[Editorial] Best 15 Zombie Horror Films

I remember the first time I encountered a zombie film. Channel 4 was premiering the remake of Dawn of the Dead (2004) so I must have been around eleven years old. I was browsing the five terrestrial channels and came across an image of a young girl, her face covered in blood, her lip torn away. Her father ran to her to assess her injuries, yelling to his wife to call an ambulance. As he turned, his daughter sunk her teeth into his neck, ripping out his jugular. Terrified, I switched off. That girl haunted my dreams for months; little did I know this would begin a lifelong obsession with the living dead. 

Nowadays the market is saturated with zombie (or zombie adjacent) content, so here’s a list of my favourites so you can find the gems in the horde:

15. White Zombie (1932)

When most people think of zombies, they stand by the ‘Romero rules’; however the origin of the zombie can actually be traced back to Haitian mythology, where a dead body was reanimated by magical means, such as voodoo. White Zombie, starring horror legend Bela Lugosi, is based around these ideas, and is often called the first ever zombie film. Although the acting is quite hammy, the sets are reused from other films on the Universal lot. While  the film hasn’t aged particularly well,  it’s still a must see to understand the beginning of this horror sub-genre. Lugosi’s piercing stare and enchanting monologues make this one for fans who like their horror with a touch of vintage.  

14. Anna and the Apocalypse (2017)

Described as “Shaun of the Dead meets La La Land”, Anna and the Apocalypse is a British Christmas Zombie Musical. That’s right, it’s all the above. With its quirky cast and a surprising number of kills, this bizarre film attracts almost every crowd imaginable with humour, horror, and banging musical numbers. My personal favourite tune is Turning my Life Around which features a zombie postman eating a baby in a pram. Merry Christmas indeed.

13. The Crazies (2010)

This film has the potential to provoke arguments between people about what makes a zombie film. With the original coming from the daddy of zombies himself George A. Romero in 1973, I would like to point out that The Crazies (2010) remake really pushes the boat out on the physical changes experienced by the infected, with the origins being some sort of rage virus. Clearly inspiring other films like Mom and Dad (2017), where parents (Nicolas Cage and Selma Blair) contract an unknown hysteria that results in an urge to kill their own children, I would argue that The Crazies is most definitely a zombie film, as the infected are unable to control their behaviours and moral compass, resulting in feral aggression and the death or infection of anyone around them.

12. #Alive (2020)

The first South Korean entry on the list (Koreans do zombies well), this great little gem landed on Netflix peak pandemic. A shut-in gamer who seems to be wasting his life in front of a computer screen discovers that his city has been overrun by the undead and needs to  survive in his apartment block. This film really came at the right (or wrong, depending on how you were fairing mentally) time during one of the many lockdowns in the UK, when people felt well and truly closed off from the world in their own homes.

11. Rabid (1977)

The only way to describe this film is ‘Cronenberg’. Another unconventional take on zombies, the root source of this outbreak is a woman who has had an accident and, after emergency surgery, ends up with a phallic stinger and orifice in her armpit that she uses to feed on other people’s blood. Those she feeds on then become infected and attack others, who then also become infected, and so on. This film is artistic chaos and is my second favourite David Cronenberg work (after The Fly of course). 

10. Cooties (2014) 

From Elijah Wood’s studio Spectrevision (who release amazing indie horrors – I have a lot of love and time for them), this film gives us zombie kids infected by eating gross chicken nuggets. Very funny and a great cast, as well as enough gore to keep it nestled in the middle of this list. 

9. Pontypool (2008)

This one went under the radar for me until last year when I was searching for something obscure to watch. This film is quite hard to explain as it involves a completely new way to spread the zombie virus – words. You must follow the rules: don’t use terms of endearment, rhetorical discourse, or the English language, and don’t translate the warning message. A very odd premise but a thoroughly enjoyable one with top notch unlikeable protagonists.

8. The Wailing (2016)

The Wailing isn’t a zombie film, until suddenly it is. The twists and turns in this movie keep you guessing who is responsible for the horror until the end, with the comic relief of a bumbling policeman and some downright ‘did me dirty’ betrayals. 

---

ARE YOU BRAVE ENOUGH FOR THESE LISTS?

---

7. The Evil Dead (1982)

I was incredibly on the fence about whether to include The Evil Dead on this list as a zombie film, but I think it may be the closest to the original zombie origins, after White Zombie. Using the Naturom Demonto (the Book of the Dead), a form of magic, leads to the demonic possession of the innocent college students, turning them into Deadites (aka zombies). You can only kill them by dismembering them (very zombie). Plus it’s one of the greatest horror and comedy films of all time. 

