Ever since zombies hit the big screen, they’ve spent decades dominating movies and even more fighting in hordes. One of horror’s archetypes, the living dead , has persisted in popular culture for over half a century, emerging and evolving in new forms and eating away at the collective consciousness. The zombie is a strange being, neither dead nor alive, a former friend turned mindless enemy imbued with the terror of cannibalism. 🧠
The entire Skull World team has come together to bring you a list of the greatest zombie movies showcase! Some are just entertainment with blood splatters. When others are more complex and make us think about the world we live in. Put on your protective gear, arm yourself and let’s explore together in films with the living dead !
Film #25 : Dead Snow (2009)
Tommy Wirkola’s Norwegian horror comedy, which helped define the notion of Nazi zombies at the time it became an integral part of Call Of Duty, combines cinema’s two forms of evil.
When a group of high school students head to a snowy Scandinavian cottage for Easter break, they accidentally summon a horde of undead Nazis when they find a treasure trove of gold. It’s a story that plays with the narratives that chronicle the Nazi obsession with the occult, happily relying on the potential of its dramatic concept. 🩸
Film #24: Planet Terror (2007)
It’s the story of a go-go dancer, a misguided bio-weapon, and Texan townsfolk turned into bloody and quite aggressive monsters . Based on its B-movie roots, with missing reels of film, botched cuts and pretty funny dialogue, Planet Terror never fails to surprise. 🔫
Its sweaty gore effects are downright gross and the film ends with a goofy-amusing finale in which Rose McGowan’s heroine, Cherry Darling, gets her severed leg replaced with a machine gun. One of the cult sayings: « I will eat your brains and acquire your knowledge! ».
Zombie fanatic? Prove it by wearing your zombie military t-shirt .
Film #23: Rec 2 (2009)
This second dose of panic-inducing horror is largely as effective as the first film. She revisits the epidemic-hit building from a new perspective as a team of soldiers with surveillance cameras advance to the outbreak site to secure a sample. 🦠
It’s a more action-oriented but also imaginative sequel with a unique perspective on zombie traditions , with viral infection made worse by a certain religious occultism. It’s particularly impressive how it manages to switch from one perspective to another without ruining the central concept of the first film.
Movie #22: The Dawn of the Dead (2004)
Early in his career, Zack Snyder delivered a worthy reincarnation from a screenplay by James Gunn. Its biggest change is the controversial switch to fast-moving zombies , offering frantic survival sequences with a palpable sense of panic as an epidemic spreads and society quickly collapses. 😵
Some of the film’s ideas are quite impressive and harrowing. For example, what happens when a pregnant woman is bitten by an undead? Many more surprises are waiting for you! ” Dawn of the Dead ” is a suspenseful film that serves as a diffusion mechanism for a scathing critique of American capitalism, where greed naturally accompanies killing.
Film #21: ParaNorman (2012)
A zombie movie, but… for kids! Because they need it too. After traumatizing an entire generation with Coraline, animation studio Laika has now prepared a family-friendly horror film. 👨👩👧👦
Norman, the main character, is an outlaw boy who can talk to the dead, which comes in handy when a witch’s curse calls walking corpses from the town’s graveyard. A chilling treat and a rare zombie film that isn’t gore, but instead relies on understanding and forgiveness to get out of a sticky situation.
Film #20 : Braindead (1992)
Long before he left for “Middle-earth,” Peter Jackson painted the city red with his ridiculously gory zombie film, sometimes hailed as “the bloodiest movie ever made.” Inspired by Romero and Raimi, this zombie movie is a real animated movie.
Set in 1957, Timothy Balme plays the role of Lionel Cosgrove trapped in a sticky place when his interfering mother is bitten by a “Sumatran rat monkey” while following her son to a zoo appointment. She dies. And then she turns into… We let you discover the sequel! 😉.
