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- 28 Days Later
- Fox Searchlight Pictures
Released four years before George Romero's Night of the Living Dead, The Last Man on Earth was the first screen adaptation of Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend, which was a big influence on Romero's zombie opus. The film obviously was, too, as the black-and-white images of lifeless figures swarming the house where Vincent Price, as the eponymous last man on Earth, hides at night pretty clearly prefigure the boarded-up farmhouse of Romero's classic.
The difference is that in The Last Man on Earth - and Matheson's original novel - the undead are vampires, not zombies.
- Dig Deeper...The Best Characters on The Last Man on Earth, Ranked
- #54 of 124 onThe Top 100+ Zombie Movies Of All Time
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After George Romero pioneered the modern zombie movie with Night of the Living Dead - but before he continued that trend a decade later with 1978's Dawn of the Dead - he made a film that combines much of what he had done (and would continue to do) in his zombie films with a cautionary tale about a biological device called "Trixie" that accidentally taints the water supply of a small town in Pennsylvania.
Those who are exposed to Trixie either perish or become exremelty aggressive, while the uninfected locals must contend not only with the "crazies," but also with government troops in hazmat suits and gas masks who have been ordered to aggressively contain the outbreak.
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One of the movies credited with the cinematic rise of "fast zombies," 28 Days Later plays something like a "greatest hits" mix of George Romero's iconic films. There's just one thing: The "zombies" in 28 Days Later aren't actually zombies at all. They're people who have been infected with the incredibly contagious "rage" virus, which makes them extremely aggressive.
The virus gets loose when some activists attempt to free infected chimpanzees, and spreads throughout England in a matter of days - 28 of them, as you may have guessed from the name - leading to widespread societal collapse.
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Brian Taylor is the writer/director of Crank, so it should come as no surprise that his contribution to the "zombie" movie subgenre is wild and frenetic. However, it also adds a surprisingly fresh angle. An unknown sort of mass hysteria causes all parents to turn on their children for 24 hours - but they have no inclination to hurt anyone else.
By limiting the aggression to those we would normally count on in the event of an emergency, the film changes the dynamic of the "zombie outbreak" scenario in ways that are fascinating to watch as they play out in the background of the story about one family falling apart in the face of insensible aggression. Mom and Dad also features a classically madcap performance by Nicolas Cage.
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In most zombie films, the virus - or whatever it is that's turning people into zombies - spreads through being bitten or scratched. In some versions, anyone who perishes comes back as a zombie, no matter what does them in. Pontypool adds an entirely different spin to the idea.
The film follows a radio DJ during an outbreak of bizarre aggression that seems to be tied to language itself. Director Bruce McDonald stresses that the individuals infected by this linguistic virus are not zombies, however. Instead, he calls them "conversationalists." In an interview, he describes the three stages of the virus:
The first stage is you might begin to repeat a word. Something gets stuck. And usually it's words that are terms of endearment like sweetheart or honey. The second stage is your language becomes scrambled and you can't express yourself properly. The third stage you become so distraught at your condition that the only way out of the situation you feel, as an infected person, is to try and chew your way through the mouth of another person.
More Pontypool- #59 of 124 onThe Top 100+ Zombie Movies Of All Time
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Not every "zombie" movie actually needs zombies - or even zombie stand-ins. Take Bird Box, for example, the 2018 adaptation of Josh Malerman's novel of the same name. In the film, entities that we never see (for obvious reasons) cause anyone who sees them to take their own life. The societal unraveling that follows feels a lot like the kind of gradual apocalypse that you get in just about every zombie movie, but without the slow-moving (or fast-running) masses of the undead.
Instead, everyone has to navigate their world blindfolded or risk accidentally sneaking a peek at something that they must not see.
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The vicious thugs in John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13 may not be mindless zombies - but as far as the people inside the eponymous precinct are concerned, they may as well be.
These villains may use sidearms instead of teeth, but they are eerily silent and unwilling to listen to reason. Though their targets have no idea why, the band of bad guys have sworn a blood oath to take out everyone inside the precinct, and they'll do whatever it takes to get it done. As the crew swarms the building, turning enemies inside to unlikely allies, this classic siege picture owes as much to Night of the Living Dead as it does to Rio Bravo.
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All telecommunications devices, radios, TVs, etc., have begun to transmit nothing but a strange signal that amplifies a listener's emotional traits, causing most people who hear it to become extremely aggressive.
Told across three distinct stories, or "transmissions," The Signal was written and directed by indie filmmakers David Bruckner, Dan Bush, and Jacob Gentry, with each one tackling a separate segment. The three filmmakers have since gone on to work on films like V/H/S, Southbound, The Ritual, The Vault, and Synchronicity.
