5 Movies To Watch If You Love Zombies

Did you catch the article I wrote previously about 4 TV Show To Watch If You Love Zombies? Well if you’re like me and you love zombies in all forms of media then boy do I have a treat for you!

If you don’t want to necessarily sit down and binge-watch hours and hours of zombie related TV shows than cuddle up and pop one of these movies on instead for the ultimate scare fest!

Shaun of the Dead

The movie poster of Shaun of the Dead gets me every time! This great horror comedy stars British comedian Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as two down and out roommates going through the motions of a mundane life until one day the entire community turns into zombies. In an attempt to turn his life around, win back his girlfriend and reconcile his relationship with his mother, Shaun takes what he does best and leads his friends and family to safety from the zombie horde.

This movie is one of the most cleverly written zombie movies ever made, with one of the most amazing tracking shots. The best part is by far the fact that Shaun tends to gloss over the beginning stages of the zombie apocalypse because honestly in this day and age everyone acts like zombies anyway - going about their business in the daily grind, glued to their phones and their coffees. Zombie fans will easily be able to pick up on all the signs at the start of the movie that point to the incoming invasion, but Shaun of the Dead proves that the monotony of 9 - 5 life may just be killing us already, and that's what makes the film so undoubtedly clever.

If you want a zombie comedy with brains, Shaun of the Dead is definitely one to pop in the DVD player (or cue on Netflix).

Quarantine

Quarantine is my favourite zombie movie ever! It’s the American remake of the Spanish horror film [Rec] which is also a great zombie movie to watch, and is filmed in the then-cool style of handheld camera recordings. The film follows TV journalist Angela (played by Jennifer Carpenter) as she reports on the inner workings of a downtown fire station. When the firemen are called to an emergency situation in an apartment building, Angela and her cameraman come along for the ride, only to find themselves sealed in to the apartment by the CDC with the tenants and the firemen. It turns out a plague has erupted in the apartment building, and slowly one by one the tenants are turning into flesh eating zombies.

Quarantine is spectacular for many reasons but the main one is that it is one of the only good handheld camera style movies out there, the camera work makes you feel like you are actually in the apartment building along with everyone else, rather than just making you feel sick with the shoddy movements. As the drama intensifies it feels like you are right there along with it, which is absolutely terrifying for a zombie film! The building is explored and the drama gets worse and worse until it meets a terrifying and shocking end. Focusing more of the effects of being there, rather than unnecessary blood and gore, the film remains true to the zombie outbreak feel and will be one terrifying ride if you have an hour and a half to spare.

Zombieland

Another excellent zombie comedy is the the 2009 Zombieland starring Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin. It's not as cleverly devised as Shaun of the Dead is, but the movie stands up in it's own right, honing in on "rules to live by" such as "look in the back seat", "double-tap", and "avoid public restrooms". It takes what horror movie fans would yell at stars in the cinemas while watching a movie (things like "don't run upstairs!" and "don't answer the phone!" or "look behind you!") and makes it a reality, which is refreshing to see.

The story of Zombieland centres around a shy student trying to reach his family in Ohio, who encounters and join forces with a Twinkie loving tough guy and a pair of grifting sisters trying to get to an amusement park. As the unlikely group travel together their priorities change and life becomes so much more than just survival.

With comedy heavyweights such as Emma Stone and Woody Harrelson, Zombieland is filled with funny moments, including a very notable appearance by comedian Bill Murray. The reality of the situation and the moments included in the film make for a very real look into what experiencing the zombie apocalypse would be like, but takes it in the opposite and less-clueless direction than Shaun of the Dead did. Like the fact that 90% of Rick and Morty fanboys think they are Rick when they are really Jerry, Zombieland is a movie for the 10% of fans that would actually survive a zombie outbreak.

Train to Busan

Train to Busan is unlike the kind of action packed zombie movies you would find in the likes of 28 Days Later or The Walking Dead merely for the fact that it is actually a South Korean film filled with subtitles. Don't let that put you off though - you could easily watch this film without subtitles and be able to fully follow the story.

Train to Busan centres around a deadbeat workaholic dad who agrees to take his daughter back home to her mother in Busan when a zombie virus breakouts aboard the train. The duo becomes entangled with the lives of the other passengers including a man and his pregnant wife, a teenage baseball star and his girlfriend, two elderly sisters, a homeless man, and a stewardess. as they fight to survive the outbreak that floods from carriage to carriage.

The zombies and their attack scenes throughout the movies are so well-executed that throughout the whole movie you are on the edge of your seat. While being trapped in a train isn't the most unique location for a zombie film, it does make the movie fast-paced and the carnage a little more dramatic, but the reason Train to Busan has made one of my favourite zombie movie lists is that I loved the idea you could understand what was going on even if you didn't speak Korean or read the subtitles. It's a sign of good communication within a movie, and something that can get lost in Hollywood's current thirst for being a reboot profit-making machine, rather than putting together a good story with good action. The South Koreans did zombies right with this one!

Warm Bodies

Lots of people love a good romance and rom com, but what if you're like me and a wall of ice surrounds your heart that requires melting? Well, this just happens to be one of the premises in the 2013 romantic horror Warm Bodies, starring Skins' Nicholas Hoult and Lights Out's Teresa Palmer. Mixing and rebooting stories are a dime a dozen in Hollywood nowadays, but Warm Bodies made the cut in this article because they took a tale as old as time and turned it into a unique story for the ages. The original story? William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

Nicholas Hoult plays R (Romeo - get it?!) a highly unusual zombie who is oddly introspective. He saves a still-living heroine named Julie (Teresa Palmer picking up the Juliet role) and the two form a relationship that sets in motion events that could transform the lifeless world. Taking the zombie genre and putting it on it's head, don't get any ideas about this being the next Twilight because Warm Bodies stays true to the violence of being a zombie without forgetting the heart behind the story. Worth a look if you are after something different!