---
title: Best Zombie Movies of All Time
description: The central themes of zombie movies are enduring for many reasons. Here, a survey of their history, from their origins in the 1930s to the present.
canonical: https://time.com/7294860/the-25-best-zombie-movies-of-all-time/
author: James Grebey
article:opinion: false
article:content_tier: free
article:published_time: 2025-06-20T21:22:47.000Z
article:modified_time: 2026-03-11T00:54:31.731Z
article:section: Entertainment
og:title: The 25 Best Zombie Movies of All Time
og:description: The central themes of zombie movies are enduring for many reasons. Here, a survey of their history, from their origins in the 1930s to the present.
og:url: https://time.com/7294860/the-25-best-zombie-movies-of-all-time/
og:site_name: TIME
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twitter:title: The 25 Best Zombie Movies of All Time
twitter:description: The central themes of zombie movies are enduring for many reasons. Here, a survey of their history, from their origins in the 1930s to the present.
twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt871a22659d3fddda/6998c7ada97fc0de5aa7475d/best-zombie-movies.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9
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# The 25 Best Zombie Movies of All Time
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by
[James Grebey](https://time.com/author/james-grebey/)
## James Grebey
Grebey is a contributor for TIME.
Jun 20, 2025 9:22 PM UTC
Clockwise from Top Left: 28 Days Later, Night of the Living Dead, Evil Dead II, Resident Evil, Shaun of the Dead, Dawn of the Dead
Clockwise from Top Left: 28 Days Later, Night of the Living Dead, Evil Dead II, Resident Evil, Shaun of the Dead, Dawn of the DeadColumbia TriStar, Rogue Pictures, 20th Century Fox, United Film Distribution, Rialto Pictures/Everett (4); Everett (2)
by
[James Grebey](https://time.com/author/james-grebey/)
## James Grebey
Grebey is a contributor for TIME.
Jun 20, 2025 9:22 PM UTC
It's fitting that, much like the [walking dead](https://entertainment.time.com/2011/10/14/tv-weekend-the-walking-dead-has-legs/) themselves, zombie movies just can't stay down. The latest major example of this reliable horror subgenre shuffling (or in this case running) into theaters is [_28 Years Later_](https://time.com/7295845/28-years-later-review/). Coming not quite 28 real-life years after [_28 Days Later_](https://entertainment.time.com/2011/11/11/cinematic-visions-of-the-apocalypse/slide/28-days-later-2002/) but basically close enough, the new film is a long-awaited continuation of one of the [iconic zombie franchises](https://time.com/3671187/28-days-weeks-later-sequel/). It's credited as being among the few movies that revolutionized the subgenre—and given how many times the undead have been reinvented on the big screen, that's saying something.
Why are zombie movies so enduring? The central themes at play are undeniable. Zombies confront us with death, our universal, ultimate fear, in a very literal and visceral way. They're metaphors for disease and social unrest, capable of horrifying audiences or delighting them with gory, over-the-top gags. It makes sense that so many zombie movies are comedies; it feels good to laugh in the rotting, decaying face of death. The fact that zombie movies are not inherently especially expensive to make also must account for their popularity. The only real special effects you need to make a cheap-o zombie movie are a little makeup and some fake blood, which a bunch of buddies with a camera can easily do.
There's a whole horde of cheap and/or forgettable zombie movies, but these 25—whether their budgets were in the tens of thousands or tens of millions—are the ones that have resisted decay and stood the test of time. All 25 of these movies are good; but just as crucially, they're all important to the history of zombie cinema, starting with black-and-white movies about the voodoo zombies of Haitian folklore.
This sort of zombie—which originated the term—brings up the surprisingly tricky question of determining what counts as a zombie movie. It can't just be any undead being—ghosts don't have a body and it's not always clear if a demon from hell was once a person or if they're just some devilish entity. In theory, mummy movies and Frankenstein adaptations could count as zombie flicks, yet they seem like their own thing. Does a zombie need to have originated from a viral outbreak or can some magic be animating the dead? Do the zombies need to be dead or can they just be infected with a virus that turns them into mindless cannibals? There's no cut and dry definition for a zombie movie; you've just got to trust that you know one when you have it in your sights—and that you're aiming for the head.
