Film

Earthquake

Name: Earthquake
Genre: Action, Drama, Thriller
Released: 1974
Cast: Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, George Kennedy, Lorne Greene, Geneviève Bujold

Disaster
Very dark
Relentless

A 1974 disaster film where an 8.3 earthquake tears through Los Angeles, interweaving the fates of strangers—a marriage on the rocks, a corrupt official, a structural engineer. It's pure spectacle wrapped around human drama: buildings collapse in real time, the score thunders, and everyone screams. Made when disaster films were still tactile and expensive-looking. For people who want to feel something shake.

TMDb rating

3.1

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love old-fashioned disaster spectacle played straight, where a crowd of loosely linked lives collide with a city coming apart and the effects are the point.

Skip it if the characters are broad sketches and the dialogue creaks, so if you need recent-standard visual effects or subtle performances, this 1970s film will test your patience.

What it asks of you: At just over two hours, it spreads its attention across many households before the ground starts moving, so expect a deliberate build and plenty of ensemble chatter.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

The Poseidon Adventure1972

The ur-disaster film. A luxury ship capsizes, and survivors must crawl upward through a sinking vessel. It has the same DNA as Earthquake—interconnected characters, real practical effects, genuine jeopardy—but inverted spatially.

But The pacing is deliberate. If you want the catastrophe first and the human stakes second, this might feel backward.

The Towering Inferno1974

Released the same year as Earthquake, it has Steve McQueen and Paul Newman in a burning skyscraper. That cast, those practical effects, the moral weight of the disaster itself. A masterclass in controlled chaos.

But It's long and genuinely bleak about the cost of cutting corners. Not a ride, exactly. More of a reckoning.

Jaws1975

Spielberg's thriller uses the same template: a mounting, invisible threat that forces ordinary people into extraordinary circumstances. The tension builds the same way. The score hits the same way. The climax shakes you the same way.

But It's quieter than Earthquake. More dependent on suggestion than spectacle. If you loved the collapse scenes, you might want something louder.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Earthquake

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Skyscraper2018

Both use architectural collapse as a metaphor for lives falling apart. Both interweave personal damage with physical destruction. But where Earthquake treats the quake as an external force, Skyscraper makes the disaster internal—built from resentment and revenge.

Not the Dwayne Johnson movie. The Chinese film by Zhang Yimou: a man with a traumatic past must save his family from a burning super-tall building. It's a mirror-image disaster film—not about random catastrophe, but about calculated malice and guilt made visible. The action is balletic, almost beautiful.

But The emotional core is heavy. It's also not easy to find in the West, and the plot requires patience to understand fully.

Dante's Peak1997

Pierce Brosnan as a volcanologist warning a small town of imminent eruption. It brings the same sense of scale and spectacle, with better modern effects, and genuine emotion about what happens when people don't listen.

But It leans harder into melodrama than Earthquake does. The romance subplot might feel heavy-handed if you came for the disaster itself.

When Time Ran Out...1980

A luxury resort built on the slope of an active volcano. Newman, Redford, and an all-star cast against a eruption. It's Earthquake's spiritual cousin in every way: expensive, ambitious, and completely sincere.

But It's not widely available and hasn't aged as gracefully. The effects look like effects. The pacing is bloated by 1980s standards.

The Day After Tomorrow2004

A climate catastrophe film that uses the same broad strokes: interconnected characters, mounting dread, a disaster that forces humanity to reckon with hubris. Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhaal in a world going cold.

But Emmerich's direction is more comic-book than grounded. The science is laughable. If you value plausibility, this will annoy you.

San Andreas2015

A modern earthquake film with Dwayne Johnson and better CGI than 1974 could dream of. It's essentially Earthquake remade with bigger spectacle and faster editing. A bridge between the disaster era and contemporary blockbusters.

But It's hollow. All surface, no character work. If you appreciated Earthquake's ensemble drama, this will feel like a video game cutscene.

Krakatoa, East of Java1969

Both prioritize scale and collective survival over individual heroics. Both build drama from the clash between ordinary people trying to do the right thing during extraordinary pressure. Both trust the audience to sit with dread.

A seafaring disaster film where a salvage ship sails toward a volcanic eruption. It's all ocean swells, practical stunts, and characters trapped by their own conflicting motives. Maximilian Schell, Diane Baker, and a 70mm volcano. Handsomely mounted and completely sincere.

But It's sprawling and takes its time. The 70mm presentation is rare now. If you watch it on a small screen, you lose half the point.

Afterimage2016

Both are about individuals confronting the machinery of their own annihilation. Both use visual destruction—of cities, of identity—as the real subject. But where Earthquake is about surviving an external force, Afterimage is about the slow impossibility of surviving an internal one.

Andrzej Wajda's final film, about a 1930s Polish painter returning from Soviet exile to a country that wants to erase him. It's structurally spare and painfully quiet—a single man against institutional collapse and obliteration. A masterpiece about disaster as ideology rather than geology.

But It is emphatically not a thriller. It is a requiem. If you came for buildings falling and people running, you will find a meditation on powerlessness instead. It may devastate you.