THE ZOMBIE FLICK GENRE HAS EVOLVED THROUGHOUT TIME

The zombie flick genre has evolved throughout time

The zombie flick genre has evolved throughout time

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It's hard to reconcile the Zack Snyder of the "Justice League" #SnyderCut, the too-faithful "Watchmen" adaption, and "300" and "Sucker Punch" with the filmmaker of "Dawn of the Dead."

Which is not to say that Snyder's 2004 remake of George Romero's 1978 movie of the same name, also called Dawn of the Dead, is not stylish. The first 12 minutes set the tone for the rest of his career, and the opening title sequence is one of the best in the history of the genre. This intro is a great physical counterpoint to the movie that "Dawn of the Dead" is often compared to: Danny Boyle's "28 Days Later," mostly because both movies have zombies that move quickly.

Dawn of the Dead's opening minutes are its high point, and although the rest of the picture never quite matches them, the script by future "Guardians of the Galaxy" director James Gunn keeps things interesting. Snyder avoided the tragedy that would inevitably follow his following take on Alan Moore's work and the DC universe as a whole by bypassing Romero's societal critique and establishing his own unique take on the zombie genre.

And it's a fork in the road he'll return to in 2021 with Netflix's "Army of the Dead."

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 into a small group of survivors who are quickly running out of food, he decides to help them. When the flesh-eating Flesh Eaters attack suddenly, they have to run away, which puts 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 known for playing sad characters, plays a happier one in Little Monsters. She may be taking her kindergarten class on a field trip when a zombie outbreak happens, but it looks like she's having a great time. This was the actress's second horror movie of 2019. Her first was Jordan Peele's "Us," which is better known.

But she's clearly up to the challenge. According to the official press notes, the video is "dedicated to all kindergarten teachers who push children to study, build confidence in them, and save them from being eaten by zombies." Yes, that pretty much wraps it up. "Little Monsters" also stars Josh Gad as an annoying, renowned kid performer, and Alexander England as an effete, has-been musician accompanying his nephew on a field trip who is also in love (or maybe lust) with Nyong'o.

So, what you get is a strange mix of horror and romantic comedy that makes both genres more interesting.

The zombie pandemic has persisted unabatedly since then. Few individuals have perfected the skill of running. The most known example is The Walking Dead on television, although zombies have also featured in found footage films ([REC]), romantic comedies ([REC]), and grindhouse homages (Warm Bodies) (Planet Terror).

In the meanwhile, a global subgenre emerged in reaction to Romero's works.

Lucio Fulci, a titan in Italian horror, continued with the concept, first in his sequel Zombi (also known as Zombi) and later in his experimental and wildly bizarre "Gates of Hell" trilogy.

Zombie films had its foundations shaky before fans of Romero's work came along and tampered with the genre's conventions. Dan O'Bannon, Fred Dekker, and Stuart Gordon are just a few of the filmmakers who have done this in recent years. Soon after that, interest in zombies began to wane.

The undead had become a mainstay of horror movies, but now they only show up in sequels (like Return of the Living Dead and Zombie) and cheap B-movies (like My Boyfriend's Back, Cemetery Man, and Dead Alive).

Where else could we begin? White Zombie was the first full-length "zombie" horror film and the first to popularize the notion of Haitian voodoo zombies in Hollywood, decades before the current George Romero ghoul.

White Zombie is currently accessible for watching on YouTube, and it can also be found in practically any cheap zombie movie collection. Bela Lugosi plays a witch doctor called "Murder" since the studio was only a few years away from discovering subtlety at the time. Lugosi had just been a year away from being one of Universal's go-to horror performers after his appearance in Dracula.

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 the only bright spot, as expected, but you had to start somewhere. After White Zombie, there were a few voodoo zombie movies made in Hollywood every so often for many years. Most of them are now in the public domain.

And, of course, Rob Zombie's musical effort was inspired by the film. Some "greatest zombie movie" lists include it prominently, but let's be honest: this isn't a film that most people would enjoy viewing today 2016. It earns the honorable mention at #50 almost entirely because of its historical relevance.

Planet Terror is the better half of Robert Rodriguez's Grindhouse double-bill with Quentin Tarantino, which tells the tale of a go-go dancer, a bioweapon gone wrong, and Texan peasants transformed into shuffling, pustulous creatures. Planet Terror has its exploding tongue firmly entrenched in its rotten cheek, leaning heavily towards its B-movie heritage with missing reels, rough editing, and hammy overdubbed dialogue.

