The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The zombie film is one of the most popular sub-genres of the horror film. A zombie is a reanimated corpse that has returned from the dead, slow, shuffling and lacking will. In the modern incarnation, the zombie has become a creature ravenous for human flesh.
The idea of the zombie comes out of African religion. The first ever zombie film was White Zombie (1932) and for the next 36 years, the zombie remained in the province of Voodoo, occasionally a creature of mad science or created by alien invaders. There it was slow, shuffling reanimated corpse but never more than that.
The modern zombie film began with George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968), an apocalyptic film about the dead risen and laying siege to the living in a farmhouse. This made the zombie into a flesh eater and created the popular mythology about it only being able to be killed by incapacitating the head. This created a number of imitators but the true popularity of the zombie film grew in the 1980s following Romero’s sequel Dawn of the Dead (1978), which added copious gore and splatter to the mix. There were a number of enthusiastic imitators in particular from Italy. The 1990s saw the first zombie comedies.
The zombie film underwent a revival in the mid-2000s with a series of works that remade or homaged Romero’s films and others that claimed to be spurious sequels. This was followed by a vast shuffling horde of mostly low-budgeted zombie films. During this time, we have seen zombie films from almost every film-making country in the world.
These low-budget copies soon revealed that the number of original plots available to the zombie film was limited. This period also saw an upsurge in the zombie comedy and by the 2010s this evolved to a series of gonzo takes where filmmakers mixed zombies up with the most absurd title or conceptual mashups. By the end of the 2010s, the gonzo zombie film too had started to run out of ideas.
Tim Burton and Henry Selick combine on this stop-motion animated fantasy made in Burton’s characteristcially eccentric style, a beautifully stylised and dark fantasy in which assorted Halloween denizens invade Christmas
The film that created the modern zombie genre, that took a creature from voodoo and reinvented at a something stumbling and wanting only to devour flesh. George Romero creates a horror film that shoots out all cozy, established convention
The third and most undervalued of George Romero’s original trilogy of zombie films, an explosively bared to the bone series of apocalyptic confrontations containing some of the best performances and writing in any of his films
A film that deserves a cult reputation, this is possibly the most unique and original take on the zombie film I have ever come across
Ferociously paced low-budget hit that put the names of Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell on the map, both making their film debuts here. What made the film a cult hit was Raimi’s full tilt pace and entertainingly over-the-top splatter effects
The idea of a zombie film all shot in a single take. This proves a novelty amusement but then the film spins this on its head and becomes positively ingenious.
One of Wes Craven’s best films. Loosely based on true-life book by botanist Wade Davis who set out to find the drug that creates zombies, Craven delves into Haitian voodoo in a striking blend of dream and horror
George Romero’s successor to his cult hit of Night of the Living Dead. Romero creates a very different film, one that takes place in a mall and comes with a level of droll satire. A bigger budget allows him to push things to gore-drenched extremes
Phantasm series director Don Coscarelli returns with this mind-expanding effort that seems a conceptual collision between Donnie Darko, Limitless, a slacker version of Supernatural and Marvel Comics’ Dr Strange. Maybe the best mind-tripping fun it is possible to have without the use of illegal substances
This has become legendary as the Worst Film Ever Made. Maybe it is but the audience that celebrates its technical gaffes, the purple prose and bizarre bheind-the-scenes stories has contrarily made it one of cultish fascination
One of the key films from the legendary Val Lewton, this exploits a topical interest in voodoo. As with Lewton’s films, this sits in an ambiguous place that leaves the actuality of the supernatural uncertain
This was one of the classic 1980s splatter films. Stuart Gordon throws most of H.P. Lovecraft’s tone out the window and goes for hilariously black comedy served up with outrageously over-the-top effects
