Which is not to argue that Zack Snyder's 2004 adaptation of George Romero's 1978 picture with the same title has any sense of aesthetic. The first twelve minutes of the film act as an opening salvo for his career and include one of the most impressive opening title sequences in the annals of the genre's history. This introduction provides a fantastic dynamic counterpoint to the movie that "Dawn of the Dead" is sometimes linked to: Danny Boyle's "28 Days Later," mostly because to the involvement of zombies that are referred to as "quick."
The remainder of "Dawn of the Dead" never quite matches these first few minutes, but the writing by future "Guardians of the Galaxy" director James Gunn keeps things entertaining all the way through. It should be emphasized that replicating a classic was certain to fail (a fate Snyder would repeat when tackling Alan Moore's work and the whole DC world), but by forsaking Romero's social criticism, Snyder was able to carve out his own part of the cinematic zombie cosmos.
It's a corner of the genre where he wants to go back with "Army of the Dead" on Netflix in 2021.
Set in a post-apocalyptic zombie apocalypse brought forth by the strange street drug "Natas." We follow one guy as he pursues Flesh Eaters for fun, atonement, and escape from his past.
After running into a small group of survivors who are quickly running out of food, he decides to help them. When the flesh-eating Flesh Eaters attack suddenly, they have to run away, which puts the Hunter's skills to the test.
The trailer for Zombie Hunter makes it look like the kind of bloody B-movie fun that everyone would love to see. We're interested to see how director K. King pays tribute to the style of movies like Machete and Planet Terror. The marketing team did a great job with the eye-catching poster.
Lupita Nyong'o, who usually excels in dramatic roles, wowed audiences with the 2014 film Little Monsters. It would seem, however, that she is really enjoying herself in her part as a kindergarten teacher whose class is on a field trip when they encounter a zombie outbreak. After starring in Jordan Peele's critically acclaimed horror film "Us," the actress returned to the genre in 2019 with a much lower profile film. The movie premiered this year.
But she is definitely up to the challenge. According to the official press materials, the movie is "dedicated to all the kindergarten teachers who inspire kids to learn, give them confidence, and keep them from being eaten by zombies." Yes, that pretty much says it all. Josh Gad plays an annoying, famous child entertainer, and Alexander England plays a snobby, washed-up musician who is taking his nephew on a field trip and is in love (or maybe just lust) with Lupita Nyong'o.
As a result, you get an unique horror—romantic comedy mix that amps up both genres.
Since then, there hasn't been a stop to the zombie outbreak. (Some of them have even learned how to run.) The most famous example is The Walking Dead on TV, but zombies have also been in found footage movies ([REC]), romantic comedies ([REC]), and homages to grindhouse movies (Warm Bodies) (Planet Terror).
Meanwhile, in reaction to Romero's works, a global subgenre emerged.
Lucio Fulci, an Italian horror classic, took the notion and ran with it, first with Zombi 2 (aka Zombie) and then with his far more weird and experimental "Gates of Hell" trilogy.
Fans of Romero's work who expanded upon his foundation—directors Dan O'Bannon, Fred Dekker, and Stuart Gordon, for example—came along and messed with the genre's constructions, exploring and expanding what a zombie movie might be. The popularity of zombies thereafter rapidly declined.
The undead had been a fixture of horror films, but they now mainly feature in sequels (such as Return of the Living Dead and Zombie) and low-budget B-movies (such as My Boyfriend's Back, Cemetery Man, and Dead Alive).
Where else could we possibly start looking? White Zombie was the first full-length "zombie" horror film, and it was also the first time the notion of Haitian voodoo zombies was popularized in Hollywood. This was decades before the current zombie films of George A. Romero.
White Zombie is now available on YouTube for your viewing pleasure, and it can also be found in almost any budget collection of zombie movies. Bela Lugosi portrays a witch doctor who is literally dubbed "Murder" since the studio was still a few years away from finding nuance at this time. Lugosi was just a year removed from his fame as one of Universal's go-to horror actors after his role in Dracula.
The Svengali-like Lugosi uses his various concoctions and powders to turn a betrothed young woman into a zombie in order to bind her to the will of a cruel plantation owner, and... well, it's fairly dry, wooden stuff. Predictably, the finest part is Bela Lugosi, but I guess you had to start somewhere. White Zombie was followed by a number of other Hollywood voodoo zombie films, the most of which are now freely accessible online.
Of course, the film had an impact on Rob Zombie's musical career. Some "best zombie movie" lists include it prominently, but let's face it: in 2016, this isn't a movie that most people would like. This object is ranked fifty on the list almost exclusively because of its historical significance.
Planet Terror, directed and co-written by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, is the better half of their Grindhouse double feature. The story revolves on a go-go dancer, a botched bioweapon, and the transformation of the residents of a tiny Texas hamlet into shuffling, pustulous monsters. The explosive tongue of Planet Terror is firmly planted in its rotting cheek as it embraces its B-movie roots with missing reels, poor editing, and hammy overdubbed dialogue.
In an outrageously exciting conclusion with over-the-top gore and oozing effects, Rose McGowan's hero Cherry Darling has her severed arm replaced with a machine gun. Gather 'round, people: I'd want to eat your knowledge in order to grow mine.
