Sick flicks

With diseased dystopias

break flicks, the thriller takes place in a postapocalyptic world in which a genetically reengineered vaccine yields dire results, killing the bulk of humanity and turning nearly everyone else into bloodthirsty mutants.

Will Smith stars as potentially the only uninfected person left on the planet who aims to find a cure — and other humans who haven’t been killed or sickened.

“World War Z” (2013):

Sharing some similarities with “I Am Legend,” the Brad Pitt-led “World War Z” is set in a world where a virus turns infected people into savage zombies.

Pitt, who plays a former investigator for the United Nations, works to figure out a vaccine for the ailment, which ravages the United States and beyond.

“12 Monkeys” (1990):

The star-studded sci-fi film involves Bruce Willis’ character traveling from a dystopian future in 2035 back to the early 1990s in hopes of finding the cure to a virus that destroyed the bulk of the population.

The pandemic is believed to have been spread by a group known as the Army of the Twelve Monkeys. Pitt also has a supporting role in the film. “The Andromeda Strain” (1971): An earlier entry to the rampant disease genre, the movie focuses on a mysterious organism from space that reaches the United States and causes widespread illnesses and deaths.

The movie, which stars Arthur Hill, James Olson, David Wayne and Paula Kelly, is based on a book by the same name that came out two years earlier.