8 Zombies Movies That Define The Genre
- Thread starter DrStrangelove
- Start date
How many zombie movies has the author seen exactly?
Here's my pics:
Romero's trilogy, the whole trilogy. Night basically invented the idea of zombies that we know today. Dawn perfected all of that and broadened the scale. If I had to pick just 1 movie that defines the whole genre, it would be Dawn of the Dead. Day went further and played around with the ideas established in the previous 2. It even gave us a zombie hero to root for:
To this day when making a zombie movie, people are still ripping off Romero's concepts.
Fulci's Zombie flesh Eaters. While it may not be the most popular one these days, many zombie movie makers were inspired by it. It has a lot of awesome brutal scenes, including one of the best things ever:
Return of the Living Dead. Essentially a parody of Night of the Living Dead, it keeps a good balance between comedy and horror (although it's more funny than scary). Again, it was influential among zombie movie makers and it started a franchise (decent until ROTLD 3).
Peter Jackson's Dead Alive. It put romance and humor (including physical slapstick gags) into a zombie movie plus it went to the next level with the gore.
Snyder's Dawn of the Dead remake. You can argue whether it was this movie or 28 Days Later which brought back zombies but in 28DL they weren't really zombies (they turned in seconds so they weren't really reanimated, they died of starvation etc.) so I'm going with this one. It's much more memorable, it's better made and it doesn't get weak in the end like 28DL (yes, I'm talking about the part with the military). Also, in my opinion, it's one of the best remakes ever and Snyder's best movie.
Shaun of the Dead. One of the best comedies of the last decade and a good zombie movie. Even people who don't like zombies seem to like this one.
Here's my pics:
Romero's trilogy, the whole trilogy. Night basically invented the idea of zombies that we know today. Dawn perfected all of that and broadened the scale. If I had to pick just 1 movie that defines the whole genre, it would be Dawn of the Dead. Day went further and played around with the ideas established in the previous 2. It even gave us a zombie hero to root for:
To this day when making a zombie movie, people are still ripping off Romero's concepts.
Fulci's Zombie flesh Eaters. While it may not be the most popular one these days, many zombie movie makers were inspired by it. It has a lot of awesome brutal scenes, including one of the best things ever:
Return of the Living Dead. Essentially a parody of Night of the Living Dead, it keeps a good balance between comedy and horror (although it's more funny than scary). Again, it was influential among zombie movie makers and it started a franchise (decent until ROTLD 3).
Peter Jackson's Dead Alive. It put romance and humor (including physical slapstick gags) into a zombie movie plus it went to the next level with the gore.
Snyder's Dawn of the Dead remake. You can argue whether it was this movie or 28 Days Later which brought back zombies but in 28DL they weren't really zombies (they turned in seconds so they weren't really reanimated, they died of starvation etc.) so I'm going with this one. It's much more memorable, it's better made and it doesn't get weak in the end like 28DL (yes, I'm talking about the part with the military). Also, in my opinion, it's one of the best remakes ever and Snyder's best movie.
Shaun of the Dead. One of the best comedies of the last decade and a good zombie movie. Even people who don't like zombies seem to like this one.
I know this is nitpicking but I probably would have called it "8 movies that defined the zombie genre"
I could (and have) easily argue that the "rage virus" zombies in 28 days later are zombies (just a different kind)because I'm not real picky with that stuff but I sort of have to draw the line with evil dead.
They were possessed, not zombified. Once you have people using telekinetic devil powers and speaking, it seems like the label doesn't fit and applying it to any "humanoid baddy" just makes the word lose meaning completely.
To put it in perspective, Jason could be considered a zombie but calling Freddy Kruger a zombie would just be too much of a stretch.
Also, I love that you are getting people to go see Fido (it's awesome) but a little surprised that you have Evil Dead and Army of Darkness and no return of the living dead. That movie, if I'm not mistaken, pretty much invented the "fast zombie" but also had brilliant ideas I haven't seen since, like the idea of zombies that don't die when you destroy the brain or even chop them up into pieces and then to make it worse they show problem solving abilities in some situations.
People to this day will argue that the zombies saying "braaaaains" was in night of the living dead. I can't think of any other zombie movie that does that but I have seen it done in countless zombie movie parodies, most notably the simpsons.
I could (and have) easily argue that the "rage virus" zombies in 28 days later are zombies (just a different kind)because I'm not real picky with that stuff but I sort of have to draw the line with evil dead.
They were possessed, not zombified. Once you have people using telekinetic devil powers and speaking, it seems like the label doesn't fit and applying it to any "humanoid baddy" just makes the word lose meaning completely.
To put it in perspective, Jason could be considered a zombie but calling Freddy Kruger a zombie would just be too much of a stretch.
