Zombie movies have a long cinematic tradition and have offered us some of the best must-see films in the history of cinema. The zombie subgenre is probably the most prolific genre of the genre horror film: it has produced several hundred titles over time. But how did the zombie movie?
Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel I Am Legend, although classified as a vampire story, had a formidable influence on the zombie category through George A. Romero. The novel and its 1964 film adaptation, The Last Man on Earth, shows a single human survivor waging war on a vampire world, by Romero’s own admission significantly influenced his 1968 low-budget film. Night of the Living Dead, a work that was more adherent to the zombie principle than any previous cinematographic or literary work.
Origin of Zombies
The term zombie originates from Haitian folklore, where a zombie is a corpse reanimated through different approaches, most of which are often magical like voodoo. Zombies are dead individuals resurrected by the magical act of a bokor, a sorcerer or a witch. The bokor is opposed by the houngan (priest) and the mambo (priestess) of the official voodoo faith. A zombie remains under the control of the bokor as an individual servant, with no will of its own.
The Haitian custom also consists of a incorporeal type of zombie, the “celestial zombie”, which belongs to the human soul. A bokor can capture a celestial zombie to enhance its spiritual power. Similarly, a heavenly zombie can be sealed inside a specially embellished bottle by a bokor and offered to a customer to bring healing, companionship, or luck to success. The two types of zombies show duality of the soul, a Haitian voodoo belief.
The zombie belief has its roots in the customs given to Haiti by enslaved Africans and their subsequent experiences in the New World. It was believed that the divine voodoo being, Baron Samedi, would collect them from their grave to take them to a divine afterlife in Africa, unless they angered him in some way, in which case they would be permanently enslaved after death. , like zombies. The modern idea of zombies was heavily influenced by Haitian slavery. Plantation slave drivers, who were normally themselves servants and in some cases voodoo priests, used zombification to dissuade servants from suicide.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, although not a zombie, foreshadows many 20th-century concepts about zombies because the resurrection of the dead is depicted as a scientific rather than magical procedure in which the reanimated dead are more violent than the living. Frankenstein, published in 1818, has its roots in European folklore, whose tales of the cruel undead followed the pattern of the modern vampire concept. Later, significant 19th-century stories about the undead were Ambrose Bierce’s “The Death of Halpin Frayser” and in several tales of Gothic Romanticism by Edgar Allan Poe.
In the 1920s and early 1930s, Lovecraft wrote numerous short stories about the undead. “Cool Air”, “In the Vault” and “The Outsider” all tell the undead, however Lovecraft’s “Herbert West – Reanimator” (1921) helped better identify zombies in pop culture. This series of narratives included Herbert West, a mad researcher, who tries to reanimate human corpses. The reanimated dead are uncontrollable, mostly mute, very violent and primitive; although they are not described as zombies, their portrayal was anticipatory.
The Zombie in Western Culture
The English word “zombie” was first recorded on tape in 1819, in a history of Brazil by the poet Robert Southey. A 1903 Kimbundu-Portuguese dictionary defines the associated word nzumbi as soul, while a later Kimbundu dictionary specifies it as a “spirit that must roam the earth to torture the living.” Among the very first books to expose Western culture to the idea voodoo zombie was WB Seabrook’s The Magic Island (1929), the tale of a writer who stumbles upon voodoo cults in Haiti and their reanimated slaves.
Modern media depictions of resuscitation of the dead generally do not include magic. , but rather the techniques of science such as substances, radiation, mental illnesses, vectors, pathogens, parasites, clinical accidents, etc. An advancement of the zombie archetype characterized computer games in the late 1990s, with their more action-oriented genre and their introduction of fast-paced zombies, causing a resurgence of zombies in pop culture. These video games were followed by a wave of fi Low-budget Asian zombie lms such as Bio Zombie (1998) and the action film Versus (2000), and later a new era of popular Western zombie films in the early 2000s, consisting of films that include lightning-fast zombies, such as 28 days later (2002), the films Resident Evil and House of the Dead and the 2004 remake Shaun of the Living Dead. The “zombie armageddon” principle, in which the civilized world is destroyed by a worldwide invasion of zombies, has actually become a staple of modern popular art.
