29 Best Zombie Movies of All Time
A zombie is a fictional creature, typically depicted as a reanimated corpse that has risen from the dead. Zombies are often shown as mindless, slow-moving beings driven by an insatiable hunger for human flesh. They are a popular element in horror stories and movies, representing fear and the unknown.
Zombie movies have always been a favorite in the horror genre, keeping viewers hooked with a mix of fear, survival, and sometimes humor. From the slow, flesh-eating monsters of old films to the fast, angry infected in newer ones, these movies tap into our basic fear of death and rot. They often also comment on society in clever ways. Over the years, zombie films have changed a lot, bringing different ideas and styles to the story of the undead, each adding something unique to the zombie legend.
In this article, we’ll delve into the best zombie movies of all time. Each of these films has greatly impacted the genre and still excites and scares people everywhere.
Train To Busan (2016)
Country: South Korea
Language: Korean
Director: Yeon Sang-ho
Starring: Gong Yoo, Jung Yu-mi, Ma Dong-seok, Kim Su-an, Choi Woo-shik
Storyline: While a zombie virus breaks out in South Korea, passengers struggle to survive on the train from Seoul to Busan.
Available on: Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Peacock, Viki
Shaun Of The Dead (2004)
Country: United Kingdom, France, United States
Language: English
Director: Edgar Wright
Starring: Simon Pegg, Kate Ashfield, Lucy Davis, Nick Frost, Dylan Moran
Storyline: An aimless salesman and his best pal must save their friends and family from the zombies in London.
Available on: Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV
World War Z (2013)
Country: United States
Language: English
Director: Marc Forster
Starring: Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, James Badge Dale, Matthew Fox
Storyline: Former United Nations employee Gerry Lane traverses the world in a race against time to stop a zombie pandemic that is toppling armies and governments and threatens to destroy humanity itself.
Available on: Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV
I Am Legend (2007)
Country: United States
Language: English
Director: Francis Lawrence
Starring: Will Smith, Alice Braga, Dash Mihok, Charlie Tahan
Storyline: Years after a plague kills most of humanity and transforms the rest into monsters, the sole survivor in New York City struggles valiantly to find a cure.
Available on: Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV
Dawn Of The Dead (1978)
Countries: United States, Italy
Language: English
Director: George A. Romero
Starring: David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott Reiniger, Gaylen Ross
Storyline: During an escalating zombie epidemic, two Philadelphia SWAT team members, a traffic reporter and his TV executive girlfriend seek refuge in a secluded shopping mall. Sequel: Zombi 2.
Available on: Amazon Prime Video (Buy)
Zombieland (2009)
Country: United States
Language: English
Director: Ruben Fleischer
Starring: Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin
Storyline: A shy student trying to reach his family in Ohio, a gun-toting bruiser in search of the last Twinkie and a pair of sisters striving to get to an amusement park join forces in a trek across a zombie-filled America.
Available on: Netflix, Amazon Prime Video
Warm Bodies (2013)
Country: United States
Language: English
Director: Jonathan Levine
Starring: Nicholas Hoult, Teresa Palmer, Rob Corddry, Dave Franco, Lio Tipton
Storyline: After a highly unusual zombie saves a still-living girl from an attack, the two form a relationship that sets in motion events that might transform the entire lifeless world.
Available on: Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu
Also read this: 100 Best Horror Movies of All Time to Watch Now!
The Girl With All The Gifts (2016)
Country: United Kingdom
Language: English
Director: Colm McCarthy
Starring: Gemma Arterton, Paddy Considine, Glenn Close, Sennia Nanua
Storyline: A scientist and a teacher living in a dystopian future embark on a journey of survival with a special young girl named Melanie.
Available on: Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV
Planet Terror (2007)
Country: United States
Languages: English, Spanish
Director: Robert Rodriguez
Starring: Rose McGowan, Freddy Rodriguez, Michael Biehn, Jeff Fahey, Josh Brolin, Marley Shelton
Storyline: Set in Texas, the film follows the survivors of a biochemical outbreak as they battle zombie-like creatures and a rogue military unit.
