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.
If the phrase ‘Arnold Schwarzenegger zombie film’ is not capable of getting you excited, then you’re visiting the wrong site. This is surprisingly good, the complete opposite of anything we expect of either a Schwarzenegger or zombie film, where he can even be said to be giving a serious performance for once
French horror film shot all in a single unbroken take as a deadly infection, possibly a zombie outbreak, spreads all around town
An entry from the great era of mad scientist films wherein George Zucco turns his assistant into a zombie so he can steal his fiancee. Despite a wonderfully mad performance from Zucco, the effort is prosaic and routine, while the zombie gets to do almost nothing throughout
Another entry from the oeuvre of cult French director Jean Rollin – a film about the bond between a girl and her zombified friend that sits between some gore amateurish effects and a poetic subtlety
One of the better copies of
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
Amiable Canadian entry in the oversaturated market of the zombie comedy that emerges sort of as a Judd Apatow film with zombies and produces the occasional smile if never any true laughs
Billed as a ‘zom-rom-com’, Dane DeHaan deals with girlfriend Aubrey Plaza who has returned from the dead. The film has a quirky appeal to it, even if in the end you never feel it is quite as funny as it promises to be
An absurd film where angels conduct a war on Earth amid much gunfire and creature effects
Crazed Evil Dead-styled film directed by sf/horror writer S.P. Somtow about modern-day Aztec sacrifices, this makes a beeline for bizarre gore effects
Film spinoff from a YouTube channel that features two comedians giving absurdly over-the-top survivalist tips. The general observation with these YouTube spinoff films is that what works as a series of short clips has difficulty in extending said gags to sustain a dramatic plot
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
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
Whether we asked for it or not, this gives us the world’s first gay pornographic zombie film
One of the weird mash-ups of horror and martial arts that were popular in Hong Kong during this period. Despite a great title, this suffers from an emphasis on frenetic slapstick and caricatures and in the version seen here from excruciatingly witless dubbing that fairly much kills the show off
A surprisingly good low-budget film that places zombie into the mediaeval period amid the Black Death
An obscure Japanese film about a backwoods motel where things get very strange – the hosts slaughtering the guests, a zombie wandering around. The film comes with a decided WTF element to it, the least of which is actually trying to work out what is going on
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
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
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
Zombie film that appropriates the name of the Val Lewton classic (and Arnold Bocklin’s painting) but is actually a low-budget copy of Resident Evil
A B budget 1950s alien invasion film that cuts cost by having the invasion represented by stock footage and the resurrected dead in a series of images that prefigure Night of the Living Dead
Directed by low-budget actress Marlene Mc’Cohen, this is both an alien invasion and a zombie apocalypse film. A film where those involved are making an effort but the skill gap falls well short of the basics, particularly in the story field and budget needed to make a film work
Forget about the talk of outbreaks of Lyme Disease, this is another zombie film in all but name even if the phrase is never mentioned
A zombie film from Venezuela
Surely the first slacker horror film in which teenager Devon Sawa’s hand becomes possessed. A comedy that should have been a lot funnier than it is
British lad culture take on the zombie film. Think a version of Shaun of the Dead inhabited by guys around the age of 20 whose only real concerns is getting laid and wasted. The constant vulgarity of the humour becomes tiresome and as a zombie film it is negligible
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
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
New Zealand-made entry into the zombie comedy stakes. This has the amusing idea of having a zombie outbreak occur during the shooting of a zombie film. The film owes a big debt of inspiration to Peter Jackson’s Braindead and proves amiable if broad in its humour
Odd film about 19th Century body snatchers that is like a low-budget version of a Burke and Hare story. This develops a sense of humour and starts to go in some very strange directions
The greatest distinction this has in movie history is that it was released on one of the most memorably titled double-bills of all time along with I Drink Your Blood. While I Drink‘s vision of rabid hippies was highly entertaining, this is a voodoo film that is dreary and uninteresting
Classic horror film influenced by Night of the Living Dead about hippies turned into zombies by rabies infected meat pies
Mockbuster from The Asylum that was intended to capitalise on the release of I Am Legend and in fact gets much more of the essence of the original Richard Matheson novel than the official film adaptation
The third of the trilogy of animated films from Arcana Studios based around the adventures of a young H.P. Lovecraft
The first of Uwe Boll’s videogame adaptations and the beginning of his bad director reputation. Ignoring much of the game’s canon, this is a zombie film by the numbers. Nnevertheless, it was one of the films that presaged that huge zombie film revival of the 00s
One of the key films in the cult of Lucio Fulci. Imagine a version of The Amityville Horror with the addition of zombies, mad scientists and a gore-drenched death every few minutes
A variant on the much more charming Mad Monster Party?, an animated film featuring cute cuddly versions of the Famous Monsters (Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, wolfman etc) with Adam Sandler voicing Dracula
Bizarre entry from the Anglo-horror cycle with Michael Gough as a mad scientist creating zombies and driving a deadly armoured Rolls Royce
A low-budget regionally made film about a zombie outbreak. This does better than most of the vast horde of low-budget zombie films that came out in the late 2000s
This could be The Raid reconceived as a zombie film (and a few borrowings from Assault on Precinct 13). This never reinvents the basics, just delivers a ferociously entertaining, bared to the bone zombie survival film
A Disney live-action film that engenders no believability in its basic premise. Much of the show is regarded as an opportunity for Bette Midler to steal the limelight and play to over-the-top excess
As part of their attempt to sell everything including the family silver, Disney make a sequel to their witch comedy, bringing back the three original actresses who are now looking a little long in the tooth
The Gonzo Japanese Splatter Film offers a wild array of splatter, bio-transformations and an obsession with schoolgirls’ panties. This is a low-budget entry that offers something akin to a zombie-hunting equivalent of Buffy
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
A Pakistani copy of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Backwoods Brutality film, all served up with reasonable vigour. It is fascinating seeing the genre tropes translated between different cultures