The late 2000s and 2010s saw the humanization and romanticization of the zombie archetype, with zombies significantly represented as human-like friends and interests. Significant examples of the latter are the films Warm Bodies and Zombies, Neil Gaiman’s American Gods books, Daniel Waters’ Generation Dead and John Meaney’s Bone Song. In this context, zombies are generally seen as discriminated groups who have a hard time achieving equality, and the romantic man-zombie relationship is interpreted as a metaphor for free love and breaking taboos.
Must-see Zombie Movies
Here’s a long list of must-see zombie movies – some not to be missed, others worth checking out.
J’accuse (1919)
The first zombie film in history. When J’accuse was first shown on screen in France in April 1919, it was a fantastic success with the general public, whose mood in the aftermath of the war seemed to be sensitive to the themes of the film. Its success continued when it was exhibited in London in May 1920, at the Philharmonic Hall with a 40-piece choir and orchestra.
In a Provençal town in the south of France, the villagers call for war with Germany in 1914. Among them is François Laurin, a man with a violent and envious character, who he is married to Édith, the daughter of a veteran soldier. François thinks that Édith is having an affair with the poet Jean Diaz who resides in the city with her mother, and sends Édith to stay with her parents in Lorraine, where she is raped by German soldiers. In the end, from the graves of the dead, the soldiers emerge and gather in a large cohort that marches back to their homes. Jean challenges the villagers to say if they have been worthy of the sacrifices of men, and they watch in horror as their dead family and friends appear in the doorway.
Maniac (1934)
An ugly and fantastic film at the same time, Maniac is a true trashy work of art. A delusional film, mainly recorded in a basement, some say is the worst film ever made. A film so bad that it is somehow unmissable.
Don Maxwell is a former vaudeville impersonator who works as a lab assistant to Dr. Meirschultz, a mad researcher trying to bring the dead back to life. When Don eliminates Meirschultz, he tries to hide the crime by becoming the doctor himself and gradually goes mad. The “doctor” deals with a client, Buckley, but mistakenly injects him with adrenaline, which causes the man into violent attacks. In the midst of these attacks, Buckley kidnaps a woman, rips her clothes off and rapes her. Buckley’s wife finds the real doctor’s body and blackmails Don for turning his spouse into a zombie.
Ouanga (1936)
Ouanga is the second film to include zombies, following the 1932 film White Zombie. Black starlet Fredi Washington was cast as Klili Gordon’s “hideous mulatto”, while white star Sheldon Leonard was cast. chosen to play LeStrange, the black boy who examines Adam’s plantation.
Klili Gordon is the owner of a half black, half white plantation that is brought by Adam Maynard, a neighboring plantation owner, who is white. Adam is a friend of Klili, however he fears that their relationship will not go well due to the mixed-race heritage. Klili resurrects 13 black men from the dead to put a white woman, Eve, into a hypnotic trance so that Klili can kill her. LeStrange, Adam’s plantation overseer, is adept at voodoo and casts a curse on Klili by hanging the corpse of a black woman who is Klili impersonating.
Revolt of the Zombie (1936)
Revolt of the zombies is a horror film directed by Victor Halperin, produced by Edward Halperin and starring Dean Jagger and Dorothy Stone. One of the first zombie films, it was initially conceived as a large sequel to the director’s moderately successful White Zombie (1932). Though uncredited, Bela Lugosi’s eyes appear in Revolt whenever zombifying powers are used; it is the same image of Lugosi’s eyes used in White.
On the Franco-Austrian border during World War I, a priest is sentenced to life in prison because he has the power to turn kids into zombies. In his prison cell, the priest prepares to burn a scroll of the secret formula. General Mazovia (Roy D’Arcy) eliminates the priest and takes the partially burned parchment. After the war, an exploration of agents from allied nations with colonial interests is sent to Cambodia to discover and permanently damage the so-called “Secret of the Zombies”.
