The dead walks, the living dies. It’s a simple formula that has survived for decades and is still going strong today with super successful movies and TV shows, like The Walking Dead universe. The undead is a popular trope in horror, but what makes zombies so terrifying? It’s not just that they’re dead and hungry for brains — it’s that they’re people, and it’s more than enough to make them the perfect monsters. There’s something about watching humans, our fellow creatures, reduced to mindless eating machines that is deeply unsettling.
Zombie movies aren’t just about gore and terror, though; the most serious entries in the horror zombie genre explore humanity’s darkest impulses, from greed to cowardice to rage and beyond. And sometimes they ask us what we would do in extreme situations. Would we fight or flee? Could we kill others if push came to shove? If you haven’t seen many zombie movies yet (or any at all), here are some great ones to get you started on your own zombie movie marathon.
#1 28 Days Later
2002 | 1h 53m | Directed by Danny Boyle
The plot depicts the breakdown of society following the accidental release of a highly contagious virus. It focuses on the struggle of a group of survivors to cope with the destruction of the life they once knew. The success of 28 Days Later led to a 2007 sequel, 28 Weeks Later. A third film, 28 Months Later, has been rumored to be in development for years but has been repeatedly delayed.
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38points
#2 Shaun Of The Dead
2004 | 1h 39m | Directed by Edgar Wright
Edgar Wright’s comedy horror film is one of those funny zombie movies that you can rewatch over and over, but also one of the most inventive. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost play two Londoners who have trouble coming to terms with how their lives are going when a zombie apocalypse forces them to take refuge in a local pub with their loved ones.
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38points
#3 Zombieland
2009 | 1h 28m | Directed by Ruben Fleischer
A fast-paced, funny, and gory horror-comedy starring Emma Stone, Woody Harrelson, and Jesse Eisenberg. A dysfunctional group of survivors travels together across the Southwestern United States in an attempt to find a sanctuary free from zombies. Zombieland was a critical and commercial success and led to a sequel, Zombieland: Double Tap, released in 2019.
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37points
#4 Night Of The Living Dead
1968 | 1h 36m | Directed by George A. Romero
Considered by many critics to be the zombie movie that started it all, George Romero’s cult classic is an iconic film that set the standard for the genre and made zombies a mainstream staple. The movie follows a group of survivors holed up in an abandoned farmhouse, trying to fight off hordes of undead roaming all over the East Coast. In 1999, the film was deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
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35points
#5 Dawn Of The Dead (1978)
1978 | 2h 7m | Directed by George A. Romero
Dawn of the Dead sees a group of survivors holed up in a shopping mall as zombies try to get in. It’s the sequel to Night of the Living Dead, but it has no characters returning from the previous film. It’s probably the most famous zombie apocalypse movie ever made, and it spawned plenty of remakes over the years, including the recent one by Zack Snyder.
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32points
#6 28 Weeks Later
2007 | 1h 40m | Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
28 Weeks Later is a British-Spanish production structured as a sequel to the critically and commercially successful film 28 Days Later. The movie picks up six months after the Rage virus spread throughout the city of London. NATO has restored order and is repopulating the quarantined city when a carrier of the Rage virus enters London and unknowingly re-ignites the spread of the deadly infection. The nightmare is coming back.
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31points
#7 The Evil Dead
1981 | 1h 25m | Directed by Sam Raimi
A super worth it watch among the many Shudder movies available, The Evil Dead is the story of five friends vacationing in a cabin in the woods. After playing a cursed audiotape, four of them get possessed, with the fifth friend forced to fight for his life and survive a bloodbath. The movie has developed a reputation as one of the most influential cult films and is cited among the greatest horror films of all time.
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29points
#8 Day Of The Dead (1985)
1985 | 1h 41m | Directed by George A. Romero
George A. Romero’s third installment in his zombie series finds a group of survivors holed up in an underground bunker as they try to figure out how to stop the undead hordes that have overrun the earth. Like its predecessors, the film has garnered a cult following and inspired numerous parodies and homages. Romero himself considers it his personal favorite movie in the original Dead trilogy.
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27points
#11 The Return Of The Living Dead
1985 | 1h 31m | Directed by Dan O’Bannon
Set in Louisville, The Return Of The Living Dead follows a diverse group of people dealing with the accidental release of a horde of unkillable zombies. It’s the film that introduced the concept of zombies as “brain-eaters,” unlike previous titles that show undead just eating any random part of the body. Its enduring popularity has spawned four sequels and made the saga a cult classic.
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26points
