The finest zombie movies are evaluated according to how well they use zombies, as well as other elements such as bizarre locales, realistic effects, gore and mayhem, astute social satire, dark humour, or intense tension.White Zombie, the first feature-length "zombie" horror film, popularized Haitian voodoo zombies. Bela Lugosi played a witch doctor.
Murder is a film about a Svengali-like Lugosi using potions and powders to zombify a young woman who is engaged to be married. It's pretty dry, wooden stuff, but it inspired a certain musical project from Rob Zombie.
A group of boaters who get stuck find the zombie crew of a sunken SS submarine on an empty island. Peter Cushing as an SS Commander who looks crazy.
The Dead Next Door was produced by Sam Raimi, who used a portion of the proceeds from Evil Dead II to allow friend J. R. Bookwalter to direct the film. It was a low-budget zombie action-drama shot entirely on SUPER 8, with a combination of cringe-inducing amateur acting performances and unexpected professionalism.
The premise of a United Nations investigator looking for a cure or biological agent to combat zombies is a compelling one, despite the fact that Globe War Z is one of the poorest adaptations of a fantastic source material.
A group of visitors investigates the ruins of an evil Templar monastery, awakening the blind dead, who can locate you by listening to your heartbeat. They are pursued across a field by a horde of zombie Templar knights with swords and mounted on zombie horses.
A bunch of slackers believe they have become supersoldiers after being turned by a zombie-infected military private. The film follows a similar narrative from the viewpoint of the zombie structure to that of Colin, but with an innovative and humorous twist.
In the movie Deadgirl, a group of teenage boys argue over who gets to rape the "deadgirl" next. This shows how sexual the dead can be. The movie is creepy and gross, and it makes the list just because it uses zombies in a way that hasn't been done this deeply in the past 40 years.
Nicholas Hoult's character is a zombie who spends his days in the company of hundreds of his fellow undead at a closed airport until he meets Julie, at which point his previously lifeless heart begins to beat again.
Warm Bodies is a romantic comedy about star-crossed zombies who meet a despotic parent. The most entertaining aspects of the picture are the characters' hilarious friendship.
The movie demonstrates Nyong'o's knack for musical performance, while Josh Gad's ability to be annoying is put to excellent use over the course of the movie.
Students have taken refuge in a remote cabin in Norway, where they are reanimating Nazi zombies and stealing their money. The horror-comedy aspect of the film is just OK, but the special effects and action sequences are fantastic.
Jeff Barnaby's Blood Quantum is a zombie film that strives for the satirical, political edge associated with the genre, and that sinks its teeth deep into the mundane evils of colonialism.
Slither, James Gunn's debut film, was a spoof of B-movie zombie and extraterrestrial films. The similarities to another film on our list, Night of the Creeps (1986), hurt its uniqueness a little, but the movie is nonetheless entertaining on its own merits.
In the game Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, a sonic radiation machine is used to raise the living dead from the earth.
The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988), directed by Wes Craven, is a welcome return to the voodoo-style Haitian zombie and proof that it is still feasible to produce a "voodoo zombie" movie that is at least somewhat serious about scaring its audience.
A nurse goes to the Caribbean to care for a patient who may or may not be infected by the zombie plague and gets entangled in a mystery involving a local voodoo cult.
This German independent "feature film" is barely 63 minutes long. It focuses on Michael, a delusional schmuck who visits his girlfriend's apartment just as a zombie epidemic happens.
In Rammbock, getting sick doesn't always mean dying and turning into a zombie, and strong emotions will cause the full change. The movie also has surprisingly little blood and gore.
A squad of law enforcement officials break into a largely deserted apartment high-rise in order to take down a gang of drug traffickers who are responsible for the death of one of their own. Twenty minutes into the operation, however, a group of zombies appears.
Robert Englund plays a possibly zombie-infected villager, while Jack Albertson plays the town's eccentric coroner/mortician.
A post-apocalyptic zombie picture with flair, Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead is terrifying without being gloomy, expressive without coming across as pretentious, and gruesome without becoming Peter Jackson's Dead Alive or Bad Taste.
The plot of the movie is on an extraterrestrial invasion carried out by parasitic slugs from another world that give their victims the ability to transform into superpowered zombies. It is a risqué and very tawdry horror film that takes place at a college and frequently seems like some sort of zombied-up version on Animal House. The film's setting is at a college.
Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead is a leaner, action-packed, and deadly contemporary zombie thriller. One of the most memorable zombie movie beginnings ever.
Train to Busan, a film from South Korea, is a mix of popcorn fun and family drama. It comes to a close with action and makeup effects that I've never seen before.
In 2007, both the first Paranormal Activity film and Romero's own Diary of the Dead were released. The best found-footage zombie film is still REC, a Spanish film that blends traditional zombie myth with Catholic spirituality.A zombie epidemic might spread via digital phones. This movie does a good job of depicting the situation.
Pontypool is a conceptual and ethereal re-imagining of what the term "zombie" may be understood to signify in many contexts. It is a condemnation of the incapacity of mankind in the 21st century to actually connect with one another and debate matters that are relevant and truly vital, and it is a film that I appreciate tremendously for taking the hard route.
Zombi 2 is the genre's crown jewel, escalating madness and gore. It features iconic horror sequences.
Night of the Living Dead, directed by George Romero, is the most significant zombie film ever filmed, as well as a tremendously influential independent film.
One of the funniest and most suspenseful horror films of all time, Evil Dead 2 is a remake of the first film in the series. This film exemplifies the shifting cultural perspective on zombies in cinema.
Together, 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead set a standard for the "modern" zombie movie and showed that the cultural zeitgeist of zombies could also be used to make people laugh a lot.
Day of the Dead is not as well regarded as Dawn, but it is my personal favorite of George Romero's zombie movies, and it is notable for the fact that it brings science back into the genre of zombie movies.
The conventional Romero ghoul is reimagined in Day of the Dead, which features Bub, maybe Romero's most famous zombie, who has an unique degree of personality and even humor.
Dawn of the Dead by George A. Romero is a major leap forward website in terms of presentation, professionalism, thematic intricacy, and innovative visual effects. It is set in a garish mall overrun by zombies and has classic visuals that subsequent zombie films have sought to replicate or ridicule.