Movie #19: The Last Girl (2016)
It takes a lot to make a really hot zombie movie. And Colm McCarthy’s film adaptation of the Mike Carey novel is intelligent and thoughtful reinvention with genre horror as a bonus. In this film, the zombie state is the result of a pathogenic fungus that has turned most of the population into « starving people ». 🍴
However, this largely remains in the background of the story, which instead focuses on young Melanie, who receives an unusual upbringing in a heavily armed facility from Gemma Arterton’s teacher, Helen. As a starving “second generation”, Melanie still wants to eat human flesh, but she can also think and feel, and her very existence could be the key to the future.
Protect yourself from the hordes of undead by wearing your”” zombie oxygen mask”” .
Movie #18: Night of the Living Dead (1968)
They’re coming for you, Barbra! With his directorial debut, George A. Romero invented the modern zombie film as we know it. Shot in black and white on a very low budget, the independent film delivered brutal and subversive horror that established key facets of the zombie tradition (bodies returning from the grave that destroy the brain to kill). ⚔️
As Ben, Barbra and others hide from the corpses on a rural farm, Romero reflects on notions of racism in the US, the enduring trauma of the Vietnam War, and the American public’s realization that their greatest enemy may actually be themselves.
Film #17 : Rabid (1977)
A young adult film star undergoes major plastic surgery after a car accident. Whenever men get a little too close to her, she unwittingly stabs them with a spike she carries under her arm. She infects these fat bullies with a rabies virus that brings all of their bestial urges to the surface. 🐗
The fact that Chambers was an actress in an adult film in real life is one of the most important axes of the film. He condemns sex workers, feared by society as carriers of disease . At the same time, the actors themselves claim that they are much safer and more controlled than the consumers of the same films.
Film #16 : Rec (2007)
Rec used the shooting style to get the maximum effect, that of the shoulder camera. You really think you’re there and you’re involuntarily in the skin of the victim! With this epidemic turning people into zombies . Luckily for a report with a shoulder camera, one of Rec’s main characters remains stable! 🎥
Together with the journalist Ángela (Manuela Velasco) they shoot a report at the wrong time in the wrong place. Scary as hell, with an above-average intelligent cast of characters and a time-delayed final role due to the camera’s night vision mode being activated. Hold tight!
Movie #15: Zombie Hell (1979)
Intended as a quasi-sequel to Dawn Of The Dead, Italian director Lucio Fulci’s film is known for its truly disgusting effects. He returned zombie mythology to its black magic-inspired roots. ⚫️
Zombie Flesh Eaters, also known as Zombi 2, follows a zombie outbreak on the Caribbean island of Matul. Like the result of a voodoo curse, with squeaking and shuffling undead in various stages of decomposition, often covered in maggots. A famous scene involving damage to the eyeball landed him in the Video Nasty scandal. And while it’s a cult film, zombie fans love it more than critics. Bonus points for the confrontation between zombies and stupid-dangerous sharks.
Movie #14: The Day of the Living Dead (1985)
The final installment in Romero’s original trilogy, Dead is more meditative than the previous ones, but it’s a powerful film with reverberations of anger still lingering. Still further in the zombie apocalypse , Day finds that the uninfected population dwindles, the surviving scientists and soldiers disperse, and the undead themselves begin to evolve. 🧐
Bub, a real zombie hero, relives the echoes of his past life, with a cognitive function suggesting that not all undead are soulless monsters. Since they mostly play underground, the hero becomes claustrophobic and pessimistic. And the fights between humans result in even greater slaughter than that Presence of zombies…
Movie #13: Return of the Undead (1985)
A far cry from Romero’s seriousness, Dan O’Bannon’s horror comedy delivered a grittier take on the zombie movie, right down to his catchphrase, “You’ve come back from the grave and you’re ready for a party!” 🎊
Return Of The Living Dead is set in a world where the inhabitants of a town are threatened by the arrival of a rather evil clan of undead. Zombies with a very specific brain hunger have the particularity of being able to speak. Slimy and gory, they got carried away by a punky soundtrack featuring tracks like The Cramps and The Damned.
Watch your zombie movie with the”” right glass”” !
