Since the advent of zombies on the big screen, they’ve dominated movies for decades, making their way in hordes. One of horror’s archetypes, the undead, has endured in popular culture for over fifty years, emerging and evolving in new forms, sinking into the collective consciousness. The zombie is a strange being, neither dead nor alive, a former friend turned brainless foe, imbued with the terror of cannibalism. 🧠
The whole team at our online store has come together to present you with a unique list of the greatest zombie movies! Some are simple, blood-splattering entertainments, while others are more complex, leading us to reflect on the world we live in. Equip yourself, arm yourself and let’s set off together to discover films with the undead! 🔥THE MOST POPULAR PRODUCTS🔥
Movie #25: Dead Snow (2009)
Tommy Wirkola’s Norwegian horror-comedy, which helped popularize the idea of Nazi zombies becoming a staple of Call Of Duty, combines cinema’s two forms of nastiness.
When a group of students go on Easter vacation to a snowy Scandinavian cabin, they accidentally unleash a horde of Nazi undead when they discover a treasure trove filled with gold. It’s a story that plays on tales of the Nazis’ obsession with the occult, while reveling in the potential of its dramatic concept. 🩸
Movie #24: Planet Terror (2007)
This is the story of a gogo dancer, a biological weapon gone wrong and Texan townsfolk transformed into bloody, rather aggressive monsters. Drawing on its B-movie roots, with missing reels, messed-up edits and some rather amusing dialogue, Planet Terror doesn’t fail to surprise. 🔫
Its gore and disgusting effects are downright repulsive, and the film ends on a stupidly amusing finale where Cherry Darling, the character played by Rose McGowan, replaces her severed leg with a machine gun. One of the cult lines is, “I’ll eat your brains and acquire your knowledge!”
Movie #23: Rec 2 (2009)
This second dose of panic-attack-inducing horror is every bit as effective as the first film. It revisits the building affected by the epidemic from a fresh perspective, as a team of soldiers equipped with surveillance cameras head to the site of the outbreak to retrieve a sample. 🦠
This is a more action-driven sequel, but also an idea-driven one, with a unique perspective on zombie lore, the viral infection exacerbated by religious occultism. It’s particularly impressive to switch from one perspective to another without ruining the central concept of the first film.
Movie #22: Dawn of the Dead (2004)
Early in his career, Zack Snyder delivered a worthy reincarnation from a James Gunn script. The biggest change made was the controversial introduction of fast-moving zombies, offering frenetic survival sequences with a palpable sense of panic as an epidemic spreads and society rapidly collapses. 😵
Some of the film’s ideas are simply impressive and overwhelming. For example, what happens when a pregnant woman is bitten by the undead? Many more surprises await you! “Dawn of the Dead” is a suspenseful film that serves as a vehicle for a scathing critique of American capitalism, where greed naturally accompanies slaughter.
Movie #21: ParaNorman (2012)
A zombie movie, but… for kids! Because we need them too. After traumatizing an entire generation with Coraline, animation studio Laika brings us a family horror film. 👨👩👧👦
Norman, the main character, is an ostracized boy who can talk to the dead, which comes in handy when a witch’s curse awakens walking corpses from the town cemetery. Scary fun and a rare zombie movie that’s not gory, but rather relies on understanding and forgiveness to resolve a difficult situation.
Movie #20: Braindead (1992)
Long before his departure for “middle-earth”, Peter Jackson painted the town red with his ridiculously bloody zombie film, often considered the “goriest film ever made”. Inspired by Romero and Raimi, this zombie movie is a true work of animation.
