new World Horror Wants to Make Zombie Movies Great Again
The best zombie movies of all time
No guts no glory every bit nosotros count down our favourite mankind-eating horror films.
Zombie movies pass up to die. Ever since Night of the Living Dead invented the modern version of the genre in 1968, the undead have risen continuously over the decades, mutating as they get. Sure, there's a well-established formula – some sort of plague infects the planet, turning the deceased into ravenous cannibals looking to feast on the flesh of the living – and plenty of hacks have exploited the template to overwhelm video store shelves and streaming platforms with mindless schlock. Only a rarefied few take institute ways to take the bones mythos and twist it into something wholly unique. Others hit the beats with such mode and freshness, while some are but so energetically over-the-top that they tin't be ignored. On this list, you'll find examples of all iii: from classics to cult faves, zom-coms to gorefests, and even a few that predate George A Romero. Grab some popcorn and board upwards the windows – these are the all-time zombie movies ever made.
Recommended:
😱 The 100 best horror movies of all-time
👹 The best monster movies of all-time
🔪 The 31 best serial killer movies of all-time
The best zombie movies
xxx. World War Z (2013)
The biggest upkeep zom-buster of them all features Brad Pitt strapping on his undead-ass-kicking boots and heading out on a earth-trotting trip to find the source of a zombie pandemic. It all goes a bit awry in the last 3rd as Brad inexplicably ends upwardly hanging out with a soon-to-exist-former Dr. Who in a rural Welsh GP's surgery, simply up to that bespeak this is a gripping grand-scale romp, fifty-fifty if it does skimp on the gore that all but defines the genre in favor of PG-13 spectacle.
29. Dead Snowfall (2009)
A Norwegian blackness one-act that takes singled-out pleasance in splattering snowy landscapes with viscera, Expressionless Snow never fully realises its potential as either a comedy or a horror film. But in pitting a group of hikers against a risen platoon of Tertiary Reich ghouls, it does make a solid argument that the only thing better than punching Nazis is hacking their reanimated corpses to pieces or – in one item worth-the-price-of-access set piece – rappelling down a fjord using their intestines.
28. Fido (2006)
This cheeky Canadian comedy posits a question nobody previously thought to ask: What if the '50s Lassie series ditched the collie and replaced him with a mankind-munching pet zombie played past Billy Connolly. Dylan Baker and Carrie-Anne Moss go total Ward and June Cleaver in the pastel romp, which pairs its gee-whiz whimsy with some serious satirical seize with teeth.
27. 28 Weeks Later (2007)
Like James Cameron before him , Juan Carlos Fresnadillo smartly pivoted from the isolationist terror that preceded his 28 Days Later on… sequel and plowed full-throttle into the zombie apocalypse, reimagining zombified England as an action-packed warzone. The opening sequence in which Robert Carlyle abandons his family unit to the hordes is a clinic in panic, and while what comes afterwards doesn't match it in pure dread, the sequel's Black Hawk Downward meets Romero action is white knuckle enough that you lot'll forget its shortcomings.
26. Little Monsters (2019)
If you like a bit of splatter and some night, edgy sense of humour so this Australian zombie-outbreak comedy – set primarily in a children's petting zoo and starring Lupita Nyong'o every bit a ukulele-playing nursery teacher – will suit your tastes. We see Dave (Alexander English language), a broken man who falls for his five-yr-quondam nephew's teacher (Nyong'o). In pursuit of his crush, he volunteers to help out at a class outing to a petting zoo that, thanks to a mishap at a neighbouring American military base, becomes a fight for survival against hordes of the undead. Amid all the blood and guts, writer-director Abe Forsythe squeezes something surprisingly heartwarming out of the moving-picture show'due south plot, proving that there'south yet life in this genre filled with undead lumberers.
25. One Cut of the Dead (2017)
Nippon'south answer to the The Blair Witch Projectand[REC] (only with a lot more LOLs), this micro-budget horror-one-act did colossal numbers at the box office, despite its bandage of unknowns and helter-skelter approach to the genre. Then once more, zombie flicks often piece of work all-time with minimal budgets and but directorial vim to get on, and One Cut of the Dead has that in spades. Director Shinichirou Ueda presides over a gory, hilarious scenario when a moving picture crew making a zombie movie crash-land into one of the real undead. What's Japanese for 'braaaains'?