Night of the Chicken Dead seems to have some of the things that are usually in a Troma movie. It will be a bunch of trash. It'll get quite bloody. There will be no limits or care for how things look. Like every other Troma movie, the real question is whether you find it boring or not. In this case, the right answer is "absolutely not."
It's called a "zom-com musical," and its social satire of consumer culture is even a little bit clever, in an obvious way. But is that really why you're watching a movie about zombie chickens that come to life in a KFC-style restaurant built on an old Native American burial ground? I didn't believe that. When you watch a Troma movie, you just have to enjoy the gore, scatological humor, and low production values for what they are.
So, Poultrygeist is just 103 minutes of filthy, rude, and raunchy madness.While zombie films have been around for over 80 years (White Zombie was released in 1932, and I Walked With a Zombie was released in 1943), it's often assumed that the subgenre as we know it today didn't take off until 1968, when George A. Romero released Night of the Living Dead.
Independent film Night captivated viewers with its intriguing storyline, stunning gore, progressive casting, and social criticism, and its gaunt, ravenous undead. Romero created five additional Dead movies, including Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead.
Despite Night of the Living Dead's impact, it was not until the late 1970s and notably the 1980s (news source) that a massive wave of notable American zombie films emerged. Shortly before Dawn of the Dead boosted the popularity of zombies as horror adversaries, Shock Waves may have been the first "Nazi zombie" film.
The film follows a party of wayward boaters who get up on a mystery island where a submerged SS submarine has released its undead crew as a Nazi experiment. In the same year that he sneered at Princess Leia in Star Wars: A New Hope, Hammer Horror star Peter Cushing plays a poorly miscast and befuddled-looking SS commander. A New Hope? Impossible!
Since then, there have been at least 16 Nazi zombie movies, which is a lot more than you might think. This one is important at least because it was the first to combine two great movie villains into one.
Shock Waves is ultimately responsible for films like the Dead Snow trilogy.
It's not easy to come up with a fresh perspective on the zombie film, but Colm McCarthy's The Girl With All The Gifts, based on Mike Carey's novel, succeeds in doing so while also giving great genre thrills.
In this instance, the zombie outbreak is caused by a fungal infection like to that shown in The Last Of Us, which has converted the majority of the population into 'hungry' zombies. But that's really in the background of the plot, which concentrates on little Melanie, who is getting an unorthodox education from Gemma Arterton's instructor Helen in a heavily-armed institution.
Melanie, a'second-generation' hungry, still desires to consume human flesh but can think and feel. Her presence might hold the key to the future.
The Draugr, a famous undead creature from Scandinavian folklore famed for its violent determination to defending its hoard of gold, is included in this gore-fest, giving it a Scandinavian touch. In Dead Snow, these draugr are really ex-SS troops who harassed and stole from the people of a Norwegian village before being slain or driven into the frigid mountains.
Certainly, this earns Dead Snow uniqueness marks. It is also an extremely humorous, bloody, and satisfyingly violent film with aspects of Evil Dead and "teen sex/slasher" films. And if you enjoy it, there's more to come in Dead Snow: Red vs. Dead, the sequel.
The narrative behind The Dead Next Door is one of those examples that may be more intriguing than the picture itself: Sam Raimi produced it using a share of the earnings from Evil Dead II to enable pal J. R. Bookwalter to direct the low-budget zombie epic of his dreams. For some reason, Raimi is listed as an executive producer under the moniker "The Master Cylinder," while Evil Dead's Bruce Campbell doubles as a voiceover for not one, but two characters, since the whole picture seems to have been redubbed in post-production. This, predictably, gives The Dead Next Door an aura of dreamlike unreality, and that's before we even consider that the picture was SHOT ENTIRELY ON SUPER 8, rather than 32 mm film.
What you have in The Dead Next Door, then, is an original take on the zombie apocalypse: A low-budget zombie action-drama with both cringeworthy amateur acting and unexpectedly polished sequences.
An "elite squad" of zombie exterminators discover a cult dedicated to the worship of the undead, but you aren't watching this one for the narrative, you're watching it for the gore. Made for no other reason than to test out gore effects and realistic decapitations, The Dead Next Door sometimes resembles a low-budget effort to recreate Peter Jackson's psychotic bloodletting in Dead Alive, except with jokes so obvious that they're scary. To paraphrase: "Who is this Dr. Savini guy anyway?" Can I call you "Officer Raimi"? Commander Carpenter?They are all there in a zombie film that looks and feels like it was crafted just for the director's family. Still, there is a certain allure to this kind of messy proximity.
The journey of zombie movies to the big screen has been very interesting. For decades, the creatures didn't have much of a presence or definition outside of Voodoo legends, radioactive humanoids, and the unforgettable art of E.C. comics. Zombies weren't used very often, and when they were, they weren't like the flesh-eating, cannibalistic zombies we know and love today.
Cemetery Man, directed by Dario Argento protégé Michele Soavi, depicts the living dead as a nuisance rather than a danger. Cemetery Man is based on the comic strip Dylan Dog and stars Everett as a misanthropic gravedigger. Why not? Living scum propagate accusations he's impotent.
But there's a catch: the dead refuses to be buried in his own cemetery. Dellamorte meets a lovely widow (Falchi) during her husband's funeral and falls in love with her. They end up boiling it up on her husband's grave after wooing her in the dreary halls of his ossuary. It just gets weirder from here.