It's impossible to reconcile the Zack Snyder of the #SnyderCut "Justice League," the far-too-faithful "Watchmen" adaption, and the style over substance pair of "300" and "Sucker Punch" with the filmmaker of "Dawn of the Dead."The 2004 version, which is based on the 1978 version by George Romero and was directed by Zack Snyder, is not, however, boring. The first twelve minutes are a career-launching assault, with one of the best opening title sequences in the history of the genre. People often compare "Dawn of the Dead" to Danny Boyle's "28 Days Later" because both movies have a lot of fast zombies. This prologue is a great, fast-paced contrast to that picture.
These opening minutes of "Dawn of the Dead" are the film's high point, and although the remainder of the movie never quite lives up to them, the writing by future "Guardians of the Galaxy" director James Gunn keeps things intriguing. However, by avoiding Romero's social criticism and creating his own unique take on the zombie genre, Snyder managed to avoid the tragedy that would be sure to follow his subsequent take on Alan Moore's work and the DC world as a whole.
And it's a fork in the road he'll 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 decides to aid after colliding with a small group of survivors who are fast running out of supplies. A surprise attack by the flesh-eating Flesh Eaters forces them to run, putting the Hunter's skills to the test.
Zombie Hunter seems to be a satisfyingly nasty B-movie — after all, who doesn't like to watch Danny Trejo fight swarms of zombies in slow motion? Director K. King looks to be aiming for a Machete/Planet Terror-style grindhouse atmosphere, so we're looking forward to seeing how it pans out. With the beautiful poster, the marketing team has surely nailed it.
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.
But I'm certain she'll be able to manage it. "Dedicated to all the kindergarten instructors who encourage children to study, instill confidence in them, and rescue them from being devoured by zombies," according to the official press materials. And I believe that's all there is to it. In "Little Monsters," Alexander England plays an effete, has-been musician in love (or maybe lust) with Lupita Nyong'o, and Josh Gad plays an obnoxious, well-known child entertainer.
It's a horror-romantic comedy mix that energizes both genres.
Since then, zombies have shown no signs of slowing down. (Some have even developed the ability to run.) In the cinematic industry, zombies have made their way into found footage ([REC]), rom-com (Warm Bodies), and grindhouse throwbacks. The Walking Dead is the most prominent example (Planet Terror).
Meanwhile, in reaction to Romero's works, a global subgenre arose.
Lucio Fulci, an Italian horror classic, took up the premise and ran with it, first with Zombi 2 (aka Zombie), then with his far more weird and experimental "Gates of Hell" trilogy.
Fans of Romero's work who expanded upon his foundation—directors Dan O'Bannon, Fred Dekker, and Stuart Gordon, for example—came along and messed with the genre's constructions, exploring and expanding what a zombie movie might be. The popularity of zombies thereafter rapidly declined.
The notion of the monster had been embedded in the horror subgenre, but the undead no longer walked the world with the exception of continuing horror sequels (such as Return of the Living Dead and Zombie) and low-budget horror films (such as My Boyfriend's Back, Cemetery Man, and Dead Alive).
Where to start? White Zombie was the first feature-length "zombie" horror film, popularizing Haitian voodoo zombies decades before George Romero.
White Zombie is simple to obtain nowadays; you can watch its 67-minute length on YouTube, if you'd like, since it is a public domain mainstay included in almost every budget zombie film collection ever created. Bela Lugosi portrays a witch doctor whose moniker is literally "Murder" since the studio was still a few years away from finding nuance at this time.
Lugosi, who looks like Svengali, uses his different potions and powders to turn a young woman who is about to get married into a zombie so that she will do what a cruel plantation owner wants her to do, and... well, it's pretty dry and wooden stuff. Lugosi is, as you might expect, the best part, but I guess you had to start somewhere. After White Zombie, a number of other voodoo zombie movies came out of Hollywood. Most of these movies are now free to watch online.
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 their Grindhouse double film, directed by Robert Rodriguez and co-written by Quentin Tarantino. The story follows a go-go dancer, a botched bioweapon, and the transformation of the residents of a tiny Texas hamlet into shuffling, pustulous monsters. The exploding tongue of Planet Terror is firmly planted in its rotten cheek as it embraces its B-movie roots with missing reels, sloppy editing, and hammy overdubbed dialogue.
In an outrageously exciting conclusion with over-the-top gore and oozing effects, Rose McGowan's hero Cherry Darling has her severed arm replaced with a machine gun. Gather 'round, people: I'd want to eat your knowledge in order to grow mine.
Since Troma is producing "Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead," some of the studio's signature touches might make an appearance. In other words, it will be of the worst possible quality. There will be brawling and fighting. Having no bounds or regard for beauty or taste, it will be completely unrestrained. The real question to ask of each Troma film is whether or not you find it dull. In this case, "no" is an appropriate answer.
