Zombies ! They’re everywhere. Calm down, I mean on the television and in movies, not clawing at your front door or slobbering over your shiny new car.
With so many zombiefests to choose from, it is good to see which ones offer the most convincing zombies and which offer the least convincing zombies in film and television.
Michael Jackson’s Thriller
Can you believe that it is over 30 years since the Thriller video came out? Hey, maybe you can but I still can’t get over the fact that it’s the 21st century already and there are so many horseless carriages on the roads. If you look back at the video now it actually stands the test of time really well. The zombies don’t scare me as much as they did when I was a kid but then again, I don’t believe in the tooth fairy or speak to imaginary Smurfs anymore either.
Night of the Living Dead
If we want to see some more convincing zombies in films and television we need to go back in time a bit further. To the lazy, crazy, hazy days of 1968, to be exact. There wasn’t so much technology or makeup used in this movie but the acting and the atmosphere made it a winner. If you watch it now I bet you are gripped by it and possibly even a little bit scared. Sadly, the 1990 remake stunk the place out.
Zombieland
If you haven’t yet seen this great zombie movie then I can recommend looking it out right now. Woody Harrelson stars in a fantastic zombiefest, as he travels through a US filled with, well, zombies really. There’s even a Bill Murray cameo to keep you happy. There are more zombies than you can shake a stick at and plenty of them are realistically creepy looking.
Redneck Zombies
You probably don’t hold out much hope for a movie based on hillbillies drinking radioactive moonshine and turning into zombies, do you? You would be perfectly correct in not doing so. Redneck Zombies shows us exactly what can go wrong with a low budget zombiefest and a weird plot. It could have been funny and endearing but it wasn’t really.
28 Days Later
This 2003 production from Danny Boyle shows what would happen if London were to be taken over by frightfully awful zombies. The answer it that would be absolutely bloody terrible, old chap. However, the film is very good and has some wonderful zombie sequences as well as absolutely no hillbillies.
Plan 9 from Outer Space
If you check out any list of the worst zombie films you can expect to find this stinker on it. In fact, it is rated as one of the worst movies of any type ever made in the history of the world and the universe. It is a science fiction disaster about aliens coming to the Earth and bringing back people from the dead as zombies. That’s about all that makes sense in this confusing and badly made movie.
Z Nation
Can you imagine being possibly the only person left alive after a virus swept the planet and turned everyone else into zombies? There are worse things that could happen, I guess but life still wouldn’t be exactly a barrel of laughs. There are some terrific zombies and effects in this, making it one of the best zombie TV series around.
The Walking Dead
It’s no coincidence that some of the most convincing zombies in film and television come from recent productions. The use of clever special effects helps make this a brilliant way to see some creepy zombies on the small screen. It’s set in a (you guessed it) post-apocalyptic world and there are enough flesh eating zombies around to keep even the most demanding zombie hunter happy.