**Read more:** [_Why the_ 28 Years Later _Franchise Has Always Been About More Than Zombies_](https://time.com/7294568/28-years-later-danny-boyle-interview/)
## **_White Zombie_** **(1932)**
_White Zombie_ is widely regarded as the first zombie movie, though walking dead did appear in cinema before, as in a silent adaptation of _Frankenstein_ or the 1919 French film _J'accuse_, which ends with countless World War I dead rising up and returning home. But _White Zombie_ was certainly the one that codified so many of the zombie tropes later movies would follow. Inspired by an American occultist's 1929 book documenting [a real](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/30/arts/design/zombies-quai-branly-paris.html) (but much exaggerated and misunderstood) old Haitian form of religious punishment where people were drugged, buried alive, and then dug up and ordered around in a dazed state, _White Zombie_ has been [criticized for](https://www.jstor.org/stable/27224232#:~:text=In%20this%20way%2C%20White%20Zombie's,but%20rather%20a%20driving%20force.) offensive and racist depictions of Haitians, very much a product of a different era.
Under the thrall of evil voodoo practitioner "Murder" Legendre (Dracula himself, Bela Lugosi), dozens of zombified Haitians mindlessly follow his orders, shuffling around ominously with vacant dead-eyed stares. The 1932 film's zombies don't eat people or spread out of control—those traits would come later—but it's easy to see _White Zombie_'s influence in the nights, dawns, and days of the dead that would follow. As a movie on its own terms, _White Zombie_ (which would be followed up by something of a sequel, _Revolt of the Zombies_)can at times feel a bit stagnant, a trait that's not uncommon in these early '30s horror movies where the cinematic language of the genre was still being developed. At its best, though, _White Zombie_ turns its lethargy into something akin to a surreal dream whose nightmarish qualities are slow but undeniable and inescapable.
## **_I Walked With a Zombie_** **(1943)**
Although voodoo zombies were the original zombies, this version of the walking dead linked to Caribbean folk tradition would eventually fall out of vogue—though tropical islands would continue to be a frequent haunting ground for the undead, and there were a few scattered later efforts like Wes Craven's 1998 movie _The Serpent and the Rainbow._ The greatest of the traditional zombie movies has to be _I Walked With a Zombie_, from director Jacques Tourneur. A Gothic story about a wealthy family, dark secrets, an innocent young nurse and a reclusive, unwell wifethat's set in Jamaica rather than some English moors, _I Walked With the Zombie_ is a chilling tale that's features some legitimately haunting imagery, like actor Darby Jones' bug-eyed, deathly stoic zombie-like guard of the crossroads, Carrefour. Also notably, it's one of the great early examples of how well zombies work as a vehicle to explore societal themes. It's almost surprising how earnestly and respectfully this horror-drama engages with the legacy of slavery, racism, and the religions of the African diaspora, including vodou, though its handling of race—including the way it centers a white woman who is at best a tourist in this complex Black tradition—is not without critique.
## **_Night of the Living Dead_** **(1968)**
Undeniably the most important and influential zombie movie ever made (not to mention terrifying), [George A. Romero's indie horror masterpiece](https://time.com/collection/100-best-movies/6295848/night-of-the-living-dead-1968/) established the modern idea of a zombie, one no longer tied to folklore and a master controlling mindless slaves but a flesh-eating menace whose greatest threat might come from how it could not be controlled. Shot on a meager budget in a condemned farmhouse not too far outside of Pittsburgh, _Night of the Living Dead_ has "ghouls" rising from their graves to feast on the living—a level of gore that's both unshowy and unflinchingly upsetting. A random assortment of characters all take refuge in the farmhouse as the dead descend on it; a representative smattering of America and the societal unrest that comes with it. Duane Jones, a Black actor, plays Ben, the film's protagonist—a bold first for horror filmmaking, which Romero says was only due to Jones having the best audition. Whatever the reason, the casting adds so much more weight to _Night of the Living Dead_'s gut-wrenching ending. After surviving the undead, Ben emerges only to be shot by some good ol' boys who mistake him for a zombie. If _Night of the Living Dead_'s greatest legacy is how it shaped all the living dead to come in the days that followed, it's no less important for how it didn't let the living off the hook.