Movie #12: The Last Man on Earth (1964)
dr Robert Morgan is the sole survivor of a devastating global plague thanks to a mysterious acquired immunity to bacteria. Now he’s all alone – or at least it seems so. As night falls, the victims of the plague begin to leave their graves and become part of a hellish army of undead that thirst for his blood. 🩸
The 1964 film, in which Vincent Price gives a great performance, is the first-ever attempt to adapt author Richard Matheson’s superb 1954 post-apocalyptic horror novel “I Am a Legend” for the screen. Decades later, “Omega Man” (1971) with Charlton Heston and “I Am Legend” (2007) with Will Smith followed.
Film #11: 28 Days Later (2002)
Purists will say this isn’t a zombie movie. If they’re technically right, they’re also dead wrong. Danny Boyle’s film about a murderous rabies infection reinvented and redefined what a zombie film could be by taking the infected walking idea from the return of the undead. 🧟
This is a poignant work with a rare cinematic quality. Cillian Murphy’s hospitalized Londoner Jim wakes up to find the capital eerily deserted. Not knowing what happened to everyone else. Had the rabies infection not been dangerous enough, Alex Garland’s script underscores that the surviving humans are just as deadly…
Film #10 : World War Z (2013)
It bears little resemblance to his famous original novel, but World War Z may be the only blockbuster about zombies. With Brad Pitt in the leading role, a global reach and a substantial studio budget behind it, Marc Forster ‘s film presents the zombie film as a summer action spectacle with a global epidemic threatening to collapse.
While most zombie movies are claustrophobic, this one is the opposite, offering imaginative widescreen imagery of zombie swarms , hordes of undead running en masse, pushing each other up insect-like mounds, and able to scale walls by sheer force of will.
Movie #9: Last Train to Busan (2016)
Four words: zombies on a train. Korean director Yeon Sang-ho takes this theme and elevates it into a gripping and action-packed horror film . Utilizes the cramped interior and moments in more open environments to enact breathtakingly tense sequences. 🤭
The zombies in Train To Busan are fascinating to watch. Aggressive and animalistic, their limbs and spine contort as they rise to create more victims. The result is an elegant and suspenseful film with a wealth of memorable characters, most notably Ma Dong-seok’s hero Sang-hwa.
This movie makes us ask the question: do zombies really exist?!
Movie #8: Welcome to Zombieland (2009)
With the zombie subgenre heading for a cultural renaissance in the late 2010s, Ruben Fleischer’s irreverent zom-com comes at just the right time. Jesse Eisenberg is a lonely and wary Columbus who does his best to survive the undead apocalypse by applying a set of rules designed to make the audience think twice (check the backseat, double-click on your murders). 🔪
He’s part of a happy family when he teams up with Woody Harrelson’s Tallahassee, the twinkie lover badass, Emma Stone’s Wichita and Abigail Breslin’s Little Rock. With a running time of under 90 minutes, zombie killings and the genius Bill Murray, this is a zombie movie that ends in a real carnival theatre!
Film #7 : Cemetery Man (1994)
Everett’s Fracesco Dellamorte tells of an eerie routine in which a man fights the undead that come out of the Italian graveyard at nightfall, forcing him into horrifying trials of strength every night. As if that wasn’t unsettling enough, Francesco is also a romantic loner. Only when he sees a young widow (Anna Falchi) burying her motorcycle friend does he realize the potential for real society. 🖤
Francesco is soon hunted by the undead in ways he could never have foreseen. Aided only by his mute and mischievous sidekick Gnaghi (François Hadji-Lazaro), Francesco finds himself in a showdown against the zombies .
Become the first zombie on earth with this ghastly “”t-shirt featuring a bleeding zombie head”” .
Film #6 : Re-Animator (1985)
Based on a short story by HP Lovecraft, Stuart Gordon’s re-animator shows a different take on the undead. The unbalanced Professor Herbert West invents a lemon-green liquid that can revive the tissues of dead animals and soon applies it to corpses (for which he is partly responsible). 🧪
The fellow scientists are trying to steal the « reagent », a pile of zombified corpses isn’t long in coming… It’s a swirling, vibrant mix of horror and comedy and a bloody story, even by 80’s gore standards. With a tight script and bravura approach, it remains terribly entertaining.