Its over-the-top gore and oozing effects are revolting, and it builds to a ridiculously entertaining climax in which Rose McGowan's character, Cherry Darling, gets her severed leg replaced with a machine gun. I'm going to have to consume some of your brains in order to absorb some of your wisdom.

Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead, being a Troma film, offers a few tropes. It will be really filthy. There will be violence. It will have no limitations and no aesthetic sensibility. The fundamental question with each Troma film is, "Is it boring?" In this case, the answer is "absolutely not."

The social satire of consumer society is quite subtle for a musical marketed as a "zom-com," if that makes any sense. Why, however, are you sitting in a movie about undead chickens who invade a KFC-like restaurant located on top of a Native American burial ground? Don't think so. Accepting the violence, scatological jokes, and shoddy production standards as part of the fun is essential to a Troma viewing, as does an appreciation for the thoughtless storyline.

This is why the running time of the disgusting, gory, raunchy Poultrygeist is just 103 minutes.

While zombie films have been around for almost 80 years (White Zombie was produced in 1932, and I Walked With a Zombie was published in 1943), it's widely acknowledged that the subgenre as we know it today didn't emerge until 1968, when George A. Romero released Night of the Living Dead.

Night was an independent movie with a budget just above six figures. It had a mysterious plot, shocking violence, progressive casting, social commentary, and, of course, hordes of ragged, hungry zombies that people will never forget. Romero was called the "godfather of zombies," and he went on to make five more Dead movies. The best of them, like Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead, are in this guide.

Despite Night of the Living Dead's impact, a wave of American zombie movies developed in the late '70s and '80s. Shock Waves may be the first "Nazi zombie" film, released before Dawn of the Dead popularized the genre.

Throughout the most of its duration, it's a dismal, slow-paced thriller about a group of lost boaters who wind themselves on a mystery island where a submerged SS submarine has abandoned its crew of zombies, a Nazi experiment. The same year he sneered at Princess Leia in Star Wars: Episode III, Hammer Horror icon Peter Cushing appears as a poorly miscast and addled-looking SS Commander. It's difficult to comprehend that there is a New Hope!

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 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 (updated information) 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 still wants to eat human flesh, but she can also think and feel, and the fact that she is alive could be the key to the future.

The Draugr, an undead monster from Scandinavian legend that ferociously defends its treasure trove, is included into this splatter-fest, giving it a Nordic take on the standard zombie. In the case of Dead Snow, the draugr are former SS troopers that harassed a Norwegian hamlet and robbed their things before being killed or driven into the frigid mountains by the people.

I have to give Dead Snow credit for inventiveness here. It has aspects of Evil Dead and "teen sex/slasher" movies, and it's hilarious, bloody, and satisfyingly brutal. In addition, Dead Snow: Red vs. Dead is the sequel, so fans can expect even more of the same.

The Dead Next Door is one of those rare movies when the tale behind the movie is more interesting than the movie itself. The film was produced by Sam Raimi, who used the profits from Evil Dead II to help his friend J. R. Bookwalter realize his vision of a low-budget zombie epic. Despite the fact that the whole picture seems to have been redubbed in post-production, Raimi is listed as an executive producer under the moniker "The Master Cylinder," and Evil Dead's Bruce Campbell does double duty by providing the narration for not one but two different characters. Even without considering the fact that the whole picture was filmed on super 8 rather than 32 mm, it's clear that this contributes to The Dead Next Door's air of dreamy unreality.

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.

You're not watching this one for the storyline; you're watching it for the gore. The premise centers on a "elite squad" of zombie exterminators who stumble onto a cult that worships zombies, but you're not watching this one for the plot. The Dead Next Door sometimes feels like a backyard attempt to replicate the demented bloodletting seen in Peter Jackson's Dead Alive, except with genre references that are so on-the-nose you can't help but laugh at them. The film seems to have been made as an excuse to simply practice blood effects and practical decapitations. "Dr. Savini"? "Officer Raimi"? "Commander Carpenter"?

They're all here, in a zombie picture that seems like it was only ever intended for the director's family to witness. Even yet, there's a strange allure to that degree of lousy familiarity.

It's incredible to see how popular zombie movies have become. 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.

Dario Argento's protege Michele Soavi directed the horror thriller Cemetery Man (also known as Dellamorte Dellamore). This film presents the undead as more of a nuisance than a serious threat, and it is a weird and chaotic mind trip. In the movie, Everett plays the role of Francesco Dellamorte, a misanthropic gravedigger who prefers the company of the dead than that of living people. Dylan Dog is the source material for this adaptation. The question is why he wouldn't just do it. The living are jerks for spreading false rumors about him not being able to have children.

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.

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