Hands down, this is the best vampire comedy ever made. An incredibly witty effort that contrasts the cliches of the genre with the mundane business of a group of vampires flatting together in New Zealand. A film that comes with sly deadpan gags packed into the corner of every frame
An extraordinary French film that has nothing at all to do with flesh-eating zombies but delves into voodoo religion that expands out to makes contrasts with French colonialism with striking results
One of Peter Jackson’s early films, which is maybe the funniest zombie comedy ever made. This becomes a work of unparalleled genius in the glorious gore-drenched excesses it reaches for
The zombie film has become an overworked vein in the last few years, reduced to self-parody. This South Korean film does nothing to reinvent the zombie film, just contains the drama aboard a train for the duration, but manages to create a grippingly intense epic of the genre
Spinoff of Night of the Living Dead that emerged from a complicated copyright split with George Romero. Director Dan O’Bannon substitutes black humour to deliver an hilariously different take on Romero’s zombie film
Bruce McDonald makes a standout fim with Stephen McHattie as a radio dj dealing with a zombie infection that inhabits the English langage
The most original treatment of the zombie film in some time. Rather hilariously, what we get is a film about a girl being pursued by a single zombie (at a walking pace) and the slow relationship she develops with it
Robert Rodriguez’s half of the Grindhouse double-bill where Rodriguez makes an hilariously tongue-in-cheek zombie film with great absurd comic energy and packed with witty cameos from various stars
George Romero returns to zombies, making a Found Footage film. After the disappointment of Land of the Dead, he delivers the goods here, while making powerful political points about modern media
The zombie film has become a creatively exhausted genre in recent years. This is an effort that completely changes the game with fiercely original effect, anchored by one of the best child performances in some time
A very funny film about a horde of zombie schoolchildren. Co-written by Saw‘s Leigh Whannell, this has a great deal of fun deflating zombie cliches and is wittily on the ball in its characterisations of the teachers
A warm parody/tribute to the George Romero zombie films that saw the emergence of Simon Pegg as a star. It also saw the zombie film move towards a more comedic emphasis, although few subsequent entries come with such good-natured humour
Third of the V/H/S films, all horror anthologies in the Found Footage style. While the other two were fairly hit and miss, this is extremely good. Each of the four stories sits among the very best episodes among the current crop of multi-director horror anthologies
An Australian effort that feels like a zombie movie version of Walkabout with an infected Martin Freeman wandering the Outback searching for someone to care for his infant daughter before he succumbs
Amid the zombie genre, which has given all evidence it has started to run out of original ideas in the last few years, this hits in with a considerable originality. The story of teenagers who find a zombie girl and keep her imprisoned for sexual purposes soon enters a disturbing headspace
The world’s first Cuban zombie film. Imagine a Latin American equivalent of Shaun of the Dead, conducted with some cleverness, oddball wit and an undeniable satiric undertow to produce an effort that is just as polished as any English-language counterpart
I went into this wondering what new things it could find to do with such an overworked genre as the zombie apocalypse but ended up gently surprised. Not a film that reinvents the wheel for the zombie genre but spins the basics out into a tight, exciting, international locale hopping survival story
Joss Whedon scripted work that is less a horror film than a meta-horror film that is constantly deconstructing the genre and subverting its cliches. A rare genre entry less about visceral impact than it has brains to spare
A standout Australian-made zombie film that breathes some life into an overworked genre, focusing on the tensions among the survivors
Completely insane Japanese film that wades in gore while playing everything up at a level of demented cartoonish absurdity. Possibly the most delirious movie-watching fun it is possible to have
Beautifully made and very adult version of the fairytale, which seems determined to play up the terror aspect of the title, resulting in a work that seems a long way away from Disney
Cult Italian film with Rupert Everett as a cemetery keeper facing the resurrected dead. This has such a wackily off-the-wall mix of black, deadpan humour and artiness, not to mention Everett at his laconic best, that you can never tell where it is going from one minute to the next