The Ghost Breakers (1940)
This film ushers in the legendary formula to make audiences scream with laughter and fear at the same time, fun and loud entertainment. One of the best ghost stories ever produced in those years: the amalgamation of farce and horror was very successful.
The film opens in 1940 in Manhattan during a violent night thunderstorm. From the studio of a radio network, broadcaster Larry Lawrence exposes the criminal activities of Frenchy Duval. In her hotel suite, while listening to Lawrence on the radio, Mary Carter is met by Mr. Parada, a sinister Cuban lawyer. He provides her with the deed of inheritance: a plantation and an estate in Cuba. Despite Parada’s objections, Mary chooses to take a ship trip there to check out the property. During the trip, Larry and Mary start a flirt. Later, they meet an acquaintance of Mary’s, Geoff Montgomery, a young intellectual who entertains them with stories of Caribbean superstitions, especially voodoo, ghosts and zombies.
King of the Zombies (1941)
King of the Zombies is a funny 1941 American zombie movie directed by Jean Yarbrough and starring Dick Purcell, Joan Woodbury and Mantan Moreland. The film was produced by Monogram Pictures. Along with the flight scenes, the use of bizarre characters and the slapstick scenes were overlaid with stories of spies and zombies.
In 1941, a Capelis XC-12 transport plane piloted by James “Mac” McCarthy (Dick Purcell) flying between Cuba and Puerto Rico runs out of fuel and is blown off course by a storm. McCarthy, unable to receive any radio broadcasts over the Caribbean, hears a faint radio signal. After a crash landing on a remote island, his host Bill Summers (John Archer) and his black valet, Jefferson Jackson (Mantan Moreland) take refuge on an estate owned by Dr. Miklos Sangre (Henry Victor) and his wife Alyce (Patrizia Stacey).
Bowery at Midnight (1942)
Lugosi plays a psychology teacher by day who, privately and under a false name, runs a Bowery soup kitchen at night called the Bowery Friendly Mission. Lugosi’s character uses his soup kitchen as a means of hiring members of a criminal gang, of which he is also secretly the leader. Throughout the film, among Lugosi’s henchmen, a doctor who appears to be an alcoholic drug addict says he has a secret plan for the remains of the henchmen that Lugosi actually eliminated. The corpses are brought back to life by the doctor. When the doctor leads the unwitting Lugosi into a basement space where the reanimated remains assault him, Lugosi’s character meets his death.
I Walked With a Zombie (1943)
I Walked With a Zombie is the second film supervised at RKO by producer Val Lawton, who in the early 1940s produced a stunning series of artistic but low-budget horror films similar to Cat People and The Ghost Ship. Less eccentric than White Zombie, this film is a prime example of the improvement of the Hollywood system from the early 1930s to the early 1940s, even on the low budget.
The story centers on a young nurse who takes a trip to the Caribbean to care for a client who may or may not be affected by zombies, which drags her into a secret surrounding a voodoo cult. The cult performer, Carre-Four is among the most famous early images of a voodoo zombie. There are some truly amazing footage in this film with the shadows and the imposing silhouette of Carre-Four. I walked with a zombie may be the first historical zombie movie with images that will most likely remain in your memory for many years.
Creature with the Atom Brain (1955)
In this film, the fun of the 1950s is abundant, with all the genre ideology twisted and crammed into an action film, science fiction and even noir. A giant zombie enters an estate and kills a gangster named Hennesy. The bloodstains left at the crime scene are radioactive and the killer’s fingerprints are from a man who actually died days prior to the murder.
Gangster Frank Buchanan, who was actually forced to flee the United States before being expelled, has been betrayed by his own underworld gang members. On a trip to Europe, he discovers former Nazi researcher Wilhelm Steigg (Gaye) attempting to resuscitate the dead. Buchanan funds the research study and takes the researcher to America with the undeclared goal of sending Steigg’s zombies to kill those who ousted him; one by one, they are eliminated.