Set in 1957, Timothy Balme plays Lionel Cosgrove, who is trapped when his meddling mother is bitten by a “Sumatran rat monkey” while accompanying him on a visit to the zoo. She dies. And then she turns into… I’ll let you find out what happens next 😉
Movie #19: The Last Girl – She Who Has All the Gifts (2016)
It takes a lot to create a truly captivating zombie film. Colm McCarthy’s adaptation of Mike Carey’s novel is a clever and thoughtful reinvention, offering genre thrills to boot. In this film, the zombie condition is the result of a pathogenic fungus that has turned most of the population into “starving men”. 🍴
However, this remains largely in the background of the story, which focuses instead on young Melanie, who receives an unusual education in an establishment heavily armed by Helen, the teacher played by Gemma Arterton. As a starving “second generation”, Melanie still craves human flesh, but she can also think and feel, and her mere existence could hold the key to the future.
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. This independent film shot in black and white on a shoestring budget offered brutal, subversive horror that established the most important elements of the zombie tradition (corpses returning from the grave, the need to destroy the brain to kill them). ⚔️
As Ben, Barbra and others hide from the corpses on a rural farm, Romero reflects ideas of racism in the U.S., the ongoing trauma of the Vietnam War and the American public’s realization that their greatest enemy might actually be themselves.
Movie #17: Rabid (1977)
A young female adult film star undergoes major plastic surgery after a car accident. Whenever men get a little too close to her, she unwittingly stings them with a stinger she has under her arm. She infects these brutes with a rage virus that brings out all their most bestial urges. 🐗
The fact that Chambers was an adult film actress in real life is one of the film’s most important aspects. It condemns sex workers, feared by society as disease carriers, while these actors claim to be far safer and more controlled than the consumers of these same films.
Movie #16: Rec (2007)
Rec used the handheld camera style of shooting to maximum effect. You really feel like you’re there, and in spite of yourself, you find yourself in the victim’s shoes! With this epidemic turning men into zombies. Fortunately, one of Rec’s main characters remains stable, despite the fact that the film is shot with a handheld camera. 🎥
Together with journalist Ángela (Manuela Velasco), they find themselves shooting a story in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s scary as hell, with a group of smarter-than-average characters, and a delayed final reel when the camera’s night vision mode is activated. Hold on tight!
Movie #15: Zombie Hell (1979)
Imagined as a quasi-sequel to Dawn of the Dead, this film by Italian director Lucio Fulci is known for its truly repulsive effects. It takes zombie mythology back to its black magic-inspired roots. ⚫️
Zombie Flesh Eaters, also known as Zombi 2, depicts a zombie epidemic on the Caribbean island of Matul. The result of a voodoo curse, these grimacing, decomposing undead, often covered in worms, evolve in various stages of decomposition. A famous scene showing eye damage landed it on the “Video Nasties” list. Although it’s a cult film, it’s more popular with zombie fans than critics. Bonus points for the silly clash between zombies and sharks.
Movie #14: Day of the Living Dead (1985)
The final part of Romero’s original trilogy, Day of the Living Dead is more meditative than its predecessors, but it’s a powerful film, carrying a lingering anger. Delving even deeper into the zombie apocalypse, Day of the Living Dead finds the uninfected population dwindling, surviving scientists and soldiers scattering, and the undead themselves beginning to evolve. 🧐
Bub, a true zombie hero, recovers fragments of his past life, demonstrating a cognitive function that suggests not all the undead are soulless monsters. Taking place mainly underground, the film becomes claustrophobic and pessimistic. Fighting between humans leads to even greater carnage than the presence of zombies…
Movie #13: Return of the Living Dead (1985)
Far from Romero’s gravitas, this horror comedy from Dan O’Bannon offered a wackier take on the zombie movie, as evidenced by its tagline: “They’ve come back from the grave and are ready to party!”. 🎊
Return of the Living Dead takes place in a world where the city’s inhabitants are threatened by the arrival of a group of rather ill-intentioned undead. These zombies have a very specific hunger for brains and have the peculiarity of being able to talk. Slimy and bloody, they’re accompanied by a punk soundtrack featuring tracks by the likes of The Cramps and The Damned.