24. The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988)
Real zombies! Okay, not exactly. Just A Nightmare on Elm Street director Wes Craven did base his movie – very, very loosely – on a volume of the same name by anthropologist Wade Davis, which recounted his experiences investigating voodoo cults in Republic of haiti. The pic's a fair bit sillier, as Bill Pullman'south anthropologist discovers the truth behind the zombie mythos. Information technology's a lot of fun, though.
23. Night of the Living Dead (1990)
Due to a copyright snafu, George A Romero's NOTLD entered the public domain immediately upon release. The outcome has been a rancid pile of unauthorised remakes across the decades. Only 1 stands out every bit worthy of its name – the Romero-approved 1990 reimagining directed by Tom Savini, the deranged gore-lord who designed Romero'due south nastiest kills in Dawn and Mean solar day . The beats are basically the aforementioned, relieve for a meatier feminist bent that provides #JusticeForBarbara. More crucially, though, the blood and guts are top tier cheers to Savini'due south frighteningly intimate knowledge of human anatomy.
22. Dawn of the Expressionless (2004)
Hot take: Were it called anything simply Dawn of the Dead , Zack Snyder'due south George A Romero riff would be beloved based on the corker of an opening scene alone. With the name in place, though, it seems like sacrilege: a commercial director tackling the well-nigh sacred of horror satires with only the barest thread of anti-consumerism commentary present. Still somehow, Snyder'due south Dawn of the Dead works as a kinetic zombie-action picture show soaked with gore and sporting wholly likeable survivors, courtesy of screenwriter James Gunn. Snyder would whiff on his return to the genre with the godawful Regular army of the Dead , proving that perhaps the director is meliorate off with a big studio calling the shots.
21. The Happiness of the Katakuris (2001)
This sing-along zombie apocalypse, one of a mind-boggling 7 movies Japanese director Takashi Miike released in 2001, may not have the sticking power of Audience. But any motion picture inspired every bit by Night of the Living Expressionless and The Sound of Music deserves your attention. Yes, the zombies practise sing.
20. The Girl With All The Gifts (2016)
This enigmatic British zombie movie starts brilliantly, with a group of manifestly placid kids strapped into wheelchairs in a military facility. They are 'hungries', infected with the affliction that has wiped out almost all of humanity – and at the first whiff of blood they go ravenously insane. The Girl With All the Gifts can't quite sustain its initial promise, but immature star Sennia Nanua is ferociously brilliant.
19. The Plague of the Zombies (1966)
It was merely made 2 years earlier Night of the Living Dead, only this likeable Hammer Studios endeavor could've come from a different century. In a cosy little nineteenth-century Cornish hamlet, mysterious happenings are itinerant. It soon transpires that the local laird has been creating undead slaves to work in his tin mine, which is a novel approach to labour laws if aught else.
xviii. Zombieland (2009)
Sure, zombie movies may be filled with guts and gore and people getting ripped, graphically, in two. But there'south something about those goofy, shuffling bastards that'southward just inherently comical. This activeness comedy set in a post-apocalyptic America is hardly original, but it breezes by on amuse, aided past arguably the starriest bandage ever assembled for a zom-com – Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, Jesse Eisenberg and a very dead Bill Murray.
17. White Zombie (1932)
Non just the inspiration for a metal ring, this eerie oddity is mostly considered to be the very beginning zombie film Рand boy, did they do things differently in those days. Forget all that groaning, flesh-eating and really being expressionless. This features a Haitian voodoo priest Рplayed, naturally, by B̩la Lugosi Рwho drugs his victims and turns them into zombie slaves.
xvi. Nighttime of the Comet (1984)
This witty sci-fi romp is the picture equivalent of a Cyndi Lauper song, following two airhead California girls who manage to survive when a comet destroys most of humanity and turns the rest into crazed zombies. If it sounds dumb, it isn't; the writers slipped in all kinds of barbed putdowns and wry gags about consumer culture. Romero should accept been flattered.
fifteen. Re-Animator (1985)
This moving picture mayhap stretches the definition just a little fleck. Stuart Gordon's witty and OTT splat-com, loosely based on an HP Lovecraft tale, stars the mighty Jeffrey Coombs as an oddball scientist who invents a serum that tin can bring the dead back to life. Merely this lot are not all chompy and brain-dead; they're more than similar Frankenstein creations – so should we have put erstwhile commodities-neck himself in here also? It's a genre quandary, merely any alibi to gloat Re-Animator works for us.
