Whether they are sprinting toward you or amassing just over the horizon, zombies only want one thing, BRAINS!!!! Or at least, an arm. And even though they’re not knocking down your door yet, we thought we’d give you a head start with our top ten zombie movie moments. And always remember, when it comes to zombies, you can never be too prepared.
10. Resident Evil – What would any zombie list be without one of the most famous, and most profitable zombie franchises in film history, Resident Evil. One thing that the Resident Evil series (both the films and the video games) delivered on upon all else was turning man’s best friend into beasts that even Cujo would be afraid of. The Doberman Pinscher zombies in the first film showed that no one and no thing could escape the apocalyptic T virus. Well, except Alice of course.
9. The Serpent and the Rainbow – Okay, I’m kind of cheating on this one. Even though there aren’t any actual “zombies” in this movie, this is probably the most realistic portrayal of what the original zombie myth came from. Dennis Alan (Bill Pullman) is offered a job by a large pharmaceutical company to travel to Haiti and find information on a drug used in voodoo rituals. After finding the drug (a form of anesthesia), his arrival is made known to the governmental authorities who are using the drug to spread zombie myths to control the population with fear. After many attempts to bring the drug back home, Alan is turned into a zombie and buried alive.
8. 28 Weeks Later – What could be called the most gruesome reunion scene ever stars Robert Carlyle as Don who is meeting his wife Alice (Catherine McCormick) after learning she is still alive following a zombie attack in their country house. While she has been infected with the virus, she is completely resistant to the effects of the disease. Strapped to a gurney as a precautionary measure, Alice reunites with Don in a touching and emotional scene that doesn’t stay that way for long. After kissing his wife, Don contracts the disease through her saliva and proceeds to, well … let’s just say the romance is over.
7. Rec – This 2007 Spanish horror film (remade into last year’s Quarantine) starts off as a harmless documentary TV show piece on the local firehouse. While following the firemen on a routine call, reporter Angela (Manuela Velasco) and her cameraman Pablo (Pablo Rosso) find themselves trapped in an apartment complex full of infected tenants. The main set piece comes at the end of the film in the penthouse of the complex. With a night vision camera and bated breath, Angela and Pablo find the disturbing truth behind the outbreak in the building.
6. Dawn of the Dead – And the award for the youngest zombie portrayed in a movie goes to the zombie baby in Zach Snyder’s remake of the classic 1978 Dawn of the Dead. While hiding out in an abandoned mall, Andre (Mekhi Phifer) and his pregnant wife Luda (Inna Korobkina) barricade themselves into the mall’s children’s clothing store. After realizing his wife has been infected, Andre resorts to tying his wife to a bed in the store and hopes for the best. Soon after, we are witness to a particularly messy zombie birth and a reveal that would give most expectant mothers nightmares for weeks to come.
5. Shaun of the Dead – If any film were to portray zombies in a musical interpretation it would be Edgar Wright’s romantic zomedy, Shaun of the Dead. While trying to keep his broken relationship together, Shaun (Simon Pegg) finds himself in the middle of a zombie outbreak. After deciding to sort his life out, Shaun realizes he must come to the rescue and save the love of his life from the countless undead walking the streets of his town. Using Queen’s "Don’t Stop Me Now" as the musical background for a zombie break-in at the local bar The Winchester, Shaun, Ed, and friends battle the undead with perfect precision and choreography.
4. 28 Days Later – The only thing worse than hundreds of zombies slowly walking toward you is hundreds of zombies running toward you. 28 Days Later was a game-changer in the zombie genre. As if massive hoards of them aren’t enough, now they’re sprinting toward you with reckless abandon, ready to violently beat you to a pulp for your sweet human meat (and brains, of course). Danny Boyle’s vision of the undead was a welcome addition to the wandering masses of years past and a much more violent change to the zombie condition.
3. Dead Alive aka Braindead – Peter Jackson’s 1992 gross-out, splatter comedy is easily the goriest film ever made. Using hundreds of gallons of fake blood and prosthetics made in Jackson’s very own oven, Dead Alive shows that when dealing with zombies you can never have enough blood and guts. After his mother is bitten by a Sumatran ratmonkey, Lionel (Timothy Balme) finds that she is literally falling apart. Once she is hit by a Tram and buried, she (like all good zombies) rises from the dead and proceeds to terrorize the village, turning the townsfolk into the walking dead. As the film comes to its ultimate climax, Lionel finds himself in a barn full of zombies and nothing to help him but an old lawnmower. Let’s just say the effect is kind of like when strawberries hit a blender blade.
2. Zombie – Three words: zombie versus shark. Even though Lucio Fulci’s Zombie could fill up its own top 10 list of zombie moments, the pièce de résistance has to be an underwater brawl between a zombie and an unsuspecting shark. This may be the only scene in cinema history where audiences find themselves rooting for the shark.
1. Night of the Living Dead – Although it wasn’t the first zombie film, George A Romero’s original black-and-white classic is the most famous and most influential zombie film ever made. The story of seven strangers spending the night in a farmhouse and keeping the undead at bay set the rules of the zombie universe for years to come. And although originally panned by critics and deemed too graphic for audiences the film was eventually added to the National Film Registry citing its cultural importance to the country. Although it isn’t the most frightening scene in the film, the opening graveyard scene set the tone for the movie’s bleak outlook and proved to be the most remembered.
“They’re coming to get you Barbra!!!”