Film #12: The Last Man on Earth (1964)
Dr. Robert Morgan is the sole survivor of a devastating global plague, thanks to a mysterious immunity he’s acquired against a bacterium. Now he’s on his own… or so he thinks. As night falls, plague victims emerge from their graves, part of an infernal army of undead thirsting for his blood. 🩸
Featuring a brilliant performance by Vincent Price, this 1964 film is the very first film adaptation of Richard Matheson’s superb post-apocalyptic horror novel, “I Am Legend”. Decades later, other adaptations saw the light of day, such as “The Omega Man” (1971) with Charlton Heston and “I Am Legend” (2007) with Will Smith.
Movie #11: 28 Days Later (2002)
Purists will say that this isn’t a zombie movie. While they’re technically right, they’re also completely wrong. Danny Boyle’s film about a murderous rabid infection reinvented and redefined what a zombie movie could be, introducing the idea of the infected running around. 🧟♂️
This is a moving work of rare cinematic quality. Jim, played by Cillian Murphy, wakes up in hospital in London to find the capital eerily deserted, with no idea what’s happened to everyone else. In addition to the rabies infection posing a danger, Alex Garland’s script points out that the surviving humans are just as deadly…
Movie #10: World War Z (2013)
Quite different from its famous reference novel, World War Z is perhaps the only blockbuster about zombies. Headlined by Brad Pitt, with a global reach and considerable studio budget, Marc Forster’s film presents zombies as a global epidemic threatening to bring the world crashing down.
Unlike most zombie films, this one offers inventive widescreen imagery with swarms of zombies, crowds of the undead running en masse and piling on top of each other like insects, able to scale walls with a relentless will.
Movie #9: Last Train to Busan (2016)
Four words: zombies on a train. Korean director Yeon Sang-ho takes this concept and turns it into a gripping, action-packed horror film. Using the cramped space of the train and moments in more open environments, he creates breathtakingly tense sequences.
The zombies in Train To Busan are fascinating to watch. Aggressive and animalistic, their limbs and spines contort as they rise to attack new victims. The result is an elegant and exciting film, with a host of memorable characters, especially Sang-hwa, the hero played by Ma Dong-seok.
This film begs the question: do zombies really exist?!
Movie #8: Welcome to Zombieland (2009)
As the zombie sub-genre undergoes a cultural renaissance in the late 2010s, Ruben Fleischer’s irreverent horror-comedy comes at just the right time. Jesse Eisenberg stars as a lonely, cautious Christopher Columbus, who does his best to survive the undead apocalypse by applying a series of thought-provoking rules (check the back seat, double your kills).
He teams up with Tallahassee, played by Twinkie-loving badass Woody Harrelson, Wichita, played by Emma Stone, and Little Rock, played by Abigail Breslin, forming a makeshift family. With a running time of less than 90 minutes, zombie murders and the comic genius of Bill Murray, this is one zombie movie that ends with a real piece of fairground theater!
Movie #7: Cemetery Man (1994)
Everett tells the disturbing story of Francesco Dellamorte, a man who battles the undead who emerge from the Italian cemetery every night, forcing him to endure frightening ordeals. Francesco is also a romantic loner, until he meets a young widow (Anna Falchi) who is burying her biker boyfriend, and sees the potential for real companionship.
Francesco soon finds himself hunted by the undead in ways he could never have foreseen. Aided only by his mute, mischievous sidekick Gnaghi (François Hadji-Lazaro), Francesco finds himself in a merciless battle against the zombies.
Movie #6: Re-Animator (1985)
Based on a short story by H.P. Lovecraft, Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator offers a different take on the undead. Unbalanced professor Herbert West invents a lime-green liquid capable of reanimating the tissues of dead animals, which he doesn’t hesitate to use on corpses (for which he is partly responsible).
The fellow scientists set out to steal the “reagent”, but are soon confronted by a group of zombified corpses. It’s a swirling, deliciously bloody mix of horror and comedy, a story that pushes the boundaries of ’80s gore. With a well-crafted script and a reckless approach, the film remains incredibly entertaining.
