ZOMBIES RISE AGAIN.
With a worldwide viral pandemic and now the release of the film “Peninsula,” we offer our favorite zombie movies.
Zombies are back.
Of course, they’ve never gone away. They’re zombies.
But, with an incurable pandemic raging around the planet, zombie movies are suddenly more relevant than ever. You know that part of the movie where our heroes — and the cops/army/scientists/government/media — slowly realize they’re losing control to an unforeseen force and the best that can be done is struggle to survive in a post-industrial hellscape before succumbing to the horde? We feel their pain.
Lately, there’s been a miniexplosion of zombie movies from all over the world, including South Korea’s “Train to Busan,” Japan’s “One Cut of the Dead,” France’s “The Night Eats the World” and Australia’s “Little Monsters.” Now, with Yeon Sangho’s “Peninsula,” the highly anticipated sequel to his 2016 hit “Train to Busan” — one of the most zombie-rific films ever made — opening Aug. 21 in theaters, we thought it time to put together a cinematic salute to the undead.
In tribute to “28 Days Later” and “28 Weeks Later,” two of the best zombie movies out there, here are our 28 favorite zombie movies. All are available on various streaming services or on DVD and Blu-ray.
1. ‘Night of the Living Dead’ (1968)
George A. Romero’s stillterrifying, low-budget, blackand-white classic isn’t the first zombie movie — Bela Lugosi starred in “White Zombie” back in 1932 after all — but it’s the first of the new-generation zombie movies. Romero created the mold for the walking dead (the creatures and the TV series of the same name) that we know
today and (perhaps inadvertently) infused it with biting social commentary that rings just as true in 2020 as it did a half-century ago. When an African American man survives a long night of zombie assaults only to (52-year-old spoiler alert) be shot dead the next morning by a white sheriff, the movie feels prescient.
2. ‘Train to Busan’ (2016)
Before this South Korean thrill ride came out, many were saying that there was nothing new to be done with the zombie genre. Director Yeon Sang-ho said hold my beer. His first nonanimated feature, the story of a bunch of commuters trapped on a speeding bullet train with hungry flesheaters, is absolutely electric. It proved to be such a global cult hit that it spawned this year’s sequel, “Peninsula,” and an English-language remake is in the works.
3. ‘Dawn of the Dead’ (1978)
Romero returned to his zombie universe repeatedly throughout his career. Yet “Dawn of the Dead” feels very different from the austere “Night.” It’s in color, has a sense of humor and takes place inside a mall instead of a shack in the woods — and is a sly commentary on rampant consumerism. But, like its predecessor, it’s still as jolting as a night in hell.
4. ‘28 Days Later’ (2002)
Danny Boyle’s thoughtful yet scary amphetamine rush of a movie popularized the “fast zombie,” in contrast to the shuffling, inexorable wave of dread in Romero’s movies, where victims slowly sink into a quicksand of sharp teeth and grasping hands. (Though speedier zombies had been seen before in the Italian “Nightmare City” in 1980 and
“Return of the Living Dead” in 1985, they weren’t quite as Usain Bolt-ish as those in “Days.”) As many have argued online, the monsters here aren’t really zombies since they were never dead. They’re average citizens infected with a lab-created rage virus that turns them into super-human flesh-feeders. But — tomato, to-mah-to — that distinction matters little when they’re shredding your face off.
5. ‘Braindead/Dead Alive’ (1992)
Before Peter Jackson decided to clean himself up and make movies about hobbits and wizards, he was joyously rolling around in zombie gore with the best of them. Still, the riotously excessive “Braindead” (retitled
“Dead Alive” in North America) shows off his skills as a fledgling filmmaker, even though all he had was what looked like a $5 budget and access to a warehouse of fake body parts.
6. ‘Shaun of the Dead’ (2004)
Zombie comedies are now their own sub-genre and Edgar Wright’s film, starring Simon Pegg as an ordinary English punter who finds himself with his pals in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, stands out at the front of the horde.
7. ‘Dawn of the Dead’ (2004)
Director Zack Snyder and writer James Gunn took the bones of Romero’s original — survivors in a mall surrounded by zombies — and cranked up the action expo
nentially for this reboot. It lacks the tidal, slow-motion inevitability of Romero’s films but the injection of adrenaline gives it its own personality.
8. ‘28 Weeks Later’ (2007)
“28 Days Later” had a lot on its mind, as you’d expect from any film written by Alex Garland, the man who would go on to give us such ruminative science-fiction films as “Ex-Machina” and “Annihilation” as well as the TV series “Devs.” On the other hand, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s supercharged, frenetic sequel is all about the action — and it doesn’t disappoint.
9. ‘REC’ (2007)
This Spanish movie made the most of its “Blair Witch”-style, found-footage gimmick. The viewers see what was recorded by a news camera crew on assignment in a fire station when the fire fighters are called to an apartment building where a woman is acting strangely. No prize for guessing why. “REC,” the first of four films in the franchise, may be predictable but it’s still tremendously unsettling and bleakly effective. (While not as good, “REC2” isn’t bad either.)
10. ‘Little Monsters’ (2019)
Lupita Nyong’o turns into a fierce, shovel-wielding zombie killer in this often wonderfully witty (and bloody) Australian rom-com about a cheery Sydney kindergarten teacher whose field trip into the country with her students is interrupted by a zombie invasion. Nyong’o’s infectiously energetic performance is rivaled by Josh Gad, who throws his back into the role of a bitter, kids-TV star who loathes children almost as much as he loves booze. Even the movie’s “Star Wars” gags are funny.
11. ‘The Crazies’ (2010)
Arguably the most underrated film on this list is a remake of a 1973 Romero film, and it’s a lean, mean zombie-fightin’ machine that is brutally satisfying. Timothy Olyphant is the sheriff in a small town whose residents have been exposed to a virus, engineered by the military, that turns them into blood-thirsty killers. One thing’s for sure: After watching “The Crazies,” you may never go to a car wash again.