Movie #5: I Slept With a Zombie (1943)
“There is no beauty here, only death and decay,” says the rich plantation owner. « All that is good becomes dead… Even the stars. » Val Lewton , the maestro of horror was on all fronts when he inserted this riff on the origins of the légende des zombies into the voodoo legend. Director Jacques Tourneur tells the story of a young nurse who is taken to the small fictional island of San Sebastian to look after the plantation owner’s wife, who appears to have fallen under a voodoo curse – a remarkably strange feeling of melancholy and terror . 😏
This team of producers and directors managed to evoke terror through soft music floating in the distance, the wind whipping, or the waves smashing against a zombie’s legs. A character uses voodoo magic to turn the plantation owner’s wife into a zombie. Without having any real idea of the catastrophic consequences that will ensue…
Film #4: Please don’t cut! (2019)
To say too much about Shin’ichiro Ueda’s film would be to spoil its delicious and happy surprises! But suffice it to say that if the first few minutes feel like a particularly seedy horror film, that’s exactly the goal. An irrelevant director tries to make a zombie movie of his own liking while the production is being besieged by real zombies. From here?
Well, you’ll have to find that out for yourself. All we can tell you is that it’s a movie brimming with invention that manages to do the zombie movie in a whole new way while keeping the codes. Destined for cult.
Film #3 : Ojuju (2014)
When a water supply in a remote Nigerian slum becomes infected, the area quickly becomes a minefield of flesh -eating undead. Dad-to-be Romero must follow his survival instincts against his fear when his pregnant girlfriend starts showing strange symptoms… 😩
He teams up with his smart friend Peju and the two try to escape the infested neighborhood, passing zombified drug dealers, their old friends and many others. Incorporating the ins and outs of a Lagos slum gives the zombie film a refreshing new wrinkle. In this context, the premise of contamination in a country of 190 million where almost half the population does not have access to safe drinking water leads to a film that pushes the boundaries of horror and turns Ojuju into a socio-political allegory .
Film Nr. 2: Shaun Of The Dead (2004)
For her first actual feature film, Edgar Wright took inspiration from Romero and Richard Curtis to create the romantic comedy. Simon Pegg is the titular Shaun, a lazy thirty-something who’s forced to grow up, settle in with his girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield), work things out with his stepdad, and give up on his best friend Ed (Nick Frost) when a zombie apocalypse is coming to London. 🇬🇧
The movie isn’t just a zombie movie with gory whiplashes, well-executed jumps and a touching farewell! Showing British humor too, Shaun attacks the walking dead with a cricket bat and hatches a plan to hide out at the local pub. Glorious.
Film #1 : Zombie (1979)
“Zombie” is one of the most unforgiving apocalyptic tales of all zombie stories, with macabre makeup effects that outdo each other. The macabre show by director Lucio Fulci has something particularly primal, even biblical about it. The way the reanimated dead climb out of their graves and then walk around covered in dirt is similar to the idea of a dead human climbing out of the earth 😈
This film bridges the Haitian origins of zombie history with the Roman-style zombies we’re used to seeing. The plot focuses on an heiress who travels to a Caribbean island in search of her missing father, only to quickly find herself in a pack of zombies.
Bonus Movie: Army of the Dead (1978)
If ” zombie ” established the contemporary zombie film, then the army of the dead marks its time too! Bigger, bolder, more confident and this time in colour. The eerie tone of its predecessor is replaced with a rising tide of chaos and panic as the apocalypse unfolds and a group of survivors crowd the local mall. 🏃♂️
While this place may initially seem ideal for waiting for society to fall as it is crammed with supplies, it proves the complete opposite! Zombies are instinctively drawn to the place they were programmed to spend their free time and money while they were alive. This is another piece of powerful satire full of playful imagery. Though that doesn’t stop Romero from telling an intriguing, nightmarish tale that explodes with Tom Savini’s visceral effects, drawing inspiration from the horrific images he witnessed as a photographer during the Vietnam War.
Drink your potion from the right cup! This zombie skull mug will be perfect.