## **_Shock Waves_** **(1977)**
Zombies and Nazis are the two villains that you're supposed to feel no remorse for killing in genre fiction, so it makes sense that plenty of movies (and video games) have combined the two, creating a Nazi zombie foe that's twice as scary and that you can feel twice as good about headshotting. Later films like _Dead Snow_ and _Overlord_ would have bloody fun with this premise, but _Shock Waves_, an under-appreciated 1977 movie, deserves the spot on this list. One of the earlier Nazi zombie films (though _The Frozen Dead_ beat it by a decade), _Shock Waves_ is notable for how little zombie-slaying its protagonists do. Instead, the stranded vacationers find themselves fleeing goggle-wearing undead in the Caribbean where a former SS commander (Peter Cushing) is hiding out. In the war, he'd been in charge of a Nazi Death Corps of zombie troopers who specialized in aquatic warfare, though they proved impossible to control, leading him to sink their ship by this remote island. It's a weird, uncanny film.
## **_Dawn of the Dead_** **(1978)**
There's a credible case to be made that Romero's 1973 movie _The Crazies_, about a biological weapon that causes residents of a small town to go feral, qualifies as a zombie movie. His official return to the living dead came a few years later, though, resulting in one of the greatest horror movies of all time. A clear indictment of the consumerism that had shoppers shuffling mindlessly through malls, _Dawn of the Dead_ is a masterpiece of makeup and grotesque effects, following a group of survivors as they take refuge inside of a mall while hoards of dead mull about outside. This seeming paradise of capitalism soon curdles into a prison that strips the survivors of their humanity, yet at the same time Romero never forgets the humanity that the mass of zombies once had. _Dawn of the Dead_ has been parodied and referenced many times since, including _Shaun of the Dead_, the video game series _Dead Rising_, and a remake that's good enough to appear later on this list, but none of its successors quite captured the level of dread and malaise the original does.
## **_Zombi 2_** **(1979)**
Also known as _Zombie Flesh Eaters_ but named _Zombi 2_—despite there not being a _Zombi 1_ because Italian copyright law allowed for any film to be marketed as a sequel to any other film, regardless of any association with the original—this unofficial follow-up to the Italian release of _Dawn of the Dead_ is a shockingly effective movie in its own right. Lucio Fulci, well known in the [_giallo_ genre](https://nofilmschool.com/giallo), directs an English-speaking cast in a story about a woman, accompanied by a journalist, investigating her missing father on a remote Caribbean island. Turns out the island's rotting dead are rising from the grave—the result of a voodoo curse. (If movies and the '30s and '40s were actually engaging with Haitian tradition and spiritualism, for better or worse, by this point most movies used it as a cheap plot device.) _Zombi 2_ is legendary for a couple of extreme scenes, like one where a zombie's decaying hand slowly pulls a woman's head into a jagged piece of wood as it pierces her eyeball, and another where a zombie fights a shark. (The very real tiger shark, to the credit of sharks everywhere, seems entirely unaggressive and mostly just annoyed that some guy in a costume is trying to manhandle it.) These over-the-top moments and the absurdity of its title may be the elements that made _Zombi 2_ famous, but beneath them is a movie with an eerie, uncanny vibe that's shockingly easy to get lost in.
## **_Day of the Dead_** **(1985)**
"Perhaps the real walking dead is _us_!" is at this point such a well-established zombie trope that it might as well be decaying itself, but Romero's third _Dead_ movie pulled it off early and extremely well. (Romero has the distinction of appearing three times on this list because of how undeniably important he was to zombie cinema.) Set after the undead have already overrun the world, _Day of the Dead_ focuses on a remnant of humanity living inside a missile bunker in Florida. The scientists there are trying to find a cure for zombism—or at least that's what they're supposed to be doing, as lead scientist Dr. Logan has gotten fixated on training zombies to be docile. The soldiers protecting them, meanwhile, are led by Captain Rhodes, who is itching to exert his authority with force now that society has fallen. With the zombies already having essentially won over the living, _Day of the Dead_ lets mankind finish the job for itself. The zombies in _Day_ are almost heroic—especially "Bub," the somewhat intelligent undead that Logan trained. Tellingly, he's more sympathetic than most of the living, breathing cast.
