Mike Dougherty Gives a Sci-Fi/Horror Guide to Pandemics

It’s fair to say that many of us were not emotionally or mentally prepared for the COVID-19 pandemic once it hit. Unless of course you’re a horror and sci-fi movie nerd. In that case, the last few months have all felt eerily familiar. The panic, the quarantining, the sense of ever encroaching dread. The denial from the people in charge until its too late. We’ve watched stuff like this on our movie and television screens for decades in many of our favorite films.

Now Michael Dougherty, director of Godzilla: King of the Monsters and the cult classic Trick ‘r Treat, has created an incredible edit of some of the greatest movie moments that feel a little too similar to real life in these coronavirus times. Dougherty made the video together with editor Evan Gorski, and called Everything I Need to Know to Survive COVID-19 I Learned by Watching Sci-Fi and Horror Movies. This 3 1/2 minute video has moments from some of the greatest genre movies of all time. It all plays to Gloria Gaynor’s disco classic “I Will Survive,” appropriately enough.

Chances are, one of your favorite movies found its way into in this edit. Lots of Apocalyptic classics like Night of the Living Dead, The Mist, Shaun of the Dead, The Birds, and more are of course included. And of course, the Mayor from Jaws shows up here, for rather obvious reasons. I don’t think I need to explain. But there are some out-of-left-field choices in here as well. Movies you’d never think would relate to our current circumstances, but totally do. Demolition Man, I’m lookin’ at you.

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Twentieth Century Fox

But something almost most of these horror and sci-fi movies always have is that there are always survivors. Someone always makes it out alive at the end. So maybe our lesson from this video should be “Let’s all be like Ellen Ripley from Alien here.” And just like her, we will survive. Pandemic, schmandemic.

Featured Image: Twentieth Century Fox