Top 5: Zombie Films
The zombie has been haunting cinemas off and on since the 1930s (with Victor Halperin’s White Zombie), and it shows no signs of stopping (even though it seems more and more like they’ve run out of room to expand or grow). While they’ve certainly become oversaturated in our post-Walking Dead world, we are always down to devour films about the living dead — particularly the really great ones that define the genre and use them in interesting or meaningful ways.
Join us as we get full on the BRAINS of the tastiest films the sub-genre has to offer. Below are our picks for the best zombie films of all time.
5: Shaun of the Dead (2004)
A loving riff on George A. Romero’s seminal Dawn of the Dead, Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead is easily one of the greatest parodies ever made. Clever, charming, and effortlessly cool (in that nerdy sorta way), the film gives fans everything they could want from a zombie film, plus a hearty dose of side-splitting British comedy. The first feature film collaboration between Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost, Shaun of the Dead is notably zippy in its pacing, featuring many of Wright’s signature edits, and has one of the best bromances in all of zombie history. The dynamic between Pegg’s Shaun and Frost’s Ed gives the film its pulse, and their real-life friendship makes their film relationship all the more palpable. Pegg gives Shaun a lot of pathos, and you actively root for him to save the day. The film smartly focuses on its living characters more so than the undead, using its zombies more as an obstacle that complicates its characters aimless existence and romantic troubles. At a time when zombies seem to have ran their course, Shaun of the Dead injected new life into the rigor mortised sub-genre and continues to delight audiences to this day.
4: Dead Alive, AKA Braindead (1992)
Before Peter Jackson was frolicking about the Shire and creating massively intricate and sprawling fantasy epics, he going through a “Splatter phase.” Braindead (or Dead Alive as it’s titled in North America) is Jackson’s hyper-stylized and uber-gory zombie comedy, and it has an enduring legacy as one of the goriest movies ever made (reportedly, its climatic battle with the lawn mower used as much as 79 gallons of fake blood). It’s a film that’s wholly dedicated to being as gory and excessive as possible, and Jackson finds highly inventive and hilarious ways to revel in the bloodshed and viscera. Plot-wise, it’s very simple; a young man living with his overbearing mother tries to protect his mother after she becomes zombified after being bitten by a hybrid rat-monkey creature. Of course, mother’s desire for human flesh complicates things, and soon, the townsfolk are all dead and infected with the virus, which leads to some glorious gory scenes of pure mayhem. The film’s mother-son relationship gives the film a unique slant, and it likely made an impact on Simon Pegg, who has cited the film as one of the main influences for Shaun of the Dead.
3: Return of the Living Dead (1985)
With so many zombie films mindlessly following in Romero’s footsteps, it’s completely refreshing to see a film, like Dan O’Bannon’s zombie masterpiece, Return of the Living Dead, that just straight up throws Romero the finger. Thoroughly punk AF, O’Bannon throws out the Romero rulebook and takes his film in a radically different direction. No longer do zombies mindless shuffle about craving human flesh; RotLD’s zombies run and are only interested in one thing: BRAINS! To make their ravenous desire more bone chilling, O’Bannon gives his undead some empathy: they only desire brains because it’s the only thing that provides temporary relief from the agony of being dead. You may be asking, how do we know that brains momentarily take the pain of being dead away? That’s because O’Bannon’s zombies also talk, which makes their condition heartbreakingly understood and also leads to some quality moments of comedy (like when zombies use the paramedic and police radios to request more responders for consumption). Overflowing with 80s silliness, RotLD subverts the zombie tropes you know while ribbing the zombie king on his own turf.
2: 28 Days Later (2002)
In a post-pandemic world, no zombie film has aged quite as beautifully as Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later. With the COVID-19 virus wreaking havoc all over the globe for the better part of a year, it’s all too easy to see how devastating any potentially deadly outbreak could be, let alone a zombie-esque epidemic. In the film, a highly contagious, rage-inducing virus is accidentally unleashed by a group of animal activists, and it lays ruin to Great Britain. Our protagonist, Jim (Cillian Murphy), wakes up from a coma to find his nation an eerie ghost town, and as he navigates the strange new landscape, we learn more about the virus and its effects. The film deftly combines humanist drama, political allegory, and zombies into one tasty cinematic concoction. It revitalized the popular interest in the sub-genre and called back to the fast zombie, which was first depicted Umberto Lenzi’s underwhelming Nightmare City (1980) and later done with much more panache in Dan O'Bannon's The Return of the Living Dead. The film was notably shot using digital cameras (the Canon XL1), but Boyle and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle give the film a gritty, grainy look that harks back to the films of the 70s. Also, the way Boyle uses locations (namely the barren UK landscapes and the soldier’s mansion estate) is remarkable and also conjures up a 70s spirit. All in all, aces abound.
1: Night of the Living Dead (1968) // Dawn of the Dead (1978)
No surprise here, right?! Romero is the undisputed king of zombies, and he casts a long and nearly inescapable shadow over the sub-genre. He could have easily occupied a few slots on this list, so we lumped his two most quintessential offerings into one slot to maximum inclusion.
1968’s Night of the Living Dead was a groundbreaking success that laid the framework for zombie films and proved how lucrative a horror hit could be (Paul McCullough of Take One called it the "most profitable horror film ever ... produced outside the walls of a major studio"). Notably for its grainy black-and-white cinematography that recalled the B&W images that infiltrated American’s homes with the Vietnam War coverage (which featured a lot of grisly images that probably shouldn’t have ever been televised, let alone to the mainstream), and its subversive use of its black hero — whose grim fate hit with extra resonance with Malcolm X and Martin Luther King’s assassinations fresh in American’s minds. After cutting ties with co-creator John Russo over creative differences, Romero would branch out on his own and eclipse his previous effort a decade later with the granddaddy of all zombie films, Dawn of the Dead. A satirical examination of modern consumer culture, Dawn of the Dead broadens the world of NotLD. We see more of the widespread impact of the zombie outbreak, and the toll it takes on its survivors. Romero hilariously illustrates how capitalism and materialism have consumed us in life and death; we are so bound to the repetition and monotony of normal life that we inevitably amble back to it in death. Dawn of the Dead has it all; it’s funny, it’s terrifying, it’s clever, AND it features some truly legendary gore for special effects guru Tom Savini.
What do you think? We want to know. Share your thoughts and feelings in the comments section below, and as always, remember to viddy well!