What Twilight has done to resurrect the popularity of vampires, the hit TV series The Walking Dead is doing for zombies. A post-apocalyptic world where the dead have risen to hunt and devour the living is hip again. Zombies have come a long way since Bela Lugosi’s 1932 White Zombie and the clumsy, shuffling creatures first created by the “Godfather of all Zombies,” George A. Romero. The slow, “you couldn’t even catch my grandma” monsters have been replaced by lightning-quick, dead guys on speed. Could it be the hormones in meat? GM frankenfoods? Call it the rise of the modern zombie.
The definition of zombies has also expanded to incorporate unfortunate victims of viruses turning into vicious, raging killers. In the past, a movie zombie was usually a corpse coming back to life for whatever reason. The rules are flexible for vampires, and so they should be for zombies, despite what purists may think. But unlike vampires, these films are about the human survivors, not the monsters, who, let’s face it, are never going to develop personalities or invoke our sympathy. There may also be some loose metaphors about the state of humanity thrown in, the brainless consumerism of “mall zombies” for example. That said, here are the top 10 zombie movies.