12. ‘Zombieland’ (2009)
Ruben Fleischer’s often hilarious twist on zombie lore, with its rules for surviving a zombie apocalypse — 1. Cardio, 2. Zombie double tap, 3. Beware of bathrooms — proved to be a refreshing take on genre conventions. Too bad last year’s sequel, “Zombieland: Double Tap,” isn’t nearly as clever.
13. ‘Rampant’ (2018)
“Train to Busan” isn’t the only recent South Korean zombie pic that’s impressive. Kim Sunghoon’s swashbuckling, headhewing, period-piece showdown is part “Busan,” part “Game of Thrones,” part “Crouching Tiger” — and all good.
14. ‘Dead Snow’ (2009)
Nazi soldiers buried under layers of ice rise for revenge in this Norwegian-language thriller about a group of med students spending a winter vacation in an isolated cabin not knowing there’s looted Nazi gold in the basement. Tommy Wirkola’s film is loaded with in-jokes — one guy wears a “Braindead” T-shirt while the whole thing is a riff on the “Evil Dead” franchise — and lots of gore. The sequel, “Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead,” is more broadly comedic and, in an obvious nod to global marketing, in English. It has its pleasures, namely Vegar Hoel’s energetically nutso lead performance, but stick with the original.
15. ‘Day of the Dead’ (1985)
As Romero continued to make zombie films, his sympathies — never fully on the humans’ side, considering how “Night” ends — became more aligned with those of the zombies. In this follow-up to “Dawn of the Dead,” zombies begin to develop into more fully functioning creatures who are not just motivated by an all-consuming need to feed. It’s an intriguing concept he explores more fully in subsequent movies.
16. ‘Return of the Living Dead’ (1985)
Despite the similarity its title bears to works of of George Romero, this horror-comedy from Dan O’Bannon has nothing to do with him. The zombies here are fleet of foot and they even speak. On top of that, the film was graced with a soundtrack with some of the best ghoulish rock of the day from the likes of The Damned, The Cramps, 45 Grave and, of course, the Flesh Eaters.
17. ‘The Girl With All the Gifts’ (2019)
It’s unfortunate that this English film doesn’t end as well as it begins. The first two-thirds of this moody, atmospheric story about an intelligent, outwardly friendly girl named Melanie, who’s also a zombie — the creatures are called “hungries” here — is a compelling look at identity, assimilation and the meaning of family in a society being torn apart by one group
trying to maintain control while another rises. Sennia Nanua is phenomenal as Melanie.
18. ‘Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead’ (2014)
“Mad Max” meets “28 Days Later” in this high-octane, bloodsoaked road trip across an apocalyptic Outback Australia. Star Jay Gallagher shares a similar wiseacre appeal with Bruce Campbell from the “Evil Dead” movies.
19. ‘The Night Eats the World’ (2018)
Anders Danielsen Le gives a commanding performance as one of the few survivors of a zombie outbreak in Paris, a potential extinction event that forces him to deal with a variety of simmering personal issues.
20. ‘Paranorman’ (2012) Chris Butler and Sam Fell’s stop-motion animation story of a boy who can see supernatural beings when others cannot, may be the most charming movie ever made involving zombies.
21. ‘Juan of the Dead’ (2011)
That this horror-comedy from Argentinian director Alejandro Brugués about zombies in Havana actually got made in Cuba — whose government is depicted as saying zombies are really just dissidents — is a minor miracle in itself. Politics aside, “Juan of the Dead” is a rum glass full of dystopian fun in the Caribbean sun.
22. ‘Night of the Comet’ (1984)
Thom Eberhardt’s entertaining action-comedy, about two sisters fighting to stay alive after a comet wipes out most of life on Earth and turns the rest into zombies, may not be as well-known as the other zombie films of the era. But it was notably one of the inspirations for Joss Whedon’s “Buffy, The Vampire Slayer” which would come along eight years later.
23. ‘Zombie/Zombi 2’ (1979)
Lucio Fulci’s “Zombie,” also called “Zombi 2,” is full of enough wooden acting, forced dialogue and extraneous female nudity to be typical, ’70s-era grindhouse schlock. But this tale of a zombie invasion of a small island is also surprisingly effective — and it has a zombie vs. shark fight, so there’s that.
24. ‘Planet Terror’ (2007)
Originally released as half of a movie called “Grindhouse” — in which it was paired with Quentin Tarantino’s “Death Proof” as part of a mock double-bill — Robert Rodriguez’s Texas-shot “Planet Terror” was later released separately. Rose McGowan plays a woman who replaces her missing leg with a machine gun to blow away the dead things. Enough said.
25. ‘Warm Bodies’ (2013)
Jonathan Levine’s appealing, if slight, film about a relationship between a human young woman and a zombie (played by Nicholas Hoult) takes George A. Romero’s inclination to lend a human dimension to his undead creations to a rom-com level.
26. ‘Seoul Station’ (2016)
The same year that Yeon Sangho released “Train to Busan,” he also made this animated prequel showing the early stages of the virus that manifested first among the homeless around Seoul’s main train station. More explicitly political than “Busan,” it’s of a piece with the director’s earlier animated films “The King of Pigs” and “The Fake.”
27. ‘The Cabin in the Woods’ (2011)
Drew Goddard’s homage to the young-people-alone-in-a-shack trope gets a special-effects workout, especially in the film’s dizzying final act.
28. ‘World War Z’ (2013)
Marc Forster’s take on the Max Brooks bestseller was a disappointment, but it does contain one of the greatest effects in zombie cinema: zombies building ladders out of themselves to climb walls in Israel.