## **_The Return of the Living Dead_** **(1985)**
John Russo, co-writer of _Night of the Living Dead_, retained the rights to the "_Living Dead_" portion of the title, a deal that eventually led to the visceral punk zombie movie _The Return of the Living Dead_ in 1985\. It was this movie that popularized the idea of zombies who specifically crave "brains," and _Return_ has a sense of humor that in retrospect feels like the patient zero for _The Simpsons_' "Treehouse of Horror" episodes' entire sensibility. Following a group of punks as they hang out in a cemetery (as one does)—unaware that two bumbling employees at a medical warehouse have accidentally unleashed a corpse-reviving toxic gas—_Return of the Living Dead_ manages to strike the right balance between gleeful absurdity, knowing silliness and legitimately gross gore and decaying zombies. This sort of wry boundary pushing, elevated by the great and goopy practical effects of the '80s, would largely define the zombies in the decade to come—reaching a peak (or maybe a nadir, depending on your taste), with Peter Jackson's 1992 New Zealand splatterfest _Dead Alive_.
## **_Evil Dead II_** **(1987)**
The first _Evil Dead_ is a straightforward horror movie, following Bruce Campbell's Ash Williams as he and some friends spend the night in an old cabin in the woods, read from the Necronomicon, and unleash zombie-like demons upon themselves. Fo_r Evil Dead II_, Sam Raimi had a larger budget and essentially remade his original film, though this time around it was much more of a comedy, full of _Looney Tunes_\-esque gags and spooky pratfalls. Your mileage may vary on whether or not _Evil Dead_'s "deadites" should count as zombies; there's a whole mythology and other sorts of supernatural evil like menacing, living trees to account for, too. What's undeniable is _Evil Dead II_'s impact; it may represent the purest example of '80s filmmakers using the undead as a playground.
## **_Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island_** **(1998)**
The '90s were something of a fallow period for zombie movies. A glut of undead films from the previous decade—many of which were overtly comedic, gory to the point of absurdity, or _extremely_ cheaply made (or all of the above)—had given the subgenre a trashy reputation even by horror standards. So it's a bit ironic that one of the best zombie movies of the '90s was a direct-to-video _Scooby-Doo_ feature. Every episode of the original, charmingly formulaic _Scooby-Doo_ series had the Mystery, Inc. gang unmasking the very-real perpetrator of whatever spooky phenomenon they were investigating and in doing so undermining the scares. _Scooby-Doo on Zombie_ _Island_ does the opposite. After going their separate ways for many years, Shaggy and Co. reunite and go to a bayou island outside of New Orleans. Once there, they discover very real zombies, voodoo curses, and werecats who have been luring victims to Moonscar Island for decades. It's an earnestly effective (and kinda scary!) bit of kid-friendly horror, one that does justice to the history of zombie movies despite Scoob's silly TV origins.
## **_Wild Zero_** **(1999)**
Although the zombie movie genre in the West was mostly rotting in a creative grave, so to speak, during the ‘90s, things were happening in the East. In Hong Kong, movies featuring jiāngshī like _Mr. Vampire_ had been popular in the previous decade. (Jiāngshī, also known as hopping vampires, are really more like zombies than bloodsuckers, though you'll find _Mr. Vampire_ on [TIME's list of the greatest vampire movies](https://time.com/7094422/best-vampire-movies/) rather than here all the same.) Then, in 1993, Capcom released the first _Resident Evil_ video game in Japan, the success of which would inspire a wave of Asian zombie movies and whose impact would eventually reach the states, including an American film adaptation of the game (more on that in a minute).
The 1998 Hong Kong movie _Bio Zombie_ is one key example of this era of Asian zombie horror, but no zombie movie rocks harder than the '99 Japanese film _Wild Zero_—literally. An over-the-top romp with horror, sci-fi, and comedy elements, _Wild Zero_ stars the Japanese rock trio Guitar Wolf as themselves, heroically leaping into action to help a fan when the dead start attacking. Motorcycles belch fire from their exhaust pipes, zombie heads explode with just the right level of CGI cheesiness to make it fun, and Guitar Wolf's lead singer uses a sword sheathed in his guitar to take down a UFO. It's a lot, but gloriously so, and it's also a righteous display of trans allyship. When the young fan is initially repulsed to learn that a girl he's fallen for is trans, he sees a vision of Guitar Wolf, his idol, who tells him that "love has no borders, nationalities, or genders." Hell yeah.
