It's hard to think of "Dawn of the Dead" director Zack Snyder as the same person who made the "Justice League" #SnyderCut, the far-too-faithful "Watchmen" adaptation, and the "300" and "Sucker Punch" movies where style was more important than plot.Which is not to argue that Zack Snyder's 2004 adaptation of George Romero's 1978 picture with the same title has any sense of aesthetic. The first twelve minutes of the film act as an opening salvo for his career and include one of the most impressive opening title sequences in the annals of the genre's history. This introduction provides a fantastic dynamic counterpoint to the movie that "Dawn of the Dead" is sometimes linked to: Danny Boyle's "28 Days Later," mostly because to the involvement of zombies that are referred to as "quick."
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.
It is a genre area he hopes to revisit in 2021 with "Army of the Dead" on Netflix.
Set in a zombie-filled wasteland after the end of the world caused by the mysterious street drug "Natas." We follow one man as he hunts down Flesh Eaters for fun and to make up for his past mistakes.
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 sounds like fun B-Movie fodder — who doesn't want to watch Danny Trejo fight zombies in slow-motion? Director K. King is trying for a Machete/Planet Terror grindhouse flavor, so we're interested. The marketing team's poster is elegant.
#NowWatching "Zombie Hunter Movie Review" from @DeckerShado! https://t.co/cNZGAbVhPI #moviereview #movies
— Sluts and Guts (@sluts_guts) June 15, 2022
Lupita Nyong'o, renowned for her serious roles, portrays a more lighter character in Little Monsters. She may be teaching a kindergarten class during a zombie outbreak while on a field trip, but she looks to be having a great time. The 2019 film was the actress's second venture into the horror genre that year, after Jordan Peele's more well-known "Us."
But she can do it without any problems at all. The film is "dedicated to all of the kindergarten teachers who encourage children to study, fill them with confidence, and rescue them from being devoured by zombies," as stated in the official press notes. Yes, I think that covers every base. In "Little Monsters," Alexander England portrays an effete, has-been musician who is accompanying his nephew on a field trip and who happens to be in love (or maybe lust) with Lupita Nyong'o, while Josh Gad plays an obnoxious, renowned kid performer. Nyong'o appears alongside both of these characters. The year 2014 saw the publication of "Little Monsters."As a result, you wind up with an odd combination of horror and romantic comedy that amps up the excitement of both genres.
The zombie epidemic has persisted uninterrupted since then. (Some have even perfected the art of running.) Although The Walking Dead is the most well-known example, zombies have also featured in found footage ([REC]), romantic comedies ([REC]), and grindhouse homages (Warm Bodies) (Planet Terror).
At the same time, a whole subgenre was born out of Romero's works, and it quickly spread all over the world.
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, such as filmmakers Dan O'Bannon, Fred Dekker, and Stuart Gordon, came along and toyed with the genre's constructs, exploring and broadening what a zombie movie may be. Following that, the popularity of zombies drastically dropped.
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).
Is there somewhere else to begin? White Zombie was the first movie to popularize the idea of Haitian voodoo zombies. This was decades before the classic George Romero ghoul.
You can now watch White Zombie on YouTube, and you can also find it in almost any cheap collection of zombie movies. Bela Lugosi plays a witch doctor who is called "Murder" by the studio, which was still a few years away from understanding nuance. After his role in Dracula, Lugosi was well-known as one of Universal's go-to horror actors. This was just a year ago.
In the end, the Svengali-like Lugosi uses his various concoctions and powders to zombify a young lady who is engaged to be married. He does this in an effort to bend her will to the will of a cruel plantation owner, and... well, it's pretty dry and wooden stuff. Lugosi is, as was to be expected, the lone shining light, but obviously you have to begin someplace. Following the success of "White Zombie," Hollywood continued to produce voodoo zombie films for many years, the majority of which are now considered to be in the public domain.
A particular musical project that Rob Zombie was working on was, of course, also influenced by the film. You'll see it included heavily on some lists of the "greatest zombie movies," but let's face it: in 2016, the vast majority of viewers aren't going to get much out of viewing a movie like this one. It is virtually entirely due to its historical relevance that this item has been given the distinction of being ranked number 50.
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 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 want to absorb your brain in order to enlarge mine.
Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead will be a Troma production, so you may expect a couple of their trademark elements. It will be of the lowest possible quality. There will be physical conflict. It will have no limits and no appreciation for aesthetics or good taste. The true question is one that you ask yourself with each and every Troma picture, and that is, "Is it boring?" The correct response is "absolutely not" in this scenario.
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 page 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.
Poultrygeist is nasty, gruesome, filthy lunacy.
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, a low-budget indie film, captivated viewers with its cryptic narrative, stunning gore, progressive casting and social criticism, and, of course, the iconic hordes of the gaunt, ravenous undead. Romero was dubbed the "Godfather of Zombies" and went on to make five additional Dead films, the greatest of which are included in this book, including 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.
A gang of wayward boaters find themselves on a remote island where a wrecked SS submarine has discharged its undead crew, a Nazi experiment. Peter Cushing plays a miscast and addled SS Commander the same year he sneered at Princess Leia in Star Wars: A New Hope?
There have been at least 16 Nazi zombie movies made since this point, which is certainly more than one might be aware of, which makes this one fairly significant at least for combining the portmanteau of great film villains for the first time. There have also been many more Nazi zombie movies made since this point than one might be aware of.
Shock Waves is ultimately responsible for films like the Dead Snow trilogy.It's not easy to come up with a fresh perspective on the zombie film, but Colm McCarthy's The Girl With All The Gifts, based on Mike Carey's novel, succeeds in doing so while also giving great genre thrills.
The Last of Us-like fungal infection has transformed most of the populace into 'hungries' The plot centers on Melanie, who is taught by Gemma Arterton's instructor Helen in a heavily-armed institution.
Melanie is a "second-generation" vampire; she desires human blood but is also capable of cognition and emotion, and her mere presence may hold the key to survival.
This splatter-fest adds features of the Draugr, a Nordic undead beast that guards its treasure trove. In Dead Snow, these draugr are former SS troops that tormented a Norwegian hamlet and robbed its things before being killed or pursued into the mountains by the people.
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.
The narrative behind The Dead Next Door is one of those examples that may be more intriguing than the picture itself: Sam Raimi produced it using a share of the earnings from Evil Dead II to enable pal J. R. Bookwalter to direct the low-budget zombie epic of his dreams. For some reason, Raimi is listed as an executive producer under the moniker "The Master Cylinder," while Evil Dead's Bruce Campbell doubles as a voiceover for not one, but two characters, since the whole picture seems to have been redubbed in post-production. This, predictably, gives The Dead Next Door an aura of dreamlike unreality, and that's before we even consider that the picture was SHOT ENTIRELY ON SUPER 8, rather than 32 mm film.
The Dead Next Door, then, offers something unprecedented in this genre: A grainy, low-budget zombie action-drama with cringe-inducing amateur acting performances and surprising hints 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 in a zombie picture that seems like it was made for the director's family. Shoddy closeness has a weird appeal.
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.
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.