This was one of the entries from the 1980s heyday of the notorious Italian zombie film where people were copying Dawn of the Dead but pushing everything to a gore-drenched extreme
Cult animated film that adapts several stories from the adult fantasy comic-book Metal Hurlant/Heavy Metal. These vary but in its better moments that has a trippy cult hallucinatory quality
Animated film directed by Rob Zombie that feels like an episode of Ren & Stimpy made by someone with an unhealthy obsession with horror and exploitation movies and stripper bars
Lightweight film based around the Disney theme park attraction that becomes a Eddie Murphy comedy where he and his family enter into a big old mansion that proves to be haunted
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
Deranged entry in the 80s fad for heavy metal horror films where a band are resurrected from the dead to play an all-important concert, while fighting off conservative townspeople and a very much alive Adolf Hitler
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
A painfully unfunny endurance test created by star Kevon Ward centred around the deformed, imbecilic hillbilly he played at various Halloween shows. The film consists of little more than people playing morons in silly voices
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
A zombie film (of sorts) from Mexico, although it could just as easily be about a man infected with a flesh-eating bacteria. A zombie film in which almost nothing happens, we just sit watching a man getting ill
A British-made effort that offers the amusing idea of zombified geriatrics on their walking frames. However, the actual film lacks any tongue-in-cheek approach and emerges as excruciating on all counts
A film based on the hugely popular children’s horror series. The film creates a story where the creatures from all the books are unleashed, which is fun to watch, yet what we ultimately have is easy, undemanding horror for family audiences
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 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
The third of the Blind Dead films about the zombies of blind Knights Templar. This is set aboard a ghost ship at sea and is said to have later influenced John Carpenter’s The Fog
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
Zombie film about a small town overrun as people are infected with a virus from a fallen satellite. Familiar stuff conducted with a little more care than usual
A zombie comedy that comes with a mildly amusing premise – where people stage an intervention to stop their friend eating people. This feels a single gag drawn-out as a full length film
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
This has the amusing idea of mashing the zombie film up with the Guy Ritchie gangster film, although is never quite as amusing as it sounds nor ever hits the comic-bookishly over-the-top posturing of Ritchie’s films
One of several films that came out not long after Snakes on a Plane offering up similar wacky collusions – in this case, a zombie outbreak aboard a plane. The surprise is that the film plays itself seriously
One Cut of the Dead was one of the freshest takes on the overworked zombie film in recent years. Here Academy Award-winning director Michel Hazanavicius conducts a French remake
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
The Soska Sisters made a splash on the genre scene a few years ago. Here they make a tribute/follow-up to Night of the Living Dead but produce an utterly safe work that is the antithesis of the edginess that gained them a name
Another zombie film that comes with a deliberately ridiculous title, even if the title ends up being a misnomer. This site’s choice for the worst film of 2020
One of the worst of Uwe Boll’s videogame adaptations, this has the feel of action sequences being slung together with random indifference, slapdash production values and badly mismatched casting
Low-budget ingenue effort with pretensions to being more, this produces some occasionally nifty effects that quickly weary and only seem to hold up a thoroughly hackneyed B horror movie plot
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
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
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
The appealing idea of a romantic comedy/road movie where both characters are zombies. The plot is all over the place but the premise is conducted with some amusement
US film adaptation of a cult Italian comic-book about a private eye who investigates the supernatural, this comes out like a weak episode of tv’s Angel where a potential worthwhile idea descends to lame humour
A zombie film of sorts in which the people of an Australian outback town are possessed by an alien force
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
An anthology film produced by Charles Band where assorted directors turn in seven episodes all centred around a videogame warrior put through a series of tests by The Devil
Zombie action film with Mark Dacascos driving through the apocalyptic landscape in a luxury car looking for a home for his daughter
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
Doom was the videogame if you had a computer in the 1990s. This is the second film based based on the game and actually does a far better job of getting the essence of the game and paying fanservice to its elements than the earlier bigger budgeted 2005 film did
Heavily disappointing film version of the videogame that defined the term First Person Shooter. The film version seems to either miss or water down the principal appeals of the game, although you do get Dwayne Johnson (still billed as The Rock) as the bad guy
A film about a bunch of boorish lads gleefully eliminating zombie women. A comedy this may well be but doesn’t disguise the fact the film’s sympathies are clearly with the guys making crude innuendos and feeling downtrodden by women
Doctor Strange was one of the better MCU films. Here Sam Raimi takes over from Scott Derrickson in the director’s chair. The sequel readily delves into multiverse themes
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
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
Another entry in the zombie comedy field, this is essentially a retread of The Breakfast Club but with the addition of zombies
This is a surreal and plotless Catholic horror film from Dante Tomaselli that seems full of fairground horror house jumps and overloaded with tortured Catholic imagery but makes no real sense
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
Another in the vast horde of zombie films of the 2010s about a group of friends gathered for a party as a terrorist biowarfare attack turns the locals into zombies
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
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
The first horror film from New Zealand, a gore drenched effort about a mad scientist creating zombies. Directed by much energy even if it suffers a complete lack of plot
The Maze Runner was a solid Young Adult effort that built out an effective Conceptual Breakthrough story; this the second of two sequels that feel like a series of canned action scenes in search of a purpose
Yet another zombie comedy, one that comes steeped in homage. Essentially a zombie bromance where it at least gains its life from its two characters motormouth performances. The humour sits halfway between goofy silliness and the occasionally amusing