## **_Resident Evil_** **(2002)**
Almost certainly the worst movie on this list of great movies, Paul W. S. Anderson's _Resident Evil_ is nonetheless hugely important to the history of zombie cinema, as it was the one-two punch of _Resident Evil_ and _28 Days Later_ in 2002 that revived the subgenre in the West and gave it some critical legitimacy. (Well, perhaps not so much _Resident Evil_ on the latter front.) The (loose) adaptation of the video game series is an action-packed bit of schlock with a handful of engaging setpieces, baffling narrative choices, and some poor-looking early-'00s CGI. Milla Jovovich stars as Alice, an amnesiac ass-kicker who goes into a secret underground Umbrella Corporation lab following an outbreak of their corpse-reviving (and corpse-mutating) T-virus. It's nu-metal zombies for a new age, one where zombies weren't just metaphors for societal ills but enemies for gamers to mow down, and _Resident Evil_ and its many sequels reflected this.
## **_28 Days Later_** **(2002)**
Although credited with popularizing "fast zombies" (though its infected are not technically undead but humans turned into mindless flesh-eaters by a Rage Virus), what makes _28 Days Later_ so hauntingly effective are its many slower moments. Filmed on digital cameras that give the entire movie an uncanny, slightly fuzzy look (and whose light weight compared to film allowed director Danny Boyle to shoot unbelievable footage of Cilian Murphy's recently awoken coma patient wandering a deserted London in the wee hours of the morning), _28 Days Later_ is full of eerie tranquility until the infected rush in. The September 11th attacks occurred while the movie was filming, and as a result _28 Days_ has an additional resonance; an all-too-familiar picture of societal fear and unease. The Rage Virus, too, worked as a metaphor for America and its allies' seeming bloodlust for retaliation and the forthcoming war in Iraq. _28 Days Later_, the only real rival to Romero's zombies in terms of importance to the subgenre, was groundbreaking in the way it was made and in how its zombies behaved. It was still very much in the tradition of using the undead (or close enough) as a means to examine the failings of the living, and _28 Days Later_ would mark the start of a zombie renaissance that would last more than a decade.
## **_Dawn of the Dead_** **(2004)**
Zack Snyder's debut film, a remake of Romero's zombie masterpiece of the same name, has no right to be as good as it is. Taking the trapped-in-the-mall premise of the '78 film and adding fast zombies and a heavy dose of post-9/11 America, the '04 _Dawn of the Dead_ is an intense, mean, and unrelenting experience. After an opening sequence where Sarah Polley's protagonist comes home from her hospital job, goes to bed, and then wakes up to discover that the world as she knew it has ended (a sequence that's up there with the single greatest 10-minutes of any horror movie), _Dawn of the Dead_ plunges into violent, action-packed nihilism. If Romero's _Dawn_ was about what happens to the living when they give their brains over to consumerism, Snyder's looks at a nation in crisis, one whose residents are grappling for any sort of safety—and any power they can grasp as the ground crumbles beneath them.
## **_Shaun of the Dead_** **(2004)**
The final of the three most important zombie movies of the '00s, [_Shaun of the Dead_](https://techland.time.com/2010/10/27/my-favorite-zombie-ed-from-shaun-of-the-dead/) is as cheekily referential to the history of zombie cinema as you'd expect with a punny name like that. Directed by Edgar Wright, the horror comedy follows Simon Pegg's titular slacker as he and his buddy Ed (Nick Frost) slowly realize they're in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. Shaun's plan is to head to the local pub with his ex-girlfriend to wait it out. Extremely funny before a climatic turn that gets a bit too suddenly depressing, _Shaun of the Dead_ knowingly uses all the zombie tropes as a vehicle for comedy and the outbreak as a setting for a very human character-based drama. It's the type of deft genre-blending that can only land when the audience is familiar with the material it’s sending up.
## **_Fido_** **(2006)**
This Canadian zom-com basically takes the final joke of _Shaun of the Dead_—a reveal that zombies are being used for mindless manual labor—and makes a feature-length romp out of it. Drenched in a '50s-style Americana with shades of Tim Burton's early work, _Fido_ takes place in a world where pet-like zombies are the norm and special collars inhibit their flesh-eating tendencies, making them useful labor. When young Timmy starts forming a bond with his family's new zombie, which he names Fido, hijinks ensue (including Timmy's mom, played by Carrie-Anne Moss, basically cucking his dad with the zombie). _Fido_ is mostly content to be a clever, splattery spoof. It's smartest when it contrasts the walking dead with the conformity and repression of the 1950s.