Film #5: I Walked with a Zombie (1943)
“There’s no beauty here, only death and decay,” declares the plantation’s wealthy owner. “Everything good becomes dead…. Even the stars.” Val Lewton, the master of horror, was at the helm of this exploration of the origins of the zombie legend in voodoo folklore. Director Jacques Tourneur tells the story of a young nurse sent to the fictional little island of San Sebastian to care for the plantation owner’s wife, who appears to be under a voodoo curse, in a remarkably strange atmosphere of melancholy and terror.
This producer-director team manages to evoke terror through soft musical notes floating in the distance, the whistling of the wind and the sound of waves crashing against a zombie’s legs. A character uses voodoo magic to turn the plantation owner’s wife into a zombie, without any real awareness of the disastrous consequences that ensue…
Movie #4: Don’t Cut! (2019)
To say too much about Shin’ichiro Ueda’s film would be to spoil the delightful, joyous surprises that come with it! But let’s just say that if the first few minutes can give the impression of a particularly chaotic horror film, that’s entirely intentional. A struggling director attempts to make his own zombie movie, but the production soon finds itself under siege from the truly undead. And from there?
Well, you’ll have to find out for yourself. All we can say is that this is an inventive, sparkling film that manages to revisit the zombie movie genre in an original way, while respecting its codes. Destined to become a cult film.
Film #3: Ojuju (2014)
When a water supply in a remote Nigerian slum becomes infected, the neighborhood quickly turns into a minefield of flesh-hungry undead. Romero, a father-to-be, must face up to his instinct for survival while battling his anxiety when his pregnant girlfriend starts showing strange symptoms…
He teams up with his clever friend Peju, and the two men attempt to escape the infested neighborhood, avoiding zombified drug dealers, old friends and other dangers. The integration of the specifics of a Lagos slum gives the zombie film a refreshing perspective. In this context, the premise of contamination in a country of 190 million where almost half the population has no access to drinking water results in a film that transcends pure horror and turns Ojuju into a socio-political allegory.
Movie #2: Shaun Of The Dead (2004)
For his feature debut, Edgar Wright drew inspiration from Romero and Richard Curtis to create a romantic comedy. Simon Pegg stars as Shaun, a lazy thirty-something who is forced to grow up, reconcile with his girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield), work things out with his stepfather and part ways with his best friend Ed (Nick Frost) when the zombie apocalypse strikes London.
The film isn’t just a zombie flick filled with graphic violence, scary jumps and emotional goodbyes! It also boasts irresistible British humor, with Shaun fighting off zombies with a cricket bat and hatching a plan to take refuge in the local pub. Simply brilliant.
Movie #1: Zombie (1979)
“Zombie” is one of the most apocalyptic and unrelenting of all zombie tales, with gruesome make-up effects that surpass the rest. There’s something particularly primitive, even biblical, about director Lucio Fulci’s macabre spectacle. The way the reanimated dead emerge from their graves and walk around, covered in earth, evokes the idea of a dead person emerging from the ground.
This film bridges the gap between the Haitian origins of the zombie legend and the Romero-esque zombies we’re used to. The plot centers on an heiress who travels to a Caribbean island in search of her missing father, only to find herself quickly confronted by a horde of zombies…
Bonus Film: Army of the Dead (1978)
If “Zombie” gave birth to the contemporary zombie film, The Army of the Dead also marks its time! Bigger, bolder, more confident and, this time, in color. The dark tone of its predecessor gives way to a rising tide of chaos and panic as the apocalypse spreads and a group of survivors take refuge in a local shopping mall. 🔥THE MOST POPULAR PRODUCTS🔥
While at first this seems an ideal place to wait out the collapse of society, stocked with provisions, it turns out to be quite the opposite! The zombies are instinctively drawn to the place where they used to spend their free time and money when they were alive. It’s a powerful satire, peppered with playful imagery. Nevertheless, Romero manages to tell a fascinating, nightmarish story, which explodes with Tom Savini’s visceral effects, inspired by the horrors he witnessed as a photographer during the Vietnam War.