The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake (1959)
The film stars Eduard Franz, Valerie French, Grant Richards and Henry Daniell. Set in 1959, it tells the story of a curse placed on the Drake family by the Jivaro wizard, a native people of Ecuador, following a 19th century massacre led by Captain Wilfred Drake. For 3 generations, all of Drake’s boys died at the age of 60, after which they were beheaded.
Teacher Jonathan Drake has a vision of 3 drifting skulls. After flinching in concern, she advises her daughter Alison to send a telegram to her brother Kenneth, 60, to tell them that she will meet him on Thursday. Before Jonathan can show up, Kenneth sees a shrunken head outside his window. A tall guy with long hair and tightly sewn lips, like those of a shrunken head, hits Kenneth with a bamboo stiletto. Kenneth dies. The man, Zutai, tries to behead Kenneth but is stopped.
Plague of the Zombies (1966)
Revival of Universal’s traditional monsters (Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy) were Hammer Horror’s main specialty, however the British studio also took care of producing a formidable and prominent zombie film that is remained invisible in the years of its release. Plague of the Zombies works with voodoo zombies, however they’re not quite like those early black and white examples – they look like a real bridge to Romero’s evil spirit, and the visual impact of Night of the Living Dead is quite evident.
With exceptional production design and a scary story about a city that is gradually disappearing due to zombies, it’s a zombie movie worthy of a considerably wider audience. With its stunning Technicolor imagery, it easily matches Terence Fisher’s best known classic Hammers. You can also include aesthetically comparable films like Vincent Price’s The Last Man on Earth.
Tombs of the blind dead (1972)
A girl, riding a zombie horse, chased across a field in broad daylight by many sword-wielding Templar zombie knights, likewise riding zombie horses – it’s something that happens in this movie . Tombs of the blind dead was pretty effective when it launched in its native Spain, a film essential to the horror movie boom of the early 1970s.
The film follows some impulsive and rather stupid tourists who end up in the deserted ruins of the Templar abbey, awakening the blind dead, who can find you by feeling your heartbeat. It’s a slow movie, and not quite on par with some of the Italian classics, yet it’s unforgettable for the fantastic production style, sets and zombies. It also includes a wonderfully unexpected ending.
Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (1974)
The United States is the first country in which there is a tendency to relate to zombie cinema, most likely followed by Italy, followed by nations like Great Britain and Japan. Let Sleeping Corpses Lie is a Spanish-made zombie film, produced in Italy and launched in England.
Here the living dead are resurrected due to a “sound radiation” device developed to kill insects. It’s a fascinating mix of original American and foreign zombies and is a rather underrated title among zombie movies that you won’t easily discover, no matter how much it deserves a look.
Shock Waves (1977)
This film took some time to gain cultural awareness before a wave of American zombie films flourished in the late 1970s and especially in the 1980s. Shock Waves may very well be the first “Nazi zombie” movie.
It’s a slow-paced film for most of its duration, which follows a group of lost sailors who end up on an island where an SS submarine sank due to a Nazi experiment. Hammer Horror icon Peter Cushing plays an SS commander.
Nightmare City (1980)
If you like crazy Italian zombie movies, Nightmare City is the top of the category. It’s a comedy movie: Its zombies have pizza faces with outrageous makeup and an obsession with consuming blood as if they were vampires, due to the fact that the radiation is damaging their own red blood cells. They are different from zombies in that they maintain a certain awareness, enough to pretend they are not infected until they are within a group of individuals to kill. These zombies are equipped to the teeth with knives, axes and even machine guns.
This movie includes shooting zombies, priest zombies, medical zombies, and even zombies that landed a large military airplane. Nightmare City stars Mexican star Hugo Stiglitz as a reporter running around the countryside with his wife, attempting to ward off evil spirits while constantly complaining about the uselessness of the human experience. It all unfolds into one of the most ridiculous endings you’ve ever seen: Nightmare City is a trashy zombie cinema, yet it’s a must see.
Dead & Buried (1981)
Dead & Buried is a completely offbeat horror film that focuses on the reanimated dead, however in its own way. In a New England beach town, a wave of murders erupts among those who travel to the city. Unidentified by the police, those bodies never make it to their graves … yet individuals who look a lot like the killed visitors stroll the streets like longtime citizens.