It's billed as a "zom-com musical," and it's a little bit witty in its social satire of consumer culture—in an obvious manner. But is it really the reason you're seeing a movie about zombie chickens that come to life in a KFC-style restaurant constructed on an old Native American burial ground? I didn't believe so. Watching a Troma film entails accepting the gore, scatological comedy, and cheap production qualities, as well as just enjoying some thoughtless narrative.
As a result, Poultrygeist is just 103 minutes of dirty, vile, raunchy madness.
While zombie films have been around for more than 80 years (White Zombie was released in 1932, and I Walked With a Zombie was released in 1943), it is widely believed that the subgenre as we know it today did not emerge until 1968, when George A. Romero released Night of the Living Dead.
Night was an indie picture with a budget that was just barely over six figures. It captivated spectators with its cryptic narrative, stunning gore, progressive casting, and social criticism, as well as, of course, the memorable hordes of the gaunt, ravenous undead. Romero, who has been called the "godfather of zombies," went on to direct five additional films in the Dead series. The most notable of these films are discussed in this book, and they are Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead.
Even though Night of the Living Dead was a big deal, it took a while for the public to remember it. Notable American zombie movies didn't start coming out until the late 1970s and early 1980s. Shock Waves may have been the first "Nazi zombie" movie. It came out just before Dawn of the Dead made zombies much more popular as scary enemies.
The story concerns a group of shipwrecked people who end themselves on an undiscovered island where a sunken SS submarine has (living dead) 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.
Since then, there have been at least 16 Nazi zombie movies, which is a lot more than you might think. This one is important at least because it was the first to combine two great movie villains into one.
Shock Waves is ultimately responsible for films like the Dead Snow trilogy.
It's not easy to create a fresh perspective on the zombie film, but Colm McCarthy's The Girl With All The Gifts, based on Mike Carey's novel, succeeds while also giving some enjoyable genre thrills.
This zombie pandemic is the result of a fungal virus, similar to the one that wiped out humans in The Last of Us. Melanie, a little child, is educated in an unusual fashion by Gemma Arterton's character, Helen, in a very guarded facility.
Melanie is a "second-generation" hungry; she desires human flesh but is also capable of intellect and emotion, and her mere existence might hold the key to survival.
This gore-fest gives the classic zombie a Nordic twist by including features of the Draugr, an undead monster from Scandinavian legend that ferociously guards its treasure hoard. In the case of Dead Snow, these draugr are former SS troops that harassed a Norwegian hamlet and stole its possessions, only to be killed or driven into the frigid mountains by the locals.
Dead Snow gets bonus points for creativity on this one. It's also a really humorous, gruesome, and satisfyingly violent film, with aspects of Evil Dead and "teen sex/slasher" films thrown in for good measure. If you like it, there's more where that came from in Dead Snow: Red versus Dead, the sequel.
There are times when the backstory behind a picture is more intriguing than the film itself, and such is the case with The Dead Next Door. Sam Raimi funded its production out of the profits he received from Evil Dead II so that his buddy J. R. Bookwalter could realize his vision of a low-budget zombie epic. The whole picture seems to have been redubbed in post-production, and for some reason Raimi is listed as an executive producer under the moniker "The Master Cylinder," while Evil Dead's Bruce Campbell does double duty as the voiceover for not one but two characters. The Dead Next Door has an aura of dreamlike surrealism because of this, and that's before we even get to the fact that it was shot entirely on Super 8 and not 32 mm film.
The Dead Next Door, then, is a genre first: a grainy, low-budget zombie action drama with cringe-inducing amateur acting performances and unexpected touches of polish.
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 here, in a zombie movie that seems like it was never intended to be watched by anybody other than the director's family. Even yet, there's a certain fascination to that degree of lousy familiarity.
The evolution of zombie films has been intriguing. Outside of Voodoo legend, radioactive humanoids, and the memorable imagery of E.C. comics, the monsters didn't have much of a presence or description for decades. Zombies were seldom utilized, and when they were, they were nothing like the cannibalistic, flesh-hungry undead monsters we know and love 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, based on the Dylan Dog comic book, stars Everett as Francesco Dellamorte, a misanthropic gravedigger who prefers the company of the dead to that of the living. Why shouldn't he? The living are jerks, and they keep circulating tales about his impotence.
There is just one catch: the deceased won't remain buried in his cemetery even after they are buried there. When he meets a stunning widow (Falchi) at the funeral of her husband, Dellamorte falls head over heels in love with her. He courts her in the morbid halls of his ossuary, and before you know it, they are stripped naked and steaming it up on top of her dead husband's grave. Falchi plays the role of Dellamorte's new love interest. That's only the beginning of how strange things are going to become.