Available on: Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV
Peninsula (2020)
Country: South Korea
Language: Korean
Director: Yeon Sang-ho
Starring: Gang Dong-won, Lee Jung-hyun, Kwon Hae-hyo
Storyline: The film follows a former soldier who is sent along with a team to retrieve a truck full of money from the wastelands of South Korea, now inhabited by zombies, rogue militia, and a family.
Available on: Netflix, Amazon Prime Video
Resident Evil film series (2002 – 2021)
Resident Evil (2002).
Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)
Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)
Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)
Resident Evil: Retribution (2012)
Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016)
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021)
Storyline: These first six films follow Alice (Milla Jovovich), a character created specifically for the films. Alice is a former security specialist and covert operative who battles the Umbrella Corporation, whose bioweapons have triggered a zombie apocalypse. The seventh installment is set in 1998, it follows a group of survivors trying to survive during a zombie outbreak in Raccoon City. The seventh film in the series does not feature Milla Jovovich in the lead role or her character Alice.
Available on: Netflix
Braindead (1992)
Country: New Zealand
Language: English
Director: Peter Jackson
Starring: Timothy Balme, Diana Peñalver, Elizabeth Moody, Ian Watkin
Storyline: A young man’s mother is bitten by a Sumatran rat monkey. She gets sick and dies, at which time she comes back to life, killing and eating dogs, nurses, friends, and neighbors.
Available on: Amazon Prime Video (Buy)
One Cut Of The Dead (2017)
Country: Japan
Language: Japanese
Director: Shin’ichirō Ueda
Starring: Takayuki Hamatsu, Yuzuki Akiyama, Kazuaki Nagaya, Harumi Syuhama, Manabu Hosoi, Hiroshi Ichihara
Storyline: Things go badly for a hack director and film crew shooting a low budget zombie movie in an abandoned WWII Japanese facility, when they are attacked by real zombies.
Available on: Apple TV, Shudder
Night Of The Living Dead (1990)
Country: United States
Language: English
Director: Tom Savini
Starring: Tony Todd, Patricia Tallman
Storyline: It is a remake of the 1968 film of the same title. The film follows seven strangers as they meet and survive in a rural farmhouse, following the awakening of cannibalistic zombies.
Available on: Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV
Rec Film Series
Rec (2007)
Rec 2 (2009)
Rec 3: Genesis (2012)
Rec 4: Apocalypse (2014) (Final)
Available on: Amazon Prime Video
Overlord (2018)
Country: United States
Language: English, Canada
Director: Julius Avery
Starring: Jovan Adepo, Wyatt Russell, Mathilde Ollivier, John Magaro, Gianny Taufer, Pilou Asbæk, Bokeem Woodbine
Storyline: A small group of American soldiers find horror behind enemy lines on the eve of D-Day.
Available on: Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Roku
Fido (2006)
Country: Canada
Language: English
Director: Andrew Currie
Starring: Carrie-Anne Moss, Billy Connolly, Dylan Baker, K’Sun Ray, Henry Czerny
Storyline: When Timmy’s mom brings home a zombie servant, he discovers a new best friend and is determined to keep him, even if his zombie ate the next-door neighbor.
Available on: Amazon Prime Video (Buy)
Army of the Dead (2021)
Country: United States
Language: English
Director: Zack Snyder
Starring: Dave Bautista, Ella Purnell, Omari Hardwick, Ana de la Reguera, Theo Rossi, Matthias Schweighöfer
Storyline: Following a zombie outbreak in Las Vegas, a group of mercenaries take the ultimate gamble, venturing into the quarantine zone to pull off the greatest heist ever attempted.
Available on: Netflix
The Return Of The Living Dead (1985)
Country: United States
Language: English
Director: Dan O’Bannon
Starring: Clu Gulager, James Karen, Don Calfa
Storyline: When two bumbling employees at a medical supply warehouse accidentally release a deadly gas into the air, the vapors cause the dead to rise again as zombies.
