It is difficult to reconcile the Zack Snyder who directed "Dawn of the Dead" with the Zack Snyder who brought us the "Justice League" #SnyderCut, the too accurate "Watchmen" adaptation, and the style-over-substance duo "300" and "Sucker Punch."This is not to argue that George Romero's 1978 picture, which was remade by Zack Snyder in 2004, lacks style. The first 12 minutes set the tone for the rest of his career, with one of the finest opening title sequences in genre history. This opening is a fantastic kinetic counterpoint to Danny Boyle's "28 Days Later," which "Dawn of the Dead" is sometimes likened to because of the presence of so-called "fast" zombies.
Dawn of the Dead never quite matches its opening minutes, but James Gunn's writing keeps things fascinating. By avoiding Romero's societal message, Snyder was able to carve out his own part of the cinematic zombie realm.
And it's a corner he'll be returning to in 2021 with "Army of the Dead," which will be streaming on Netflix.
The narrative takes place in a dystopian future in which the unusual street drug "Natas" has transformed the populace into zombies. As the narrative develops, we follow a man as he hunts Flesh Eaters for amusement, penance, and to escape his own past.
After running upon a small band of survivors who were running low on supplies, he decided to pitch in and assist. The Flesh Eaters, however, have launched an unexpected onslaught, and the Hunter's skills have been put to the test.
Who wouldn't want to see Danny Trejo fight hordes of zombies in slow motion? Director K. King looks to be aiming for a Machete/Planet Terror-esque grindhouse retro vibe, so we're eager to see how this will play out. With this attractive poster, the marketing team has surely succeeded.
Lupita Nyong'o, who is renowned for her dark roles, portrays a more cheerful character in Little Monsters. She may be teaching a kindergarten class on a field trip when a zombie epidemic occurs, but she looks to be having a great time. The actress's second horror film of the year (the first being Jordan Peele's more well-known "Us") was released in 2019.
However, she is more than capable of completing the assignment. The video is "dedicated to all of the kindergarten teachers who push children to study, imbue them with confidence, and save them from being eaten by zombies," as the official press notes characterize it. Yes, I believe that adequately explains everything. In "Little Monsters," Josh Gad plays an annoying, famous child entertainer, and Alexander England plays an effete, has-been musician who is escorting his nephew on a field trip and who also happens to be in love (or maybe lust) with Lupita Nyong'o. Both of these characters are accompanied by Nyong'o. "Little Monsters" was released in 2014.
The result is a unique combination of horror and romantic comedy that breathes fresh life into both genres.
Since then, zombies haven't stopped. (Some can run.) In cinema, zombies have appeared in discovered footage ([REC]), rom-coms (Warm Bodies), and grindhouse throwbacks (Planet Terror).
Simultaneously, a global subgenre sprung developed in response to Romero's works.
Lucio Fulci, a legendary figure in Italian horror, took the idea and ran with it, first in his sequel Zombi (also known as Zombi) and then in his experimental and wildly surreal "Gates of Hell" trilogy.
Fans of Romero's work who built upon his foundation, such as filmmakers Dan O'Bannon, Fred Dekker, and Stuart Gordon, toyed with the genre's constructs, exploring and broadening what a zombie film might be. The popularity of zombies thereafter decreased precipitously.
The concept of the creature had become ingrained in the horror subgenre, but with the exception of ongoing horror sequels (such as Return of the Living Dead and Zombie), low-budget horror films, and the occasional horror subgenre oddity (such as My Boyfriend's Back, Cemetery Man, and Dead Alive), the undead no longer roamed the earth.Is there another place to begin? White Zombie popularized the Hollywood concept of Haitian voodoo undead decades before the original George Romero ghoul.
Since it is now in the public domain, you may watch White Zombie for free or at a very minimal fee on almost any zombie film anthology. The whole 67-minute film is available for viewing on YouTube. Bela Lugosi, fresh off his success as Dracula and enjoying his status as one of Universal's top horror actors, portrays a witch doctor whose name is a direct translation of the word "murder." The reason behind this is because the studio had yet to learn the value of subtlety at this point in time, which would take a few more years.
The Svengali-like Lugosi uses his various concoctions and powders to zombify a young bride-to-be in order to bind her to the will of a cruel plantation owner, and... well, it's fairly dry, wooden stuff. Lugosi is, of course, the greatest part, but I guess you had to start somewhere. White Zombie was followed by a slew of other Hollywood voodoo zombie films, the most of which are now accessible for free online.
And, of course, the movie also gave Rob Zombie an idea for a music project. It's at the top of some "best zombie movie" lists, but let's be honest: this isn't a movie that most people would want to see in 2016. It gets the #50 spot almost entirely because of how important it is in history.
Planet Terror, which was co-written and directed by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, is the greater half of their Grindhouse double feature. The film is about a go-go dancer, a bioweapon gone bad, and the transformation of the population of a tiny Texas town into shuffling, pustulous monsters. Planet Terror embraces its B-movie roots with missing reels, sloppy editing, and cheesy speech dubbing.
In the end, the severed arm of Rose McGowan's character Cherry Darling is replaced with a machine gun in a ridiculously entertaining climax with lots of blood and oozing effects. Gather around, people, because I want to use your brains to grow mine.
Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead offers Troma mainstays. Wasteful. Violence. It lacks limits and taste. The true question is, "Is it boring?" Definitely not.
