Zombie movies have had an exciting path to the mainstream. For decades, the monsters didn’t have much of a presence or meaning outside radioactive humanoids, Voodoo lore, and the unforgettable art of E.C. comics. Zombies were barely used, and when they were, they were a pretty far cry from the man-eating flesh-hungry creatures of the undead we know and love today. Then a gentleman and pioneering filmmaker called George A. Romero came along and transformed the game forever.
Romero didn’t discover the zombie as he’s frequently credited, but he did redefine it into a universal idea and established the mold from which nearly every other zombie movie has come up in the near-fifty years since the Night of the Living Dead arrived in theaters. Throughout his acting career, he would continue to develop the idea of the zombie film, first with his sarcastic Dawn of the Dead — a colorful, playful distraction from the dire drama of NOTLD, and then with the divisive and highlight the political Day of the Dead, and ultimately for the rest of the profession. Never satisfied to repeat his previous past work, Romero was regularly ahead of the curve, reacting to cinematic landscapes and the world around him to set new trends.
At the same time, a whole genre sprung up around Romero’s works, traversing the globe. Italian horror legend Lucio Fulci hitting up the concept and running in his own way with it, first with Zombi 2 (aka the Zombie), then with his much more fantastic and experimental “Gates of Hell” trilogy. Filmmakers like Fred Dekker, Dan O’Bannon, and Stuart Gordon came along and toyedand toyed around with the genre constructs; followers of Romero’s work who built off his foundation to farther explore and develop what a zombie movie could be. Then, as fast as it exploded, the zombie went out of style. The creature had become a focus concept in the genre, but outside of ongoing horror series (Zombie,Return of the Living Dead) low-budget fright flicks, and the random genre oddity (My Boyfriend’s Back, Cemetery Man and the Dead Alive), the undead walked the earth no more.
Until the new millennium kicked in and then, hot dog, zombie business wasn’t just booming again, and it was bigger than ever before. The dominoes fell fast. First Danny Boyle‘s genre-evolving the movie 28 Days Later set the stage, then proceeded the Resident Evil adaption and then Zack Snyder‘s Dawn of the Dead remake; big-budget studio movies with nationwide theatrical rollouts. At the same moment, indie zombie movies started getting good, pushing the boundaries of the traditional zombie mythology and using the narrative construction to tell strange original stories.
Then Shaun of the Dead followed, and the genre shifted once again. Edgar Wright’s meta zombie comedy movie was a love letter to the type, a razor-sharp deconstruction of the zombie classics, and also a zombie classic in its own right. The next year, Romero published Land of the Dead in theaters, his first return to the genre in three decades. It was officially approved. If the godfather of all zombies was back, Zombies were unquestionably back. By the end of the early days, there were actually dozens of zombie movies a year (and more of them than ever even had the word “zombie” in the title), and what was shocking was how many of them were worth watching; there were post-modern deconstructions (Cabin in the Woods, Zombieland), intelligent mutations to the DNA of the creatures (Mulberry Street, Pontypool), international films ( eg Rec, The Horde), remakes of foreign films (Quarantine), and animated films (ie ParaNorman), not to mention all the straight-up entertaining the low-budget shlock that was hitting up DVD shelves en masse.
In the years since, the making on zombie movies has drastically slowed, particularly at the studio level. There are still the genre characteristics (Maggie), occasional breakouts (th famous World War Z) and ongoing franchises (Resident Evil), but in expressions of volume and often quality, the zombie movie has taken a backseat in recent years. Is it genre burnout? Did fans tire of the undead the way they tired of Westerns? It is possible but unlikely considering the achievement of one pop culture juggernaut; AMC’s The Walking Dead series, which has triumphed in ratings since it debuted back in 2010. It’s possible the success of that series has a role to play in the way zombie films have withered at the cinema, either because audiences are burnt out or zombie fans are getting their fix at home. Alternatively, perhaps, it’s cultural. Romero created the modern zombie film throughout times of significant social change in the world, they again resurfaced at the height of the recession and war on terror in the early 2000s, and now that we are in the midst of an era of international political turmoil, I have noticed some pretty good zombie films popping up again.
Is another cinematic age of the undead upon us? Only time will tell for sure, but as for now, check out our team picks for the top 21 best zombie movies of all time below.
List of top 30 best US Zombie movies of all time
1.Dawn of the dead
2.The Return of the living dead
3.Re animator
4.28 Days later…
5. day of the dead
6.Evil dead 2
7. Shaun of the dead
8. Night of the living dead
9. Zombie
10. demons
11. Dawn of the dead
12. Pontypool
13. The beyond
14.Night of the living dead
15. Zombieland
16. Dead alive
17. Road of the dead
18. The plague of the Zombies
19. Night of the creeps
20. Train to Busan
21. The Battery
22. Dead and Burried
23.28 weeks later
24. The Horde
25. Cemetery man
26. Planet Terror
27. Rammbock
28. Night of the Comet
29. Juan Of the dead
30. I walked with a Zombie
31. World War Z
seen anything else that deserves our top 30 best US Zombie movies of all time? Let us hear from you too.