Available on: Amazon Prime Video
28 Days Later (2002)
Country: United Kingdom
Language: English
Director: Danny Boyle
Starring: Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Christopher Eccleston, Megan Burns
Storyline: Four weeks after a mysterious, incurable virus spreads throughout the UK, a handful of survivors try to find sanctuary. It is one of the best zombie movies of all time.
Available on: Apple TV
Re-Animator (1985)
Country: United States
Languages: English, German
Director: Stuart Gordon
Starring: Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, Barbara Crampton, David Gale, Robert Sampson
Storyline: After an odd new medical student arrives on campus, a dedicated local and his girlfriend become involved in bizarre experiments centering around the re-animation of dead tissue.
Available on: Amazon Prime Video, Tubi
Dead Snow (2009)
Country: Norway
Languages: Norwegian, English
Director: Tommy Wirkola
Starring: Vegar Hoel, Stig Frode Henriksen, Charlotte Frogner, Lasse Valdal, Evy Kasseth Røsten
Storyline: The film centers on a group of students surviving a zombie Nazi attack in the mountains of Norway.
Available on: Amazon Prime Video
Cemetery Man (1994)
Countries: Italy, France, Germany
Language: English
Director: Michele Soavi
Starring: Rupert Everett, François Hadji-Lazaro, Anna Falchi
Storyline: A cemetery man must kill the dead a second time when they become zombies.
Available on: Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV
Blood Quantum (2019)
Country: Canada
Languages: English, Mi’kmaq
Director: Jeff Barnaby
Starring: Michael Greyeyes, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, Forrest Goodluck, Kiowa Gordon, Brandon Oakes
Storyline: The dead are coming back to life outside the isolated Mi’kmaq reserve of Red Crow, except for its Indigenous inhabitants who are strangely immune to the zombie plague.
Available on: Amazon Prime Video
Valley of the Dead (2020)
Country: Spain
Language: Spanish
Directors: Javier Ruiz Caldera, Alberto de Toro
Starring: Miki Esparbé, Aura Garrido, Luis Callejo, Álvaro Cervantes, Jesús Carroza
Storyline: During the Spanish Civil War, a small group of sworn enemies must work together when they encounter flesh-eating zombies created in a Nazi experiment.
Available on: Netflix
Little Monsters (2019)
Countries: Australia, United States, United Kingdom
Language: English
Director: Abe Forsythe
Starring: Lupita Nyong’o, Alexander England, Josh Gad, Kat Stewart
Storyline: A washed-up musician teams up with a teacher and a kids’-show personality to protect young children from a sudden outbreak of zombies.
Available on: Hulu
Maggie (2015)
Countries: United States, Switzerland
Language: English
Director: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Abigail Breslin, Joely Richardson
Starring: Henry Hobson
Storyline: A teenage girl in the Midwest becomes infected by an outbreak of a disease that slowly turns the infected into cannibalistic zombies. During her transformation, her loving father stays by her side.
Available on: Amazon Prime Video
Juan of the Dead (2010)
Countries: Spain, Cuba
Languages: Spanish, English
Director: Alejandro Brugués
Starring: Alexis Díaz de Villegas, Eliécer Ramírez, Andros Perrugorría, Jorge Molina Enríquez, Jazz Vilá
Storyline: A group of slackers faces an army of zombies. The Cuban government and media claim the living dead are dissidents revolting against the government.
Available on: Amazon Prime Video
Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead (2014)
Country: Australia
Language: English
Director: Kiah Roache-Turner
Starring: Jay Gallagher, Bianca Bradey, Leon Burchill, Keith Agius, Berynn Schwerdt, Luke McKenzie
Storyline: A talented mechanic prepares to battle his way through hordes of flesh-eating monsters after his sister is kidnapped on the eve of a zombie apocalypse.
Available on: Amazon Prime Video
The Battery (2012)
Country: United States
Language: English
Director: Jeremy Gardner
Starring: Jeremy Gardner, Adam Cronheim, Niels Bolle, Alana O’Brien
Storyline: The personalities of two former baseball players clash as they traverse the rural back roads of a post-plague New England teeming with the undead.
Available on: Amazon Prime Video
Also read this: 44 Best South Korean Horror Movies of All Time to Watch Now!