Also, I love that you are getting people to go see Fido (it's awesome) but a little surprised that you have Evil Dead and Army of Darkness and no return of the living dead. That movie, if I'm not mistaken, pretty much invented the "fast zombie" but also had brilliant ideas I haven't seen since, like the idea of zombies that don't die when you destroy the brain or even chop them up into pieces and then to make it worse they show problem solving abilities in some situations.
People to this day will argue that the zombies saying "braaaaains" was in night of the living dead. I can't think of any other zombie movie that does that but I have seen it done in countless zombie movie parodies, most notably the simpsons.
I'm not going to call it for definite, but I think the "braaaaaains" thing actually came from the first Return of the Living Dead (the gloopy zombie that gets released from one of the barrels of toxic waste). Romero's zombies just grunt, groan and growl - apart from Bub!Carpenter said:
And while there are nits to be picked:
1) in NotLD, the creatures are never referred to as "zombies", although "ghouls" gets a mention (and would be more historically accurate for a monster that craves human flesh...)
2) in 28 Days/Weeks Later, the infected aren't trying to eat their victims - biting is just a way of doing more damage
With that said, I'd rather include 28 Days Later and remove the Evil Dead movies from the list and, since the "zombie genre" didn't exist until Romero made NotLD, I'd exclude White Zombie and Dr Blood. Definitely on board with Braindead/Dead Alive going on the list, though!
What kind of an article is that? 8 pictures on 8 separate pages, one sentence description without any analysis or real reason why they're on the list. A preschooler could do this in his 'computing - basics' class. This is just blatant hit-grabs, isn't it? Disappoint, Escapist.
Regardless, when something says "define a genre", I'd expect there to be a bit more thought gone into the choices. 28 Weeks? Zombieland? Hell, even the Dawn of the Dead remake played a big part in "revamping" the Zombie by making them fast. Surely at least one of those would deserve to be in there. Evil Dead is great, sure, but those are Deadites and supernatural beings more then zombies.
At least WWZ isn't on there. Some blessings I guess.
Regardless, when something says "define a genre", I'd expect there to be a bit more thought gone into the choices. 28 Weeks? Zombieland? Hell, even the Dawn of the Dead remake played a big part in "revamping" the Zombie by making them fast. Surely at least one of those would deserve to be in there. Evil Dead is great, sure, but those are Deadites and supernatural beings more then zombies.
At least WWZ isn't on there. Some blessings I guess.
That's what I was saying. Maybe that wasn't clear the way I said it, I was pointing out that the Return of the Living dead movies, despite being forgotten by most have heavily influenced people's perception of zombie movie lore.DocZombie said:
And that's all fine nitpicking but it doesn't matter what they are called, a zombie is a zombie. A werewolf is still a werewolf even if they just call it a monster.
Yes they were not trying to "eat their victims" but that isn't what defines a zombie, in fact the idea of zombies eating people is something that was invented later in the movies. Keep in mind that zombie mythology existed long before movies depicted zombies in any way.
Saying the "zombie genre didn't exist before Romero's NOTLD" is a bit unfair considering Romero did not invent zombies, he just formed what is now considered a zombie.
Yup - totally agree!Carpenter said:
This seems to be the crux of the entire thread - what exactly constitutes a "zombie"? Since "traditional" zombies (voodoo-derived) bear few of the traits now associated with "modern" zombies, I proposed that we owe much (if not most) of what we NOW accept to be a zombie to Romero, initially in NotLD, but refined in Dawn of the Dead. That's why I put quotes around "zombie genre" - I'm not saying that Romero invented zombies, or zombie movies, but I'm suggesting that his movies define what up until then hadn't been a "genre"...Carpenter said:
...so, yup - we actually agree again!Carpenter said:
Well we are talking about art so we can't expect to stick with a strict definition of "zombie" but personally I consider a "zombie" to be a normal creature (human or animal) turned savage and violent through some means. Usually they are reanimated corpses but they could also be living things affected by a virus.DocZombie said:
As it stands, the only other thing I can think of is that a "zombie" is incapable of speech (zombies like "Bub" are the exceptions that prove the rule) and that they are (usually) relentless and have no sense of personal preservation. They shouldn't show too much intelligence.
But of course that's just my silly rant on the subject, as I said we are talking about art and I think the best we can do is say "I can't describe it but I know it when I see it" because personally I am more interested in zombie movies that tweak or change these types of rules.
Return of the Living dead is a series that I think deserves some better sequels, it's really fascinating. The zombies are not mindless as they appear to be but from the very first movie are shown to have the intelligence they had in life but it's overridden by their unstoppable drive to eat human brains. It's like a drug addict, they may be incredibly smart but in that moment of "I NEED" they appear to be mindless savages.