The zombies here are varied in their autonomy and ability to act alone and pass for humans. The film is partly a mystery, partly a cult story and partly a zombie movie, and includes special effects and blood scenes from the famous Stan Winston. It’s simply a film with a feel of its own and meaningful to some uncommon casting options: Robert Englund as one of the possibly zombified town residents and, in a significant role, Jack Albertson as the town’s eccentric coroner, dominating every scene he is in. To be re-evaluated.
Zeder (1983)
People who have a delicate familiarity with Italian scary cinema tend to understand the greats: Lucio Fulci, Dario Argento and so on. Pupi Avati has made horror and mystery films in the mold of Fulci or Bava: his best known work of Avati is Zeder, a kind of rather unusual horror drama with another special point of view on the concept of a zombie film.
In Zeder we find the concept of “Zone K”, which are places steeped in magic where, if you bury the dead, they will come back to life. The problem is that the dead come back to life with some mental problems. The film tells the story of a young author who is trying to unravel the secret of the K-Zones. It is a well-shot film, with little blood and zombie violence, however remarkable in its images and extraordinary direction.
Night of a Comet (1984)
Night of a Comet is completely a B -movies, but also a clever mix of 1950s and 1980s sci-fi tropes, all mixed together and seen through the lens of 1980s teen culture. When a comet passes close to Earth, direct exposure to some type of radiation vaporizes almost everyone in the world, turning them into dust.
Those couples who got partial direct exposure end up being zombies. It’s a quirky and funny little story in a deserted Los Angeles. The main character, Reggie, resembles a parody of the girl from the 1980s: a beautiful but consummate video game woman who understands comics much better than her ungrateful partner.
Night of the Creeps (1986)
Night of the Creeps mixes the science fiction film with horror comedy: it is an intrusion of alien snails who turn their guests into zombies. Directed by Fred Dekker, it’s a bold and rather tacky horror film set in a college, and has a laboratory science vibe.
The plot revolves around the existence of aliens and an alleged plot to take over the world. In this way, it is as if the zombies were used to make a B-movie with a 50s design that otherwise would have been a movie about aliens. They took the zombies and replaced them for the aliens, with a topping of sex and rock ‘n’ roll, and a cult classic.
The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988)
In 1978, a Haitian boy named Christophe dies strangely in a French mission center as a voodoo ceremony marches outside his home window. Early the next morning, Christophe is locked in a coffin during a funeral. As the coffin is buried in the ground, Christophe’s eyes open. 7 years later, Harvard anthropologist Dennis Alan is in the Amazon rainforest to examine uncommon natural herbs and even medications with a local sorcerer. He consumes a medicine and experiences a hallucination of the same black man from Christophe’s funeral service, in a bottomless pit. There are some amazing images: hairy beasts, victims buried alive, voodoo magic that brings out scorpions in your throat; the scrotum of a boy being nailed to a chair. The Snake and the Rainbow is a reliable hint as to why movies like I Walked With a Zombie scared people off with so much success over 40 years ago, and evidence that it’s most likely still possible to make a voodoo zombie movie. .
The Dead Next Door (1989)
The story behind The Dead Next Door is perhaps among those most fascinating cases of the film itself: it was produced by Sam Raimi, using a portion of the profits he had made on Evil Dead II, to allow his friend JR Bookwalter to direct the low-budget zombie movie of his dreams. The Dead Next Door has an atmosphere of dreamy unreality due to the fact that the film was shot in super 8.
What’s in The Dead Next Door is something special about it too. category: a rough, low-budget zombie action flick, which includes a mix of amateur acting and touches of unexpected professionalism. The story centers on a group of zombie specialists who find a cult that loves zombies. A zombie film that very few have seen, with a strange low-budget beauty.
Night of the Living Dead (1990)
The 1990 remake of Tom Savini never seems to get the attention or recognition it should have. It’s easy to understand on one level: being the remake of a famous movie, it’s truly a faithful remake that didn’t attempt to transform anything in particular from the initial movie. Rather, this remake simply takes the traditional story and transplants it precisely into a slightly more futuristic setting with a larger budget.