6. Braindead (1992)

Before Peter Jackson was bringing us adventures in Middle Earth or Skull Island, he was the mastermind behind this gorefest. Known as Dead Alive in the US, Braindead is a New Zealand zombie film, with a weird little plasticine rat monkey who chomps down on an overbearing mother. The best way to describe this film is wet. There’s blood, puss, gunge, you name it, they ooze it. It also features a couple of zombie sex scenes, a zombie baby that keeps changing size depending on if it’s played by a puppet or a person, and the greatest line ever uttered in a film by a priest, “I kick arse for the Lord”. 

5. Train to Busan (2016)

The final entry from South Korea, Train to Busan broke through to western audiences in a similar way to Parasite (minus the Academy Awards). If you enjoy zombie films with a lot of action, believable acting, and claustrophobic chaos, then this is perfect for you. I would also recommend checking out its animated prequel Seoul Station (2016), which is just as relentless in the action and gore. 

4. Shaun of the Dead (2004)

Shaun of the Dead is a British comedy horror from the fantastic mind of Edgar Wright. Along with barrels of laughs, this film has drama, gore, jump scares, and so much more. As zombie aficionados will know, Shaun of the Dead is a spoof of many before it, and is a real homage to the zombie culture, as well as providing audiences with a glimpse of a post-zombie apocalypse society where we can ‘learn to live with them’. 

3. Night of the Living Dead (1968) 

No zombie list would be complete without paying respect to Romero. As mentioned in my discussions of White Zombie and The Crazies, George A. Romero is the reason we have the zombie mythology that we have today. Although Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Day of the Dead (1985) have their merits, the first in his original trilogy, Night of the Living Dead, will always be the best of the bunch as it paved the way for all its successors. It's also an interesting topic of conversation in terms of racism, something that Romero himself stated he never intended to tackle in the film. 

2. .REC (2007)

Quite possibly the scariest film on this list, .REC could have easily been number one, if it wasn’t to be number one on a list I’m writing in the future (spoilers). Using rage induced running zombies, an infected dog, and a penthouse with a patient zero possession, this film really has it all. Filmed in a shaky camera documentary format, the shots are rough and blurry, and the kills are brutal. This film is the reason that I’m afraid to look down open staircases in multi storey buildings – in case I see floors of the undead staring back at me. It’s worth mentioning that there are three sequels to .REC, however the second film is really the only other one worth watching (there’s also an ok American remake called Quarantine (2008).   

1. 28 Days Later (2002)

Danny Boyle has been quoted saying that 28 Days Later is not a zombie film… I understand he is the director but I would kindly like to disagree. We are faced once again with the rage virus, this time caused by chimpanzees in a lab. They bite humans, humans bite other humans, and thus the end of the world begins… or the UK at least. This shaky camera film is incredibly rough around the edges, which works perfectly for its style and substance. A study of human morals, 28 Days Later proves that sometimes, it’s not the zombies that you need to worry about when the end of the world comes around. Special mention to the film’s sequel, 28 Weeks Later, also a fine film but just doesn’t hit in the same way that the first does.   

This list was incredibly hard to compile given that I have watched an inhumane amount of zombie films. I thought it was therefore worth giving some further recommendations for if you’re in the mood for any specific ‘type’ of zombie:

Zombie Comedies:

Reanimator (1985), Black Sheep (2006), Fido (2006), Zombieland (2009), Paranorman (2012), Warm Bodies (2013), Life After Beth (2014), Zombeavers (2014), One Cut of the Dead (2017), Office Uprising (2018), The Dead Don’t Die (2019), Little Monsters (2019).

Zombie Action / Fast Zombies:

Resident Evil franchise (2002-2016), plus the reboot Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021), Dawn of the Dead (2004), Land of the Dead (2005), I am Legend (2007), Day of the Dead (2008), Dead Snow (2009), World War Z (2013), The Girl with all the Gifts (2016), Overlord (2018), Army of the Dead (2021).

Slow Zombies: 

I Walked with a Zombie (1943), The Plague of the Zombies (1966), Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things (1972), Dawn of the Dead (1978), Zombi 2 / Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979), Day of the Dead (1985), Diary of the Dead (2007), Survival of the Dead (2009).

Not just Zombies: 

Pet Semetary (1989), Pet Semetary II (1992), Cabin in the Woods (2011), Maggie (2015), Cargo (2017), Pet Semetary (2019), Army of Thieves (2021).

Zombie TV Shows:

Dead Set (2008), The Walking Dead (2010 – 2022), Fear the Walking Dead (2015 – present), Kingdom (2019), The Walking Dead: World Beyond (2020 – present), All of us are Dead (2022).

RELATED ARTICLES

---

---

EXPLORE

---

MORE ARTICLES

---

---