## **_\[Rec\]_** **(2007)**
This Spanish movie, remade in the U.S. with the name _Quarantine_, represents two '00s horror trends: zombies and found footage. _\[Rec\]_ happens to be one of the best examples of both subgenres. Told from the perspective of a TV cameraman filming a reporter for a news show about what happens in Barcelona at night, _\[Rec\]_ has the pair tagging along with some firefighters when they get a call about a woman needing medical assistance. Once inside, they and the residents of the apartment building realize they're trapped—and that there's an outbreak of something that's making people mindlessly violent and aggressive. Once the action starts, it's terrifying and relentless, and _\[Rec\]_ uses its unique format to make audiences feel like they're right there with the zombies in a way that no other movie really has.
## **_Pontypool_** **(2008)**
Though undermined by a pretty dumb ending, the majority of _Pontypool_ is a gripping and intelligent twist on traditional zombie movies as it relies on language—in more ways than one—rather than gore. Grant Mazzy is a shock jock radio announcer in the small town of Pontypool, Ontario, and while recording an episode of his show, he and his producers start catching wind of strange occurrences. From the (seeming) safety of the sound booth, Grant starts fielding calls from listeners and the station's helicopter reporter about an outbreak of madness, cannibalism, and dismemberment among the town's residents that seems to be spreading. Eventually, Grant learns that the infection is spread not through a virus but through words, as the English language itself has been infected. The ending really is a tremendous letdown that saps the incredibly narrated tension of the rest of the movie and replaces it with too-neat explanations. Until that point, though, _Pontypool_ is like no other zombie movie you've seen because you're mostly just _hearing_ the terror, which makes it all the more horrific in your mind's eye.
## **_Zombieland_** **(2009)**
If _Shaun of the Dead_ was a horror comedy built on the knowledge of zombie tropes, [_Zombieland_](https://time.com/archive/6910370/zombieland-the-years-coolest-creature-feature/) went a step further, venturing beyond homage into making the "rules" of the walking dead explicitly part of the text. _Zombieland_ makes its post-apocalyptic setting, where the undead lurk around every corner, look like a pretty fun hang, following Jesse Eisenberg's neurotic Columbus and his traveling companions (Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, and Abigail Breslin) as they road-trip across the country seeking refuge. Even when _Zombieland_ does get serious or lean more into horror, it's still a pretty breezy time, full of jokes, a killer Bill Murray cameo, and the possibility that awaits young folks when the undead have eaten through any chance of them having to assume societal responsibilities. After decades of zombie movies, _Zombieland_ looked on the bright side of a zombie apocalypse.
## **_Train to Busan_** **(2016)**
The zombie virus infected South Korean cinemas in the 2010s, resulting in one of the best modern zombie films, _Train to Busan_. A masterful blend of character drama, societal critique, and white-knuckle zombie action, _Train to Busan_ follows white-collar workaholic Seok-woo and his estranged young daughter as they boardthe titular train—just as an undead outbreak begins to overtake South Korea. When one bitten person boards just as they're leaving the station, it soon spreads throughout the train, forcing Seok-woo and some other survivors to band together and keep moving forward on the train, hoping they'll eventually find some safe place to stop. Many zombie movies focus on the horrible things that selfish people do in times of trouble, and _Train to Busan_ has plenty of that in the form of the rich elites who care only about their own safety at the expense of others. What makes _Train to Busan_ special is how it also keeps highlighting selflessness from normal, working-class people, eventually helping Seok-woo learn to do the right thing. That, and an absolutely terrifying depiction of zombies that sprint and crawl over one another like a wave of gnashing undead rather than individuals.
(It's worth noting that the 2013 adaptation of [_World War Z_](https://entertainment.time.com/2013/06/18/world-war-z-brad-pitt-vs-the-zombies/) did put an ant-like swarm of zombies on the big screen before _Train to Busan_—a legitimate innovation when it comes to depicting the undead. The rest of the film is a generic letdown despite the unusually high budget for a zombie movie, especially considering that the book it's loosely based on is one of the great works of undead fiction.)