Completely insane Japanese film about man-eating killer sushi. A film that has a whacko anything goes lunacy to it, resulting in some of the most surreally crazed monster movie scenes that this author has seen in some time
George Romero’s sixth and final zombie film where he writes characters and a script with much more of a richness of theme than he did in the last two entries
A French zombie film that is about as far removed from a zombie film as it possible to get – the dead inexplicably return to life not to eat the flesh of the living but calm and detached where society’s problem is how to let them return to their previous lives
Amid the plethora of zombie parodies and gonzo zombie title mash-ups, this British comedy comes appealingly. Rather than grim battles for survival, this is down-to-earth in its humour and turns quite affecting by the end
Completely madcap film from Takashi Miike, a black comedy about a family who run a guesthouse where the guests keep dying. This comes replete with musical numbers and Claymation sequences
The first in a series of films from Spanish director Amando de Ossorio about blind Knights Templar zombies. De Ossorio is clearly influenced by Night of the Living Dead but creates considerable atmosphere
A zombie film that stands out from shuffling horde by dint of the fact that it takes place in Africa and is a survival horror work that takes itself seriously rather than tongue-in-cheek. Low key but achieves some often haunted effect
![[Rec] (2007) poster](https://www.moriareviews.com/rongulator/wp-content/uploads/rec-2007-poster-3.jpg)
Furious and highly engaging Spanish Found Footage film about the infected dead taking over an apartment building. Three sequels and an English-language remake followed
Beautifully filmed, intimate work about a woman’s attempts to eke out survival in the woods in the aftermath of an unspecified apocalypse. It is only part way through that we realise we are watching a zombie film
This has a premise that doesn’t do much to enthuse – a hapless loser has to take care of a bunch of kids during a zombie outbreak. I appeal to you to sit in past that and you will find yourself in the midst of the funniest zombie comedy since well Shaun of the Dead
I was cautious about hailing 28 Days Later as a modern classic; this sequel is in fact a much better film. Newcomer director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo draws it out into a series of superbly sustained suspense sequences
Hands down the best film ever produced by The Asylum. How could one not like an entertainingly madcap concoction that features mad scientists, zombie stormtroopers, Nazi UFOs and Adolf Hitler preserved as a head in a jar attached to a robot body?
The zombie film is feeling very played out these days. This is a no expectation entry (even the title seems utterly generic) that proves an unexpected delight, filled with endearing characterisations
Just when the zombie genre seemed to be creatively exhausted, this is one of the freshest takes in some time. This does nothing radical with the basics, just offers a series of wry, sharply written vignettes as two bored slackers greet the apocalypse
In the same vein as Grindhouse, four filmmakers have come together to make an anthology of spoof horror films that homage the drive-in tradition. Good taste is left well behind and the results are both outrageous and funny
The zombie genre has become creatively exhausted. This is one of the most original takes yet that asks what would happen if a cure were found but the zombies returned to life with full memory of everything they had done
Animated spinoff of the popular Survival Horror videogame. Your first impression is that animation is not the best format for a gore-drenched film. One’s misgivings are promptly silenced by the wildly phantasmagoric range of creatures the film throws at you
George Romero’s return to the zombie genre after twenty years, which he was ironically only able to make after others starting remaking and homaging his films. The result is a mixed affair. Romero still makes pungent social metaphors but the gory extremes of his earlier films seem tamed down
Based on the book that led a publishing phenomenon in which literary classics are mashed up with monsters, this has the difficult balancing act – that of making Jane Austen’s Regency romance sit alongside zombies – nevertheless manages to play both with an impeccably straight-face
Outrageously balls-to-the-wall New Zealand-made effort that fondly recalls the 1980s splatter-comedy films of Sam Raimi, Peter Jackson et al. The film often feels like former teen heavy metalheads looking back and wittily puncturing the pretensions of their youth