A motley group of complete strangers holed up in a house, besieged by zombies, with no hint of how such a terrible series of occasions actually happened. Savini’s remake includes some high-impact scenes, providing a much more visceral variation of the same story that’s more immediately available to a contemporary audience, although sadly the gory stuff has been cut by censorship, which can make this film feel. sometimes strangely neutered. If the title weren’t Night of the Living Dead it would be a classic of the zombie movie genre: it remains underrated.
Dead Alive (1992)
Among the bloodiest films ever made Dead Alive is a New Zealand horror comedy from The Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson. A bite from a “Sumatran rat monkey” turns the protagonist’s mother into a zombie, and from that moment several citizens are contaminated and transformed into furious monsters that must be eliminated through ridiculous and comical ultraviolence.
This is not a film for the squeamish, although blood is used to make people laugh. Launched in its hometown as Braindead and as Dead Alive in the US, this can be considered one of the trashy zombie comedy masterpieces. The results are truly unsightly, slimy or bloody, particularly in the awesome ultimate fight between the hero, a zombie-filled space and an extremely blood-resistant lawnmower.
Cemetery Man (1994)
Zombies, and actually the horror category in general, went through something of a lull in the 1990s, beyond genre offerings like Scream. In Europe, however, non-traditional zombie films still appeared from time to time, of which Cemetery Man is the most significant. The structure itself looks scary and old-school – a cemetery caretaker confronts his Igor-like assistant and takes out the zombies that rise from their graves after being buried for 7 days.
Actually the film is basically one comedy , a dreamy, partly plotless film about the main character who wanders his life aimlessly and wonders why he has trouble doing his job. He pines for a woman who loses due to zombification, in the despondency and lack of identity he has to deal with. It has the creative style and pictorial quality of Italian horror films. It is a film that attempts to do many things at the same time and deserves to be seen to reflect on the symbolic meaning of zombies: from simple meat eaters to symbols of entropy and nihilism.
Dawn of the Dead (2004)
Snyder approached the genre quite enthusiastically. Unlike Savini’s Night of the Living Dead, this is not a homage and a tribute that constantly tries to find the spirit of the initial film. Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead is completely different, it’s a more action-packed and macabre contemporary zombie tale.
The fast zombies are a sign of the film’s energy and vigor, immediately kicking into action with one of the best opening scenes in the history of zombie cinema. This is truly a world that totally goes to hell overnight, as Sarah Polley’s character Ana falls asleep and gets up early in the morning, discovering that all of civilization is collapsing in an orgy of blood. Mall survivors are well chosen, especially guard CJ, who is the human villain at first but then begins to redeem himself over time.
Land of the Dead (2005)
Land of the Dead is the latest film in George Romero’s zombie series. This is not to say that his later Diary of the Dead and Survival of the Dead are bad films but Romero is no longer the same as the previous films and the zombie category has become more competitive. The director was no longer able to use a vital and unique point of view. Chronologically, it’s the latest Of the Dead movie and reveals the outermost level of zombie advancement in Romero’s eyes.
While in Day of the Dead we discovered that particular zombies could be trained, here we basically see really sentient zombies in executive positions, leading the attack on the city of Pittsburgh. Dennis Hopper is the nefarious ruler of the neighborhood, relaxing in the “Fiddler’s Green” skyscraper while the base resides in the squalor of the streets. In Romero, there is always a certain degree of social criticism, and here it definitely has to do with wealth and social class. The film is excellent and includes Romero’s taunts, although it is not on the same level as his first 3 films.
Slither (2006)
It’s funny to believe that the director of a blockbuster like Guardians of the Galaxy started with a zombie / alien homage from a B movie, however that’s what James Gunn did with Slither in 2006. He suffers from little originality. because the parallels are obvious with another movie on this list, 1986’s Shivering Night, but it’s a fun movie.
