritic Score

The Top 15 Virus Outbreak and Pandemic Films by Metacritic Score

Another week, another round of movies, movies, movies — hey, who’s complaining? Last week, we ranked the Top 10 virus outbreak and pandemic films by box office numbers. This week, we’re ranking viral outbreak and pandemic films by critic reviews via Metacritic. Are your faves the same as the critics? Check out the list. The number next to the movie title is the movie’s critic rating on Metacritic.

Top 15 Virus / Outbreak Films by Critic Reviews

15. Resident Evil – Metacritic score 33

Resident Evil is a huge franchise, starting with the video game and then the series of movies created from it. Unfortunately, the movies didn’t quite become the fan favorites they had hoped. Although the flicks have earned more than $1B (yes, that’s billion) at the box office, they scored low on Metacritic. Like all movies, you’re going to find some critics who love a movie while some trash it. For Resident Evil, most of the comments weren’t favorable. Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert said, “The movie is “Dawn of the Dead” crossed with “John Carpenter’s “Ghosts of Mars,” with zombies not as ghoulish as the first and trains not as big as the second. The movie does however have Milla Jovovich and Michelle Rodriguez.”

14. Blindness – Metacritic score 45

This 2008 film stars Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo and if you can’t get the premise from the title, let me fill you in. One professional suddenly goes blind. He sees a doctor and then the doctor loses his sight. See where it’s going? No pun intended. The movie made $25 million at the box office. Anthony Lane at The New Yorker had this to say about Blindness, “The trouble with Blindness is that it’s so preoccupied with shouldering this symbolic weight that it gradually forgets to tell a story–to keep faith with the directives of common sense.”

13. Only – Metacritic score 53

Leslie Odom stars in this 2019 too-close-to-home movie that focuses on a mysterious virus released by a comet. It begins to kill all the women in the world, so a couple hides out in their over-sterilized apartment. Will they survive? Roger Moore of Movie Nation wrote, “It is a sci-fi parable with performances that click and situations — tried and true as they are — that pop. We can only hope that “It’s only a movie” will be the way we look back on it.”

12. The Omega Man – Metacritic score 56

Don’t mess with Charlton Heston, who stars in The Omega Man, a 1971 movie about American anti-ballistic missiles that break up warheads carrying biological warfare material, killing most of the world’s population. That is, except for U.S. Army Col. Robert Neville, M.D., a scientist based in Los Angeles, who  injects himself with an experimental vaccine, rendering himself immune. Chicago Reader’s Dave Kehr put it simply, “Not bad, but far from a classic.”

11. Night of the Comet – Metacritic score 59

Again, a comet wipes out most of life on Earth, except for two Valley Girls who fight cannibal zombies. I may never look for comets again. This 1984 movie stars Catherine Mary Stewart, Kelli Maroney, and Robert Beltran. TV Guide reviewed it and had this to say, “This is a terrifically witty, refreshingly unpretentious science-fiction film with the least likely and most likable heroines in memory. All the performers are excellent, especially Maroney, who can veer from petulant to heroic in the blink of an eye.”

10. The Andromeda Strain – Metacritic score 60

Based on the 1969 book of the same name by Michael Crichton, the film stars Arthur Hill, James Olson, Kate Reid, and David Wayne. Now it’s a deadly organism of extraterrestrial origin. The movie was nominated for two Academy Awards. Chicago Sun-Times’ Roger Ebert wrote, “The Andromeda Strain is a splendid entertainment that will get you worried about whether they’ll be able to contain that strange blob of alien green crystal.”

9. World War Z – Metacritic score 63

Inching up on the critic charts, the film World War Z debuted in 2013 and grossed an incredible $540 million at the box office. Brad Pitt plays Gerry Lane, a United Nations investigator who must stop a zombie pandemic. Film.com’s William Goss wrote, “An efficient and effectively exciting globe-spanning zombie thriller.”

8. Outbreak – Metacritic score 64

The 1995 film Outbreak includes Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo, Morgan Freeman and Donald Sutherland, Cuba Gooding Jr., Kevin Spacey and Patrick Dempsey. It’s based on a fictional Ebola-like virus that comes to the United States. The Washington Post’s Rita Kempley wrote, “Outbreak is an absolute hoot thanks primarily to director Wolfgang Petersen’s rabid pacing and the great care he brings to setting up the story and its probability.”