Zombie movies have undergone a real transformation over the years. But the concept of the zombie hasn’t changed all that much. Romero said that zombies represented a people’s reaction to change how a human contends with the reversal of nature’s law: all things move toward death. So whatever your immortal fear or apocalypse kink, here are the best zombie movies to stream on Netflix right now.
Number 1: Alive
Fans of zombie cinema were hotly anticipating at least one South Korean zombie feature this year: Peninsula, the sequel to the much-loved Train to Busan was heavily hyped, but ultimately fell far short of the original. Thankfully, though, there was another Korean zombie flick waiting in the wings to step into its place, in the form of the significantly more successful (if modest) #Alive. Fans of the original World War Z novel will certainly find this story familiar, as it’s suspiciously similar to one of that book’s better-loved passages, about a young gamer/hacker in Japan who is so deeply engrossed in the web, he fails to notice the world descending into a zombie apocalypse around him, before finally being forced to unplug and go on the run.
Number 2: Ravenous
Genre geeks didn’t seem to take a lot of notice of Ravenous, beyond its Best Canadian Film award at the Toronto International Film Festival—perhaps the result of an “indie zombie drama” subgenre that seems to have run its course through films such as The Battery, and perhaps because it’s performed in French rather than English. Regardless, this is a competently crafted little drama thriller for the zombie completist, full of excellent performances from no-name actors and an intriguing take on the results of zombification. The infected here at times seem like your standard Romero ghouls, but they’re also a bit more lost souls who have hung onto some kind of strange, rudimentary culture all their own.
Number 3: Cargo
We’ve had enough takes on worldwide zombie apocalypses to last undead enthusiasts long through, well, a worldwide zombie apocalypse. Of those takes, few are inspired, a few more are watchable though workmanlike and most are dreck, whether in TV or movie form. Cargo, a collaborative directing effort between Yolanda Ramke and Ben Howling, falls somewhere in between “inspired” and “workmanlike,” which is to say it’s well worth seeking out on Netflix if you’ve a powerful need to watch twitching, walking corpses menace a family trying to survive while isolated in Australia’s Outback. Martin Freeman plays Andy, stubborn husband to his wife, Kay (Susie Porter), and loving dad to their daughter, Rosie; he’s piloting a houseboat to safer shores, or that’s the hope.
Number 4: Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island
After a decade in frequent syndication, Scooby-Doo roared back into popularity among children of the 1990s, which culminated in Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island, the first in a prolific series of direct-to-video movies. That’s about where the similarities to the original animated TV series end, though, because Zombie Island represented something wholly unexpected: a legitimate take on horror cinema, via Scooby-Doo. After decades of unmasking unscrupulous land developers and treasure hunters, the idea to put real supernatural creatures into a Scooby-Doo story was a rather brilliant one, and Zombie Island is complemented by what is undoubtedly the best animation the series had ever seen, courtesy of Japanese studio Mook Animation. It gave fans something they never knew they needed, fantastically atmospheric gothic horror vibes.
Number 5: The Girl With All the Gifts
M.R. Carey’s novel The Girl With All the Gifts plays coy with its zombie (or “hungries,” as they’re called here) trappings, drawing readers in for dozens of pages before revealing its flesh-eating premise. The film adaptation, released last year in the U.K. before making its U.S. debut in February, bares its teeth right away. If viewers aren’t burnt out on zombie offerings (and they shouldn’t be, with such recent standouts as 2016’s Korean hit Train to Busan proving that the genre has plenty of life left in it), they’ll find that The Girl With All the Gifts is less concerned with the initial overwhelming outbreak than with the moral lines survivors in the military and scientific community are willing to cross.
Number 6: The Evil Dead
Infamously pieced together from $350,000 and an exceptional amount of goodwill, The Evil Dead, when looking back at it, seems to have created a kind of horror unto itself. Sam Raimi’s debut, of course, is notable for so much more than that: like how it was edited by Joel Coen; or how Stephen King’s rabid interest caught the attention of a major studio, giving Raimi and close bud Bruce Campbell the chance to pour everything they knew about slashers, slapstick, camp, pulp and fantasy into Evil Dead II, a kind of sequel/reboot hybrid. But the real gauge of The Evil Dead’s tenor is perhaps best exemplified by the fact that its 2013 remake was something of a sickening feast for gore-hounds.
Number 7: Zombieland
Ruben Fleischer’s Zombieland is one of the most beloved horror-comedies to be released over the past decade. In addition to its 89% Certified Fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes, the film currently boasts a 7.6/10 IMDB-rating and 73/100 Metascore. Starring Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, Jesse Eisenberg, and Abigail Breslin, the film revolves around a foursome of strangers who band together in order to survive a hyper-violent zombie apocalypse. With undead ghouls abound everywhere they turn, the quartet sets out to reach the so-called safe haven Pacific Playland theme park.
Number 8: RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE
The fourth installment of the hugely successful RESIDENT EVIL franchise, RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE is again based on the wildly popular video game series, and will this time be presented in 3-D. In a world ravaged by a virus infection, turning its victims into the Undead, ALICE (Milla Jovovich), continues on her journey to find survivors and lead them to safety. Her deadly battle with the Umbrella Corporation reaches new heights, but Alice gets some unexpected help from an old friend. A new lead that promises a safe haven from the Undead takes them to Los Angeles, but when they arrive the city is overrun by thousands of Undead – and Alice and her comrades are about to step into a deadly trap.
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