Like in Night of the Creeps, the action focuses on some sort of alien parasite that arrives on earth and releases a crowd of parasitic slugs that turn the defiled into zombies. This time around, however, the slugs are run by a leader, a kind of hive mind in the form of Michael Rooker. Casting is among the best things about this zombie movie, with Firefly’s Nathan Fillion in a hero role and Jenna Fischer as well. Equally fun, gory and extremely slimy, Slither is no more than decent entertainment.
Ah! Zombie! (2007)
Some indie zombie movies are awful, however periodically you come across one like Aaah! Zombies! which is a pleasant surprise. The film uses a creative and comic style: zombies are unaware that they are zombies. Rather, a group of loafer friends think they actually ended up being soldiers thanks to military personnel who were similarly zombified.
This is achieved through different points of view: when we see things from the point of view of the zombies, the film is colorful and their dialogue is audible. When we see things from the point of view of the human characters, the film is black and white and the zombies are clumsy and uncoordinated. Our zombies, therefore, are something like unreliable storytellers: we see mostly from their point of view, however we are quickly warned that their point of view is incorrect, which is the main source of humor.
Deadgirl (2008)
The 2000s were years when taboos fell, however sex with zombies is most likely still a little too much for a lot of audiences. Still, that’s pretty much Deadgirl’s entire core style, certainly among the most extreme zombie movies that have actually come about. No one had really prepared an entire film about undead sexuality before this one.
The character of the “dead girl” in question is discovered by a few teenagers, most of whom spend their time arguing over who will rape her next. The film is disgusting and actually creepy, as you can imagine, and it stands out simply for choosing a zombie theme that has never been dealt with so thoroughly. Sex with zombies in the future will be synonymous with Deadgirl in some ways.
Dead Snow (2009)
You’d simply be amazed at the number of Nazi zombie movies out there – Shock Waves may have been the first ever, however they never stopped producing them. The first Dead Snow, while not a masterpiece, is the best film as at least in part it attempts to strike audiences with true horror instead of delivering a horror comedy.
A group of trainees set up camp in a remote snow-covered cabin in Norway and unintentionally resurrect a group of Nazi zombies as they attempt to steal their gold. The humor and characterization are scarce but the special effects and action work are first class for a indie film, with awesome zombie costumes and a great deal of explosive bloodshed.
The Horde (2010)
At first, we are drawn into a tense tale of criminals, following a group of cops as they storm a deserted skyscraper to capture a gang of drug dealers. And after a lot of zombies show up and the world seems to be heading towards an end, as police and drug dealers remain in the midst of an extreme struggle. They have no access to information about the world and can simply see how Paris is falling apart. Of course, thieves and police officers think they work together to survive, in a strange mix of ferocious humor and psychological chaos. Zombies look pretty dangerous, although their abilities tend to differ enormously from scene to scene.
Zombieland (2009)
Zombieland is not a favorite among horror and zombie fanatics and “perfectionists”, who don’t seem to consider it genuine enough as a zombie movie. Zombieland moves the action to the US and unites the survivors in a circle of friends. Jesse Eisenberg’s Columbus is the kind of character we’ve never seen in a zombie movie before, even in funny movies: rather unstable, not particularly equipped to kill, however clever and resourceful, he provides a totally different vision. of a survivor. Of course it’s Woody Harrelson as Tallahassee who really takes the stage, like a drifter on a seemingly meaningless mission. Including the menacing zombies, he draws a near-perfect line between the comic violence and the character’s humor.
Juan of the Dead (2010)
Juan of the Dead is considered the first zombie feature film in Cuba and is an extremely positive work by director Alejandro Brugués. Juan of the Dead brings some political vigor back to zombie cinema, with many Cubans assuming that the Communist nation’s zombie problems have something to do with “capitalist dissidents.”
Juan, our hero, tries to take advantage of the panic and confusion by starting a small business – at a cost, he and his team will take care of your home and take care of your zombie. Eventually he loses control and his friends and family end up in the greatest battle against the zombies. It’s a pretty scary, funny and psychological zombie movie that has won many independent film awards.
