Ghouls, biters, the living dead... call them what you will, zombies make awesome movie nasties and zombie videos make an awesome theme for a video night. So slap on your zombie make up, perfect your undead groans and settle in for the night with some of these movies.
If you haven't seen George Romero's
Living Dead series, this is definitely where you need to start. Romero's films show how ordinary citizens react to a zombie epidemic. There are six movies in the series:
In
Night of the Living Dead, a group of people seek refuge in a rural farmhouse immediately following the outbreak;
Dawn of the Dead takes place some time after the outbreak and sees television studio employees and members of a SWAT team try to escape a zombie plagued city;
Day of the Dead is set in an underground army bunker, where a military scientific team seeks to create a vaccine to cure zombie-ism;
In
Land of the Dead, survivors reside in a dictatorship, proving that human nature can be more deadly than the undead;
Diary of the Dead follows a group of college film students who film the beginning of the outbreak;
And in the most recent addition,
Survival of the Dead, National Guard deserters come in between a feud between two Irish families.
28 Days Later and
28 Weeks Later are English horror flicks that chart the outbreak of a virus that turns normal people into aggressive cannibals. The first movie follows four survivors as they search for civilization while the sequel sees another outbreak just as Britain is rebuilding.
28 Days Later was written by Alex Garland, author of
The Beach.
I Am Legend is a post apocolyptic science fiction movie that sees Lieutenant Colonel Robert Neville as the last human living in New York City after a man-made cancer vaccine turns the city's residents into zombies. Neville spends his days hunting these creatures, trying to create a cure and mourning the death of his wife and son, but also trying to live a normal life.
Plan 9 From Outer Space is a notorious 'so good it's bad' flick and has had the dubious honour of being dubbed the worst film ever made by many respected critics. The plot sees an alien invasion create an infestation of undead ghouls. The continuity eras – watch as shots interchange between day and night – and dodgy special effects are the best things about this movie.
Dead Set is a British television series that poses the question – if zombies took over the world, how what what happen to the cast of
Big Brother? The horror drama sees the
Big Brother house become a shelter from the threat, and it's will inhabitants do anything they can to survive.
If all this death and brain eating has you down, end the night with a laugh.
Zombieland is a black comedy that follows four survivors as they drive to find a sanctuary from the zombies. Stars Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg from The Social Network and features a hilarious cameo from Bill Murray.
Also worth checking out –
Shaun of the Dead (comedy starring Simon Pegg and Dylan Moran) and
Planet Terror (action movie starring Rose McGowan and Naveen Andrews).
If you can find any of these at your local video store, you should be able to find them at
Netflix.
