The Greatest Zombie Movies That Will Haunt Your Dreams

2002 | 1h 53m | Directed by Danny Boyle

The plot depicts the breakdown of society following the accidental release of a highly contagious virus. It focuses on the struggle of a group of survivors to cope with the destruction of the life they once knew. The success of 28 Days Later led to a 2007 sequel, 28 Weeks Later. A third film, 28 Months Later, has been rumored to be in development for years but has been repeatedly delayed.

2004 | 1h 39m | Directed by Edgar Wright
 

Edgar Wright’s comedy horror film is one of those funny zombie movies that you can rewatch over and over, but also one of the most inventive. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost play two Londoners who have trouble coming to terms with how their lives are going when a zombie apocalypse forces them to take refuge in a local pub with their loved ones.

2009 | 1h 28m | Directed by Ruben Fleischer

A fast-paced, funny, and gory horror-comedy starring Emma Stone, Woody Harrelson, and Jesse Eisenberg. A dysfunctional group of survivors travels together across the Southwestern United States in an attempt to find a sanctuary free from zombies. Zombieland was a critical and commercial success and led to a sequel, Zombieland: Double Tap, released in 2019.

1968 | 1h 36m | Directed by George A. Romero
 

Considered by many critics to be the zombie movie that started it all, George Romero’s cult classic is an iconic film that set the standard for the genre and made zombies a mainstream staple. The movie follows a group of survivors holed up in an abandoned farmhouse, trying to fight off hordes of undead roaming all over the East Coast. In 1999, the film was deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

1978 | 2h 7m | Directed by George A. Romero

Dawn of the Dead sees a group of survivors holed up in a shopping mall as zombies try to get in. It’s the sequel to Night of the Living Dead, but it has no characters returning from the previous film. It’s probably the most famous zombie apocalypse movie ever made, and it spawned plenty of remakes over the years, including the recent one by Zack Snyder.

2007 | 1h 40m | Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo

28 Weeks Later is a British-Spanish production structured as a sequel to the critically and commercially successful film 28 Days Later. The movie picks up six months after the Rage virus spread throughout the city of London. NATO has restored order and is repopulating the quarantined city when a carrier of the Rage virus enters London and unknowingly re-ignites the spread of the deadly infection. The nightmare is coming back.

1981 | 1h 25m | Directed by Sam Raimi

A super worth it watch among the many Shudder movies available, The Evil Dead is the story of five friends vacationing in a cabin in the woods. After playing a cursed audiotape, four of them get possessed, with the fifth friend forced to fight for his life and survive a bloodbath. The movie has developed a reputation as one of the most influential cult films and is cited among the greatest horror films of all time.

1985 | 1h 41m | Directed by George A. Romero
 

George A. Romero’s third installment in his zombie series finds a group of survivors holed up in an underground bunker as they try to figure out how to stop the undead hordes that have overrun the earth. Like its predecessors, the film has garnered a cult following and inspired numerous parodies and homages. Romero himself considers it his personal favorite movie in the original Dead trilogy.

1985 | 1h 31m | Directed by Dan O’Bannon

Set in Louisville, The Return Of The Living Dead follows a diverse group of people dealing with the accidental release of a horde of unkillable zombies. It’s the film that introduced the concept of zombies as “brain-eaters,” unlike previous titles that show undead just eating any random part of the body. Its enduring popularity has spawned four sequels and made the saga a cult classic.

2004 | 1h 41m | Directed by Zack Snyder

Dawn Of The Dead follows a group of people locked inside a shopping mall during a gory apocalyptic event. Surrounded by zombies, they must stay alive without food, water, and barely a glimpse of hope for the future. This sounds like a very clichéd story, but it’s not. The characters are interesting and well developed, and their relationships are believable (for the most part).