Rammbock: Berlin Undead (2010)
One of the most interesting aspects of Rammbock is that it understands its own restrictions and does not seek to extend beyond the natural boundaries of its history. It’s a German indie feature length only 63 minutes, however director Marvin Kren was right: it doesn’t really take an extra minute. The story centers on Michael, a kind of deluded who was recently abandoned by his wife. In the setting, you can’t help but compare it to a kind of window to the zombie courtyard, as the characters reverse and observe each other’s life.
Likewise, we are offered an uncommon twist in zombie movies: In this universe, mere infection doesn’t always suggest death and zombification. Rather, it is possible to overcome the infection without being subjected to emotions. However strong feelings will trigger the complete change into a zombie. The extremely low budget is evident in the visual style, however Kren achieves one of the best results in a zombie movie that is also bloodless. Rammbock is a suggestive little zombie story that is told in a different way by the model to become unforgettable.
The Battery (2012)
The Battery is a story about 2 men, a duo of baseball pitchers and catchers, who travel together across the nation in the wake of a zombie armageddon. That’s all. It is a film that is completely based on 2 actors, showing the way in which 2 very different characters deal with the psychological pressure and psychological difficulties of every day to discover a reason for existing.
Zombies exist, however they don’t really look like active villains, so to speak – they’re more like a consistent obstruction of everything these men have actually lost in their lives. It’s a film that almost mirrors the battle of getting up early in the morning to face another day: calling the zombies your neighbors, your co-workers, and so on. This is what zombies have come to be today: a representation of contemporary apathy.
Warm Bodies (2013)
It would be easy to put this Nicholas Hoult movie aside as a simple teen nonsense, however Warm Bodies is more fun than the big horror fanatic can expect. Hoult plays “R”, a rather sad zombie whose days are spent constantly wandering around an abandoned airport with several of his siblings as the last vestiges of his humanity slip increasingly from memory. That is, until he sees Julie (Teresa Parker) for the first time, and her cold, dead heart inexplicably starts beating again. What follows is a kind of romantic story. Julie’s teenage character in a gated neighborhood is the kind of thing you don’t typically get the opportunity to see in horror-focused zombie fiction.
Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead (2014)
Like George Miller’s influential classic, this film comes from a young Australian director with his post-apocalyptic car-centric leanings, the film also includes numerous other twists on the formula zombies. You might think it’s just another low-budget zombie movie with no real aspiration, however every minute moves Wyrmwood to an unexpected area, from the discovery that zombie blood can be used to power trucks to character-centric discoveries of Brooke and on the advancement of hidden psychic powers.
The film is many things at the same time: scary, psychological without being gory and pompous without totally falling into violent farce. Includes extraordinarily engaging characters: Brooke transforms into one of the film’s most significant stars regardless of being a bound and gagged slave for most of the film. Overall, Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead is the kind of zombie movie that many directors would have liked to do.
Little Monsters (2019)
Given that Lupita Nyong’o was getting her Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 2013, she most likely wouldn’t have expected that she would star in not one, but 2 films popular horror films in 2019. Little Monsters is an entertaining zombie movie set in Australia, starring Alexander England as a kid’s slacker uncle, and Nyong’o as the child’s charming and devoted kindergarten teacher. The school trip to the zoo is simply interrupted by a massive escape from the undead, leaving Nyong’o to carry her children to safety, hiding the gravity of these situations from them.
Blood Quantum (2019)
Blood Quantum by Jeff Barnaby is a zombie film that pursues the satirical and political side of the zombie movies genre since Romero’s first adventure in the world of the undead. Set in the early 1980s on the fictional Red Corvo Indian Reservation, which corresponds to Barnaby’s childhood in Quebec, the setting captures the despondency of a place whose individuals have been gradually robbed of their hope and willpower. .
When the dead rise it becomes clear that white citizens have ended up being the walking dead, while the residents are strangely immune. Eventually, this leads to a turn in power, where whites become refugees, to die or live according to the impulses of their native protectors. Blood Quantum is distinguished by a stern depiction of zombies who are not funny at all.