14. ParaNorman (2012)
This kid-friendly zombie moving-picture show from honor-winning Oregon animation house Laika goes light on gore and big on heart and plenty of references to much more than developed films. An outcast at school, cheers to his electro-shock hairdo and honey of all things horror, young Norman Babcock'southward ability to convene with spirits makes him the but hope for saving his hometown from a witch's curse that causes the dead to rise. It'south a supernatural caper not far removed from an old Scooby-Doo episode, and an excellent gateway into the zombie genre for little horror fiends.
13. 28 Days Later… (2002)
Danny Boyle'due south gritty British zombie film pulled audiences right in two. For some, its brave new world of running zombies revived an bilious genre, while the shots of an eerily empty London were unforgettable. Others pointed out that, sprinting flesh-eaters aside, it added little to Night of the Living Dead director George A Romero's decades-old template. 20 years later, though, it's an established classic.
12. Zombie Mankind Eaters (1979)
Zombie vs. shark! That's but one of the myriad delights in this gruesome offering from gore icon Lucio Fulci. Sold in Europe as a sequel to Dawn of the Dead (despite featuring none of the aforementioned bandage, coiffure, or anything except the zombies), Fulci'southward picture show returns the zombie moving picture to its spiritual dwelling in the Caribbean, where the dead take mysteriously begun to rise. The eye-gouging scene is about equally nasty every bit horror gets – and the dour ending is a killer.
11. The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (1974)
Also released equally Allow Sleeping Corpses Lie, this wonderfully odd motion picture was produced in Italy, directed by a Spaniard and is set largely in the Lake District (sorry Manchester, the title'due south a bit of a con). Here the zombies are resurrected by state-of-the-art ultrasonic farming equipment and unleashed to wreak havoc in the Windermere area. It sounds silly, merely the earnest performances, beautiful landscape photography and sudden, shocking gore mean the laughs tend to stick in the throat. The opening theme is a belter, too.
10. I Walked with a Zombie (1943)
Another one-time-school zombie movie, assail the island of Republic of haiti and featuring voodoo rituals and living expiry rather than hordes of entrail-munching shufflers. The director is Jacques Tourneur, the French master filmmaker behind Out of the By and True cat People, so this is an unusually atmospheric and bewitching horror film – filled with pale-skinned maidens wandering through misty groves in the moonlight.
9. Day of the Dead (1985)
The last in George A Romero's original zombie trilogy may suffer in comparison to Dark… and Dawn…, just it's a close-run matter. What Day of the Dead lacks in spiky political satire information technology more than than makes upwardly for in blunt emotional strength, every bit the last survivors of the zombie plague hole upwardly in an hugger-mugger military compound and begin to tear each other autonomously. Romero would reboot the franchise with the solid Country of the Dead in 2005, but would never recapture the raw power of his original 3.
![[•Rec] (2007)](https://media.timeout.com/images/103803268/750/562/image.jpg "[•Rec] (2007)")
8. [•Rec] (2007)
Afterwards watching this Castilian constitute-footage horror (and its delightfully unhinged sequels), you lot might recollect twice about your next holiday to Barcelona. Following a grouping of firemen and a moving-picture show coiffure stuck in an apartment edifice, things speedily descend into encarmine chaos. The claustrophobic nature of its single location, as well as the terrifying night-vision sequences and unexpected supernatural elements, volition get out you lot chilled to the core. This is zombie-horror at its most inventive, gripping and scary.
