What do zombie flicks teach us about human nature?

It's difficult to reconcile the Zack Snyder who directed "Dawn of the Dead" with the Zack Snyder who brought us the #SnyderCut "Justice League," the far-too-faithful "Watchmen" adaptation, and the style-over-substance combo of "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.

The rest of "Dawn of the Dead" doesn't live up to the first few minutes, but the script by "Guardians of the Galaxy" director-to-be James Gunn keeps things interesting. It should be said that remaking a masterpiece was a recipe for disaster (something Snyder would do again when he took on Alan Moore's work and the whole DC universe), but by ignoring Romero's social commentary, Snyder was able to carve out his own corner of the zombie movie universe.

It's a genre corner he plans to return to in 2021 with Netflix's "Army of the Dead."

Set in a post-apocalyptic Zombie apocalypse brought on by the enigmatic street narcotic "Natas." We follow one guy as he hunts Flesh Eaters for fun and atonement while simultaneously fleeing his past.

He chooses to help after colliding with a small group of survivors who are running short on supplies. However, a sudden onslaught by the Flesh Eaters compels them to flee, putting the Hunter's talents to the test.

The trailer for Zombie Hunter suggests that it will be the type of gruesome B-movie fun that everyone will enjoy. We're interested to see how filmmaker K. King handles a tribute to grindhouse classics like Machete and Planet Terror. The marketing team did an outstanding job with the eye-catching poster.



Little Monsters is a surprising film from an actress who generally excels in serious roles: Lupita Nyong'o. However, she seems to be having a great time as the kindergarten teacher whose students experience a zombie epidemic during a field trip. The 2019 film was the actress' second, though lesser-known, attempt in the horror genre that year (the other being Jordan Peele's "Us").

But she's more than capable of handling the situation. It's a video "dedicated to all the kindergarten teachers who push children to study, build confidence in them, and save them from being eaten by zombies," according to the official press notes. That pretty about covers it up. Josh Gad portrays an annoying, renowned kid performer, and Alexander England plays an effete, has-been musician accompanying his nephew on a field trip, who also seems to be in love (or maybe lust) with Nyong'o.

What you get is an interesting blend of horror and romantic comedy, which gives new life to both genres.

Since then, the zombie outbreak hasn't showed any signs of abating. (It is said that a few of them have even picked up running.) Although "The Walking Dead" is the most obvious example, zombies have appeared in everything from discovered footage movies (like "REC") to romantic comedies (like "Warm Bodies") to homages to the classics (like "The Walking Dead") (Planet Terror).

In response to Romero's writings, a subgenre grew up around the world.

Lucio Fulci, a legendary figure in Italian horror, took the idea and ran with it, first in his sequel Zombi (also called Zombi) and then in his experimental and wildly surreal "Gates of Hell" trilogy.

Fans of Romero's work expanded atop his base to further explore and broaden what a zombie movie might be. Filmmakers like Dan O'Bannon, Fred Dekker, and Stuart Gordon came along and messed with the genre constructions. The zombie then went out of style as soon as it had exploded.

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 any other place to start? The Hollywood notion of Haitian voodoo zombies was initially popularized in White Zombie, decades before the classic George Romero ghoul.

White Zombie is easy to find now because it is in the public domain and has been included in almost every cheap package of zombie movies ever put together. If you want, you can watch its 67-minute runtime on YouTube. Bela Lugosi, who had just played Dracula a year earlier and was enjoying his fame as one of Universal's go-to horror actors, plays a witch doctor named "Murder" because the studio hadn't discovered subtlety yet.

The Svengali-like Lugosi ends up zombifying a young lady who is engaged to be married, seeking to bend her to the will of a cruel plantation owner, and... well, it's fairly dry, wooden stuff. Lugosi is, inevitably, the one shining light, but you had to start somewhere. Following White Zombie, voodoo zombie films appeared seldom in Hollywood for years, the most of them are now in the public domain.

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 is the better half of the Grindhouse double feature that Robert Rodriguez made with Quentin Tarantino. It's about a go-go dancer, a bioweapon that goes wrong, and Texan townspeople who turn into shuffling, pustule-covered monsters. Planet Terror is very much a B-movie, with missing reels, shaky edits, and cheesy overdubbed dialogue. Its exploding tongue is firmly planted in its rotting cheek.

Its over-the-top gore and oozing effects are repulsive, and it builds to a wildly hilarious ending in which Rose McGowan's heroine has her leg replaced by a machine gun. I'll devour your brains for information.

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 even a little bit sophisticated in its social criticism of consumer culture—in an obvious kind of way—despite being billed as a "zom-com musical." Is that, however, the actual reason you're seeing a zombie chicken movie set in a KFC-style restaurant constructed on an old Native American burial ground? No, I don't believe so. Watching a Troma film entails accepting the gore, scatological comedy, and low-budget production standards, as well as just enjoying some thoughtless narrative.

