Zombob's Zombie News and Reviews

Best and Worst Zombie Movies of All Time

Nicholas Hoult in 'Warm Bodies' (Photo: Summit)

Vampires have dominated television shows and movies for far too long. Horror’s other favorite monsters, the zombies, are moving in to make their kill.

“Warm Bodies,” a hilariously twisted and unique love story that follows the blooming romance between a sarcastic zombie named R (Nicholas Hoult) and his human love interest Julie (Teresa Palmer), hits theaters this weekend.

Celebrate the undead’s return to the silver screen with a list of the best and worst zombie movies to ever lurch into theaters.

Best Zombie Movies

“Night of the Living Dead” (1968)
The original 1968 version of ”Night of the Living Dead,” directed by George A. Romero, follows the story of Ben (Duane Jones), Barbra (Judith O’Dea) and five other humans trapped in a Pennsylvania farmhouse that is under attack by zombies.

“Night of the Living Dead” was voted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being ”culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.” (Photo: Continental Distributing Inc.)

“Dawn of the Dead” (1978)“Dawn of the Dead,” the highly anticipated sequel to director Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead,” doesn’t have any of the same characters as its predecessor, but further explores the zombie epidemic’s effects on society as a whole.

The film stars actors David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott Reiniger and Gaylen Ross as outbreak survivors who seek refuge from the undead in a shopping mall. (Photo: United Film Distribution Company)

“28 Days Later” (2003)Five years before he took home the 2008 Academy Award for Best Director for “Slumdog Millionaire,” British director Danny Boyle terrified audiences with the zombie movie “28 Days Later.”

The terrifyingly realistic film follows a bicycle courier (Cillian Murphy) who awakes from a month-long coma and finds that his hometown of London has been infected with a mysterious virus that has turned many into murderous zombies. (Photo: Fox Searchlight Pictures)

“Shaun of the Dead” (2004)
“Shaun of the Dead” touts itself as, “A Romantic Comedy. With Zombies,” but the film is a totally unique and fun play on the classic zombie film.

The 2004 hit stars actor Simon Pegg as Shaun, an electronics store employee who gets dumped by his girlfriend (Penelope Wilton) and is constantly berated by his stepfather (Bill Nighy) for spending too much time at the bar and not enough with his mother. Shaun is forced to save the day, and his two favorite girls, when a zombie apocalypse hits planet Earth.  (Photo: Focus Features)

“Re-Animator” (1985)
This cult classic zombie flick follows the story of Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs), a genius medical student who invents a serum that has the ability to bring the dead back to life.

Things go terribly awry after West’s evil boss, Dr. Carl Hill (David Gale), gets hold of the potion. (Photo: Empire Pictures)

Worst Zombie Movies

“Plan 9 from Outer Space” (1959)
This science-fiction film is often described as “the worst movie ever made” thanks to a totally disjointed plot, terrible acting and horrible special effects.

The Ed Wood-directed flick features alien invaders who come to Earth and begin to raise the dead. Gregory Walcott, Mona McKinnon, Tor Johnson and Maila “Vampira” Nurmi star. (Photo: Passport)

“Day of the Dead” (2008)
This 2008 remake essentially spits in the face of the 1985 original. Ving Rhames, Nick Cannon and Mena Suvari star in the film, which attempted (and failed) to emulate the final movie in director Romero’s “Living Dead” trilogy.

This film, which was directed bySteve Miner, follows a small American town as it attempts to overcome the zombies that are attacking their homes. (Photo: First Look International)

“Redneck Zombies” (1988)
Combining rednecks and zombies doesn’t seem like a great idea… and it wasn’t, as evidenced by this 1988 flop.

After discovering a canister of bright green waste on the side of the road, a hillbilly family decides to cook a batch of mashed potatoes with the toxic mixture. Not surprisingly, the goofy brood turns into a herd of human-eating zombies and all hell breaks loose. Yes, that is the plot. (Photo: Troma Entertainment)

“House of the Dead” (2003)
The plot of “House of the Dead” was adapted from a video game of the same name, but unlike other massively successful video game-to-movie films like the “Resident Evil,” “House of the Dead” totally missed the mark.

The movie, which is directed by Uwe Boll, tracks the story of a group of teens stuck on an island who discover a rare, extremely fast group of zombies. The teens must figure out how to survive the night or be infected with the zombie virus. (Photo: Artisan)

“Return of the Living Dead 5: Rave to the Grave” (2005)
This poorly made sequel to 1985′s “Return of the Living Dead” strays completely off course with the story of teenagers who discover that the new drug they have been taking is turning them into flesh-craving zombies.

The movie, which stars Aimee Lynn Chadwick and Cory C. Hardict, bears very little resemblance to its four predecessors. (Photo: Aurora Entertainment)

~Laura Hibbs