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Aliens are invading London - or, at least, one London housing block - and it's up to a bunch of inner-city kids to stop them. That's the logline for Joe Cornish's directorial debut, which launched the career of John Boyega and also features future Doctor Who star Jodie Whittaker.
The result is a zombie-style siege movie in which the things doing the sieging are brilliantly conceived low-budget aliens. Essentially Vantablack gorilla suits with glow-in-the-dark teeth, the effect is one of the best simple monster designs of the past decade. It helps that the movie they're in is fast, fun, and full of heart.
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In Barry Levinson's eco-horror faux documentary, a mutant strain of the super creepy tongue-eating louse - a real isopod that eats and replaces a fish's tongue - makes the leap from fish to humans.
The infected humans mostly perish horribly, rather than turning on one another, but the unspooling disaster echoes the epidemic structure of most zombie movies. Plus, the gross little isopods are kind of the zombies in this equation, jumping from host to host and leaving devastation and gruesome demises in their wake.
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Jim Mickle followed up his 2006 debut Mulberry Street - which is also a zombie movie that isn't really about zombies - with 2010's Stake Land, a post-apocalyptic flick that follows a young man named Martin (Connor Paolo) who joins up with a hunter who just goes by the name of "Mister" (Nick Damici) to survive in the Appalachian Mountains in the wake of an outbreak of vampirism that has slain or turned most of the populace. Think of it as The Walking Dead but with vampires.
Mickle's blue-collar aesthetic - which he would later put to use adapting Joe R. Lansdale stories to the big and small screens - is on full display here, and the Rust Belt setting provides a very different backdrop from those of most post-apocalyptic films.
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Sure, there are blank-eyed, Romero-style zombies in this black-and-white British shocker, which was actually released four years before Romero's zombie classic, but they're not the main threat.
Most of the population has been done in by a mysterious gas, while the survivors are hounded by silent, unstoppable robots who take lives with a simple touch. The fact that the targets of the robots return as zombies with "gray blobs" for eyes seems like adding insult to injury for the poor survivors by that point.
Pulse
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What's scarier than a zombie apocalypse? How about a ghost apocalypse? That's what seems to be going on in this creepy 2001 film, known in Japan as Kairo and remade in the US in 2006 as Pulse.
The ghosts' point of entry appears to be the internet, and those who encounter them become listless and depressed, and usually take their own lives. The infiltration is insidious and slow in this haunting, hypnotic film from acclaimed director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, with the desperation of your average zombie flick replaced with desolation and despair as ghosts flood back into the world and the living begin to lose the will to live anymore.
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"There's something in the mist!" Frank Darabont's 2007 adaptation of Stephen King's 1980 novella of the same name looks and sounds like a monster movie - and it has plenty of monsters, to be sure - but, like most zombie movies, it reminds us that the worst monsters are those in our own mirrors.
The mist and its attendant creatures may be the threat that galvanizes the conflict, but they ultimately prove less frightening than what the survivors become as they are driven to turn on one another by fear and their own worst instincts. And like the best zombie flicks, it can be seen as a political parable or just a good old-fashioned horror yarn, without losing any of its impact either way.
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Richard Matheson's classic 1954 novel I Am Legend has been officially adapted to the screen three times, but this 2007 Will Smith vehicle is the first time that the movie version kept the novel's title. While the novel and the first film adaptation are about vampires, and 1971's The Omega Man changes them to Luddite mutants, this version makes the culprit a genetically altered version of the measles virus, which wipes out 90% of the world's population, and turns most of the rest into photophobic mutants called "Darkseekers."
Will Smith plays a virologist who is one of the only survivors and who lives an isolated existence in a ruined and depopulated Manhattan with his faithful German Shepherd. His days are spent gathering supplies, looking for survivors, and trying to find a cure for the virus. His nights are spent barricaded inside his fortified home, hiding from the Darkseekers. That is, until he encounters other uninfected survivors...
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Cold Skin
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This Shudder exclusive is not only a zombie movie that isn't about zombies, it's also like an action-packed version of Robert Eggers's 2019 indie The Lighthouse. The story follows a meteorologist who arrives on a remote island where his only human companion is a surly lighthouse keeper named Gruner. At night, however, he finds that the island is far from uninhabited, as fish-people swarm up out of the ocean and descend upon his cabin. The only safe place on the island is the heavily fortified lighthouse, where Gruner and the meteorologist form an unlikely truce to defend themselves against the aquatic threat.
However, as with any good zombie movie, the real monsters aren't the ones outside the walls, and it doesn't take long before Gruner and his new ally's detente is tested.
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