In its social satire of consumer society, this "zom-com musical" is even a little bit clever—you know, in an obvious kind of way. But is that really why you're seeing a movie about zombie chickens at a KFC-style restaurant constructed on an old Native American burial ground? I did not believe so. To enjoy a Troma film, one must embrace the violence, scatological comedy, and cheap production qualities, as well as appreciate thoughtless narrative.
As a result, Poultrygeist is just 103 minutes of dirty, vile, raunchy madness.Even though zombie movies have been around for more than 80 years (White Zombie came out in 1932, and I Walked With a Zombie came out in 1943), Night of the Living Dead by George A. Romero in 1968 is generally seen as the start of the subgenre as we know it today.
Night, a low-budget independent film with a disturbing tale, graphic violence, progressive casting, social commentary, and, of course, its famous hordes of gaunt, voracious zombies, enthralled audiences. Romero, the uncontested king of the zombie genre, went on to make five more films in the Dead franchise, the best of which is examined here.
Despite Night of the Living Dead's effect, it took some time for the picture to mature and earn cultural cachet before a massive wave of notable American zombie films exploded in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Shock Waves may very well be the first of all the "Nazi zombie" films, arriving just before Dawn of the Dead drastically increased the appeal of zombies as horror adversaries.
The film depicts a group of shipwrecked people who get themselves on an unknown island where a sunken SS submarine has released its crew of zombies, a Nazi experiment. The same year he sneered at Princess Leia in Star Wars: A New Hope, Hammer Horror veteran Peter Cushing appears as a miscast and addled-looking SS Commander. It doesn't seem conceivable.
At least 16 Nazi zombie movies have been produced since then, which is probably more than most people realize. This one is notable at the very least for being the first to combine the portmanteau of famous cinematic villains. More Nazi zombie movies have been created since then than most people realize.
Shock Waves is responsible for the success of the Dead Snow films.
It takes a lot to produce a really original zombie picture, but Colm McCarthy's adaptation of Mike Carey's book The Girl With All the Gifts is a brilliant and insightful reworking that still has genre thrills to add. The film is based on the novel by the same name.
This particular outbreak of zombieism is caused by a fungal infection, similar to the one that wiped out humanity in The Last of Us. The plot centers on Melanie, a young girl being taught by Gemma Arterton's character, Helen, in a unique way in a highly secured institution.
Melanie, a member of the so-called "second generation" of the hungry, has the capacity for thought and emotion, and her very existence may be the deciding element in the unfolding of future events. In spite of therapy, she still has a need for eating human flesh.
This gore-fest incorporates the Draugr, a mythical undead creature from Scandinavian folklore renowned for its savage commitment to guarding its gold hoard. In Dead Snow, these draugr are really former SS soldiers who terrorized a Norwegian village and robbed its inhabitants before being slain or driven into the cold mountains.
Dead Snow deserves credit for his (check here) ingenuity here. It's funny, gory, and satisfyingly brutal, with elements of Evil Dead and "teen sex/slasher" flicks. Furthermore, Dead Snow: Red vs. Dead is a sequel, so fans can anticipate more of the same.
The history of a film might be more fascinating than the film itself, and this is the case with The Dead Next Door. Sam Raimi used the money from Evil Dead II to bankroll its development, allowing his friend J. R. Bookwalter to achieve his concept of a low-budget zombie epic. The whole film seems to have been redubbed in post-production, and for some reason, Raimi is credited as an executive producer under the alias "The Master Cylinder," while Evil Dead's Bruce Campbell serves as the voiceover for not one, but two characters. Because of this, The Dead Next Door exudes a dreamy surrealism, and that's before we even get to the fact that it was filmed completely on Super 8 rather than 32 mm film.
What you have with The Dead Next Door, then, is a genre-exclusive innovation. A grainy, low-budget zombie action-drama that simultaneously features cringe-inducing amateur acting and surprising hints of polish.
The tale follows a "elite squad" of zombie exterminators who stumble onto a zombie-worshiping cult, but you're watching for the gore. The Dead Next Door seems like a backyard effort to imitate Peter Jackson's Dead Alive, but with on-the-nose genre allusions. Savini? Raimi? Carpenter?
All of them are in this zombie movie, which looks and feels like it was made just for the director's family. Still, there's something magical about being so close in a messy way.
The rise of zombie films to public popularity has been an intriguing journey. For many years, the monsters were mostly known via voodoo legend, radioactive humanoids, and the iconic artwork of E.C. comics. They did not have much of a presence or description elsewhere. Zombies did not appear very often, and when they did, they did not resemble the cannibalistic, flesh-hungry, undead monsters that we are familiar with and have come to adore today.
Cemetery Man (or Dellamorte Dellamore), directed by Dario Argento apprentice Michele Soavi, is a strange, chaotic head trip of a film that sees the living dead as more of a nuisance than a lethal menace. Cemetery Man stars Everett as Francesco Dellamorte, a misanthropic gravedigger who loves the company of the dead to that of the living, and is based on the comic strip Dylan Dog. Why wouldn't he, after all? The living are jerks who keep spreading stories that he's powerless.
The only catch is that after burial, the dead won't stay in his cemetery. At the funeral for her husband, Dellamorte meets a beautiful widow (Falchi) and immediately falls in love with her. After wooing her in the gloom of his ossuary, the two of them end up steaming it up on her husband's tomb, fully clothed. Falchi is Dellamorte's on-screen new flame. That's only the start of how out of the ordinary things are going to become.