Troma film that has maybe the silliest movie title ever. This sets out to be so persistently moronic and wilfully offensive that it eventually attains a delirious absurdity
A surprisingly good low-budget film that places zombie into the mediaeval period amid the Black Death
The very first Nazi zombie film, a genre that proven surprisingly prolific since. A modestly effective film filled with great images of dead stormtroopers rising from the surf
Italian horror directed by Lamberto Bava and produced by Dario Argento, an Evil Dead-inspired work about the possessed dead taking over a cinema, all conducted with a ferocious enthusiasm
In the overworked vein the zombie film, one of the most unique and original voices has been British director Andrew Parkinson. This was the first of Parkinson’s kitchen sink zombie films
![[Rec]3 Genesis (2012) poster](https://www.moriareviews.com/rongulator/wp-content/uploads/rec-3-genesis-2012-poster.jpg)
Third entry in the hit Spanish Found Footage series. Not the origin story it promises to be, is the one entry in the series that decides to have fun. The Found Footage look is abandoned soon in, nevertheless it turns out the gore-drenched goods and is peopled with a range of amusingly eccentric characters
Brian Yuzna’s entry is the only worthwhile effort among the sequels to Dan O’Bannon’s Return of the Living Deadwhere Yuzna adds an original plot about a zombie girlfriend and the film is spiked with perverse imagery
A film adapted from a book by the writer of Let the Right One In concerning the resurrected dead, this goes some way to divorce itself from the zombie film and develops its horrors with striking slow burn effect
This sells you with its concept – a stripper and a religious fundamentalist are trapped together in a peepshow as the apocalypse occurs – and works surprisingly well
Quite well made effort that throws zombies into a Western setting
Zombies and soccer! Ok? From co-director of the ferocious French zombie film The Horde, a rather entertaining effort that resembles something of Shaun of the Dead in its comedic approach
The zombie film has become creatively exhausted of recent – this is one original treatment, mocked up as a reality tv show like Cops, following soldiers into infestation zones, all interspersed with a series of witty commercials
The 1939 Bob Hope comedy remake of The Cat and the Canary was a big hit; here he and Paulette Goddard are put through the same in what is all but a sequel. Hope is on top form again
Classic horror film influenced by Night of the Living Dead about hippies turned into zombies by rabies infected meat pies
A zombie film made not long after Night of the Living Dead. This comes with an off-the-wall premise – the prisoners on a chain gang get high inhaling formaldehyde, which causes them to rise from the dead after being shot in an escape attempt
An overlooked effort from the direct-to-VHS era concerning itself with a field of undead scarecrows. Amid the numerous zombie and splatter effects efforts of the day that were being churned out, this settles in with an unusual atmosphere that is often hard to shake
Charmingly droll film that posits an alternate version of the 1950s where zombies have been domesticated. This has a perfect sense of mood and admirable deadpan playing by all involved
Train to Busan was a massive breakout hit from South Korear. Overlooked in the buzz was this animated prequel from the same director released at the same time. The zombie film and animation are an uneasy mix but this works well, if not with the same kick as Train to Busan
Film that seems to be trying to cram in as many exploitation elements as possible from UFOs to spree killers, zombies, Women in Prison and rock’n’roll
Modestly effective zombie film set during the US Civil War. This eschews the usual gore-drenched zombie attacks in favour of a nicely achieved story about one man’s internal journey through the apocalypse
Fascinatingly original anime set in an alternate history Steampunk version of Victorian England that has developed a technology based on Frankenstein’s corpse resurrection experiments
Eccentric comedy in which momma’s boy Steve Buscemi accepts a deal to resurrect his mother (Miriam Margolyes) from the dead
English-language remake of the Spanish Found Footage film [Rec]. A lesser work but in the hands of John Erick Dowdle one of the few English-language horror remakes that stands up to the original
A Canadian entry made soon into the zombie movie revival of the mid-00s and before the copycats started to become tediously familiar and the genre turned to self-parody. This delivers a solid rehash of the essentials – IMHO a better job that Zack Snyder did in Dawn of the Dead