Poultrygeist is nasty, gruesome, filthy lunacy.

While zombie movies have been around for more than 80 years (1932's White Zombie, 1943's I Walked With a Zombie), the subgenre as we know it today didn't emerge until 1968's Night of the Living Dead.

Night, a low-budget independent film, attracted audiences with its unnerving plot, horrible violence, progressive casting, social critique, and, of course, its legendary hordes of gaunt, voracious zombies. Romero, the acknowledged maestro of the zombie genre, made five more Dead flicks, the best of which are evaluated here.

Despite the influence of Night of the Living Dead, it was not until the late 1970s and early 1980s that a number of famous American zombie films were produced. Shock Waves may have been the first "Nazi zombie" film, released soon before Dawn of the Dead boosted the popularity of zombies as terrifying foes.

The story concerns a group of shipwrecked people who end themselves on an undiscovered island where a sunken SS submarine has released its crew of zombies, as part of a Nazi experiment. In the same year that he sneered at Princess Leia in Star Wars: A New Hope, Hammer Horror great Peter Cushing makes a cameo as a miscast and addled-looking SS Commander? It doesn't seem to be doable.

By my estimation, there have been at least 16 Nazi zombie movies since this time, which is definitely more than one may expect, making this one remarkable for combining the portmanteau of famous cinematic villains first.

Shock Waves is responsible for the success of the Dead Snow films.

It's not easy to develop a new take on the zombie picture, but Colm McCarthy's The Girl With All The Gifts, based on a book by Mike Carey, succeeds in doing so while also providing some satisfying genre thrills.

This zombie outbreak is caused by a fungal infection, just like the one that killed everyone in the movie The Last of Us. The story is about Melanie, a young girl who is being taught in a unique way by Gemma Arterton's character, Helen, in a very safe place.

Melanie, a'second-generation' hungry, still craves human flesh but is capable of thinking and feeling – and her very existence may hold the key to the future.

This gore-fest gives the classic zombie a unique Scandinavian twist by including characteristics of the Draugr, an undead monster from Scandinavian legend that is known for its ferocious devotion to the protection of its treasure hoard. In the case of Dead Snow, these draugr happen to be former SS troopers who harassed a Norwegian hamlet and robbed their things, only to be done in or driven into the frigid mountains by the locals themselves. In the end, the villagers either kill them or pursue them into the mountains.

I have to give Dead Snow credit for coming up with this. It's funny, gory, and satisfyingly brutal, with elements of Evil Dead and "teen sex/slasher" films. Furthermore, since Dead Snow: Red vs. Dead is a sequel, fans may anticipate more of the same.

It's one of those rare instances when the backstory behind a movie is perhaps more intriguing than the movie itself, and that's the case with The Dead Next Door: It was produced by Sam Raimi, who used some of the money he'd gained from Evil Dead II in order to give his buddy J. R. Bookwalter the opportunity to create the low-budget zombie epic of his dreams. Raimi, for whatever reason, is credited as an executive producer under the name "The Master Cylinder," while Evil Dead's Bruce Campbell pulls double duty—not on screen, but as a voiceover for not one, but two characters, because the entirety of the film appears to have been redubbed in post-production. It should not come as a surprise that this gives The Dead Next Door a sense of dreamlike unreality, and that is before we have even brought up the fact that this movie 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.

The premise focuses on a "elite squad" of zombie exterminators who stumble into a zombie-worshiping cult, but you're watching it for the gore, not the plot. The Dead Next Door sometimes seems like a backyard effort to imitate the psychotic bloodletting seen in Peter Jackson's Dead Alive, only with genre allusions that are so on-the-nose you can't help but giggle. "Doctor Savini"? "Officer Raimi," you say? "Command Carpenter," you say?

They're all in there, giving "The Walking Dead" an air of having been made just for the director's own private viewing pleasure. Yet, the messy proximity that was shared has its charms.

It's incredible to see how popular zombie movies have become. (check here) For a long time, monsters were primarily found in the worlds of Voodoo mythology, radioactive humanoids, and E.C. comics' famous images. Zombies were not always the cannibalistic, flesh-eating undead we've come to know and love.

Cemetery Man, also known as Dellamorte Dellamore, is a film that was directed by Dario Argento's apprentice Michele Soavi. This film is a bizarre and chaotic head trip of a movie that portrays the living dead as more of an annoyance than a lethal menace. Cemetery Man is a film starring Everett as Francesco Dellamorte, a misanthropic gravedigger who favors the company of the dead to that of live people. The story is based on the comic book series Dylan Dog. Why on earth wouldn't he do that? The living are jerks, and they persist in circulating tales that he is unable to procreate.

The only catch is that the deceased will not remain buried in his cemetery. Dellamorte falls head over heels with a lovely widow (Falchi) at her husband's funeral, pursues her in the gloomy hallways of his ossuary, and before you know it, they're stripped naked and steaming it up on top of her dead husband's grave. That's just the beginning of the strangeness.