Dawn of the Dead (2004)

I've yet to see a bad zombie movie. The formula works every time, no matter how *ahem* brainlessly executed. The same is not true of our other classic movie monsters. I find vampires to be tedious unless German or lesbian...or hunted by Corey Feldman. Werewolves stopped being fun once prosthetics were replaced by CGI. But the steadfast zombie endures.

I propose that the zombie flick is a boy's equivalent to the romantic comedy. As long as there is a Meet Cute, a series of screwy mishaps and a happy reunion, the sugar and spice inside your date will be somehow affirmed. Likewise, as long as society is upturned by a hungry horde of mindless living dead, survivors band together with improvised weapons and the body count is high, my snips and snails rejoice.

The 2004 remake of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978) meets the minimum requirements, plus such added bonuses as a Johnny Cash theme song, gratuitous celebrity-lookalike-zombie sniping, and a zombie baby. One of my favorite aspects of the zombie movie is the way human bodies tend to come apart as easily as chicken wings. Like when that guy gets quartered in Planet Terror. Always funny.


Addendum: I refer exclusively to the modern zombie apocalypse movie, of course. Zombie movies predating the original Night of the Living Dead (1968) are to be considered a separate breed, dealing primarily with Haitian voodoo and featuring a small number of obedient "zombi" servants. The very first is Bela Lugosi's White Zombie (1932), the best is Val Lewton's I Walked with a Zombie (1943), and the most spectacularly bad is Ed Wood's Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959).