## **_The Girl With All the Gifts_** **(2016)**
Part of what makes zombies such scary monsters is the knowledge that they were once people like you or me, only now they're mindless flesh-eating corpses. A few zombie movies have explored the idea that zombies might _still_ be people inside and shown sympathy towards them. (Romero's _Day of the Dead_ famously suggested this with the somewhat intelligent zombie Bub.) A pair of movies in the mid-'00s, the zombie rom-com _Warm Bodies_ and the post-apocalyptic movie _The Girl With all the Gifts_, both focused on this theme. The former is fun but fairly disposable; the latter follows a scientist and a teacher who are trying to understand—and protect—a girl infected with the parasitic fungus that turned most of mankind into zombies. Despite her infection, she can suppress the hunger it brings (to some extent). Is she still a monster, then, or something more? _The Girl With all the Gifts_ confronts the audience with difficult questions about the nature of humanity. (The movie also feels especially relevant given the popularity of [_The Last of Us_](https://time.com/7276035/the-last-of-us-season-2-what-happens/) and the [HBO adaptation of the video game](https://time.com/6247205/the-last-of-us-hbo-adaptation/), which also feature fungus zombies.)
## **_One Cut of the Dead_** **(2017)**
The history of zombie movies is littered with cheap, DIY horror flicks by low-budget filmmakers with inventiveness and gusto. _One Cut of the Dead_ is a joyful, exuberant (and fittingly scrappy) celebration of zombie movie-makers. The first half hour of the 90-minute Japanese movie is a single take, following a group of actors and filmmakers as they attempt to make a cheap zombie movie—only for _real_ zombies to descend on the set while the camera is running. At the risk of spoiling _One Cut of the Dead_'s delightful twist, the second act reveals a whole different story that recontextualizes the opening action, and the final half hour is just a wonderfully inventive ode to a genre filmmaking.
## **_Blood Quantum_** **(2019)**
It's always a thrill when a genre sinks its teeth into a novel premise or brilliant metaphor that hasn't been done before. Such is the case with _Blood Quantum_. When a zombie pandemic breaks out in 1980s Canada, the residents of a First Nations tribe discover that those with Indigenous blood are immune to the infection—a reversal of the incredibly tragic historical reality, as countless native populations were decimated by disease brought over by white settlers. Safe from being turned into zombies by a single bite but still at risk from all the other horrors a post-apocalyptic world entails, the members of the Red Crow Indian Reservation fortify themselves, trying to determine what to do about the undead and the many white people who are coming to them for supposed safety. _Blood Quantum_ isn't perfect—despite the inspired premise it does at points get a little lost in generic zombie plot beats—but it shows just how much life there still is in the undead genre.
## **_#Alive_** **(2020)**
The only way _#Alive_ could've been a more perfect COVID-19 movie would have been if the South Korean zombie movie had actually been made for the pandemic instead of just presciently filmed the year before and released in 2020\. (Its global premiere was on Netflix in September, just about when people were more than stir-crazy and starved for something new to watch.) Protagonist Oh Joon-woo is a gamer who is forced to hide in his apartment after a zombie outbreak seemingly overtakes Seoul, and he finds himself isolated, bored, and scared about an unsure future since there's no timeline for when (or if) things will ever go back to normal. Pretty relatable stuff! Luckily, _#Alive_ is not nihilistic nor does it summon memories that are too unpleasant to return to. Instead, it's about the importance of human connection, and the lengths to which we'll go to find another person in scary times.
## **_Handling the Undead_** **(2024)**
When zombies rise from the graves in most movies, it's immediately understood to be a bad thing. But don't those who have lost a loved one want nothing more than for the deceased to be back in their lives? The recent Norwegian movie _Handling the Undead_ uses zombies as a profoundly upsetting exploration of grief. When the dead inexplicably come back to some semblance of life in Oslo, three families—a bereft mother whose son is dead and buried, an old woman whose partner recently passed, and a husband whose wife died in an accident on the very day the dead rose—grapple with this grotesque disruption of the stages of their grief. The returned dead haven't been miraculously resurrected; they're decomposing, they don't speak, and they display no emotion. It's worse having them here than when they were actually dead, but what are their loved ones supposed to do? It's almost a relief at the very end once the undead start displaying more traditional zombie tendencies and begin eating the living. That sort of horror is _much_ easier to sit with than grief and the slow, undeniable realization that what is lost really can't ever come back.
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