7. Braindead (1992)
Like Evil Dead on mescaline-spiked custard – don't forget the side of rotted ear – Peter Jackson's second practice in excessive splatter is so over-the-top gory that even those with weak stomachs will eventually acclimatize to the ooze and viscera, terminate dry-heaving and start laughing deliriously. That'due south precisely the intent. Prepare in a quaint New Zealand suburb, the silly premise begins with a 'Sumatran rat monkey' whose bite turns a sweet, shy local available'due south mother into a ravenous, flesh-craving monster. Information technology'due south a secret the available must go along from the object of his affection, even as damn almost the entire village gradually catches the plague. Its balls-out, lawnmower-intensive finale makes even the next-nigh-disgusting movie on this list look similar an episode of Double Dare by comparison.
half dozen. The Beyond (1981)
At the opposite end of the spectrum from Romero's gritty, blue-collar zombie trilogy is the loosely linked Gates of Hell sequence by Italian gore maestro Lucio Fulci: City of the Living Dead, The House By the Cemetery and this unforgettable apocalyptic breadbasket-churner. Shot in the Louisiana bayou, The Beyond feels equally much similar a fever dream as a flick: tarantulas tear off people'south eyelids, women starting time to bleed for no reason and reanimated corpses elevate the innocent down into the depths of the pit. Starkly cute but utterly horrifying, this is a singular work of the imagination.
five. Railroad train to Busan (2016)
Korean zombies! On a train! This fierce, fast and frenetic splatter moving picture takes the template established by George A Romero in Dark of the Living Dead, in which a group of survivors retreat into an enclosed infinite to repel zombie attacks, and sets the whole thing in motion. Original it ain't. Stupendously entertaining information technology nigh definitely is. The sequel,Peninsula, couldn't alive upwardly to the commotion of the original. Fingers crosses that the inevitable American remake – helmed, in an inspired option, byThe Night Comes for Usmadman Timo Tjahjanto – can deliver the gory appurtenances.
4. The Return of the Living Dead (1985)
The first outright zom-com, this is a glorious slice of splatter-punk in which a vat of military-course toxic waste material causes the residents of a pocket-sized boondocks to transform into flesh-hungry crazies; only the local teenage dropouts tin can terminate them. Written and directed by Alien co-creator Dan O'Bannon, it'due south hardly high art, but it is encarmine entertaining. It's also i of the most influential post-Romero zombie flicks: This is the first pic to specify that the undead adopt braaaaains, with i particularly gloopy ghoul explaining (yes, these zombies areloquacious) that they are the only cure for the pain of being dead.
3. Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Edgar Wright's 'rom-zom-com' fabricated a star of Simon Pegg and a cult hero of its director. Playing the Romero trilogy for big, very British laughs, the flick manages to balance outright silliness and surprisingly tough gore with just a hint of romance around the edges. All those zombie parades that go on taking over London? It's Pegg and Wright's fault.
ii. Nighttime of the Living Expressionless (1968)
1 of the most essential and influential horror films of all time, George A Romero'southward hugely successful first statement on the zombie miracle set the template that endures to this day: the dead rise; a grouping of people take shelter in a remote location; everyone dies horribly. But this isn't just a near-perfect fear movie. An independent production shot guerrilla-mode on handheld cameras, Night opened the door for every ambitious no-budget filmmaker since, and proved that mass audiences could tummy 'unsatisfying' endings. The casting of a black actor as the lead was a bold move, but the picture show is peppered with radical moments – in one scene, a child literally eats her parents. It's hauntingly beautiful, too.
one. Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Night of the Living Expressionless changed cinema forever – but Romero'southward first sequel Dawn of the Expressionless is the better film, by a severed nose. As the zombie apocalypse gathers pace, four mismatched center-class survivors pigsty up in a giant out-of-town shopping mall to expect it out. But the undead adore this place, and they proceed coming dorsum. Subsequently one of the nearly grindingly intense opening acts in horror, the motion-picture show abruptly switches grade and becomes an upbeat adventure motion picture, then a graphic symbol comedy, then a topical satire, then it's back to splat for the awe-inspiring finale. The pacing is perfect, the script crackles, the score (past Italian prog legends Goblin and horror maestro Dario Argento) hums and squeaks and pounds, the performances are bang-on and the satire cuts like a scalpel. .
An email you lot'll really love
🙌 Crawly, y'all're subscribed!
Thanks for subscribing! Look out for your starting time newsletter in your inbox before long!
Source: https://www.timeout.com/film/the-best-zombie-movies
0 Response to "new World Horror Wants to Make Zombie Movies Great Again"
Post a Comment