The third film based on the roleplaying game. The previous two films were forgettable but for a throwaway effort, this is surprisingly good, taking a far darker tone than the usual sword-and-sorcery adventure and adding considerable moral complexity
South Korean anthology containing a trio of tales on the theme of the end of the world. The standout is the middle segment, a very Asimovian tale wherein a robot claims to have logically attained Buddhist enlightenment
This has been conceived as the ultimate modern exploitation film featuring Nazi zombie piloting flying sharks. Think Iron Sky by way of Sharknado. The results are highly entertaining
James Gunn directs a film about body-snatching alien slugs that proves enormous fun and comes packed to the edges with numerous genre references and homages
Documentary about the popularity of zombie films and the rise of zombie fandom. Although there are some noted omissions, this covers the history of the genre in reasonable depth, even examines its historical origins and provides an amusing glimpse into the zombie’s pervasion of popular culture
A gonzo parody of WWII heroics a la Inglourious Basterds with the addition of Nazi zombies, over-the-top splatter and some decidedly non-PC humour, this proves an enormously entertainingly comic-book of a film
Reasonable adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s stories about a Puritan warrior, an entry in the 00s sword-and-sorcery fad that comes with a welcomely dark edge
This starts out offering a fine astrophysically credible depiction of Mars only to quickly reach for the playbook of Alien cliches to essentially become Zombies on Mars. As long as one accepts the hackneyed premise for what it is, the film generates more than reasonable tension
One of the more unpretentiously enjoyable films from Charles Band, this rides the mid-80s spate of time travel films with Tim Thomerson giving a highly entertaining performance as a hard-boiled detective travelled back from the future. A series of sequels followed
Largely forgotten tv movie featuring a Robert Bloch script. Curtis Harrington creates a fascinatingly creepy atmosphere that blends a recreation of the tropes of film noir with mysterious happenings involving voodoo and the resurrected dead
Film about a zombie-creating sexually transmitted disease that feels like it was made by a bunch of drunken adolescents trying to out-gross each other after an all-weekend beer party. A film that is readily ventures into bad taste and is prepared to offend
One of the films from cult director Jean Rollin. This is a zombie film, clearly influenced by Night of the Living Dead, but with a uniquely French spin – the zombies are caused by drinking toxic wine
The second of British director Andrew Parkinson’s remarkable kitchen sink zombie films about people trying to deal with ordinary life while transforming
Yeon Sang-ho makes a sequel to his international breakout zombie film hit of Train to Busan, appropriating the basics of Escape to New York to good ends
The fifth and final of the surprisingly good Mythica series that has consistently made a strong, rousing variant on the Epic Fantasy tropes on a low budget
The second sequel to the cult splatter hit Re-Animator is a superior effort to its predecessor Bride of Re-Animator, getting the original’s sense of black humour down pat and arriving at a memorably apocalyptic climax
It is mind-boggling to think how you could combine zombies with Fight Club, the classic anti-capitalist manifesto about brawling clubs and split personality … Such an idea proves too challenging for this Taiwanese effort but we do get a solid zombie version of The Raid
Bollywood conducts a reasonable attempt to make its own equivalent of the zombie film in this mini-series about people at siege from undead British colonial soldiers awakened
A rather charming South Korean comedy about a family who try to exploit the commercial aspects of having a tame zombie
There have been a surprising number of films in recent years offering up the combination of zombies and strippers. Although what we have is never quite specified as zombies, this offers up strippers kicking zombie ass with a great deal of gore-drenched relish
One has seen just a few too many wacky titled zombie comedies and this Austrian film seems another wannabe until the climactic scenes where it redeems itself with a completely demented bloodbath
The zombie genre has become creatively overused and exhausted in recent years but this French entry plays with an appealing originality, sort of like a low-key version of Dawn of the Dead where a man builds a Parisian apartment building into his own paradise