Halloween movies mean more than just cackling witches, mournful ghosts, and creepy kids who take pleasure in getting stabby on the reg. What would celebrating the spookiness of October be without the blood, brains, and bullets of a good old fashioned zombie movie?! Here are five frightfully fantastic zombie flicks to scare some more fun into your Halloween movie marathons.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Jane Austen’s romantic comedy of manners takes on a stylishly stabby tone in this 2017 action-packed zombie feature. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies takes the famous tea and crumpets costume drama Pride and Prejudice and splatters it liberally with blood and gore. Starring Lily James as Lizzie Bennett and Bella Heathcote, Ellie Bamber, Millie Brady and Suki Waterhouse as her sisters Jane, Lydia, Mary, and Kitty, the early 19th century Bennett bachelorettes command the screen by brandishing daggers, katanas and a veritable arsenal of weapons. Trained in the deadly arts these zombie slaying sibs.
As expertly trained in the deadly arts as they are Lizzie and her sisters also know the ins and outs of fashion, societal etiquette and good manners. As they know how to plunge daggers in and lob the heads off of the grotesque undead corpses crawling across England in the post-apocalyptic Georgian era their mama still stands by her belief that “a single man in possession of good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
One of the most surprising things about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is how much everything makes sense. There are no puzzling and convoluted plot lines and what could’ve degraded into pure camp, instead manages to strike a balance between being darkly funny and true to the essence of the classic novel. Take how the Napoleonic Wars of the original novel are tweaked just so to include a paranormal plague and the resulting invasion of the undead. There’s much respect paid to the source material– nearly all of the dialogue and interactions between the characters are plucked from the novel and thoughtfully woven into the supernatural horror fabric of the film, making this an entertaining hour and a half for even the biggest of Austen fans.
One of the biggest delights about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is Lily James’s performance. Charismatic and compelling, James is exceedingly talented in bringing Lizzie to life, stealing the show in nearly every scene. And, although Sam Riley’s take on the aloof and introverted Mr. Darcy isn’t up to the same caliber as Colin Firth in the 1995 mini series and Matthew Macfadyen in Joe Wright’s 2005 movie a well-rounded James makes the banter between Lizzie and Darcy crackle with wit. Rife with action-packed sequences, impressively solid world building and phenomenal costume design, makeup (hell yes for practical effects!) and Georgian-era set Pride and Prejudice and Zombies design, witty verbal barbs thrown.
Zombieland
In 2009’s Zombieland a socially awkward and self-deprecating college student, known only as Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), joins up with a gun-slinging drifter named Tallahassee (Woody Harrellson), and two scam artist sisters, Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) and Wichita (Emma Stone) on a hell of a road trip. This ragtag band of plague survivors travel throughout the post apocalyptic United States, a barren, zombie infested, mess of a world that Columbus dubs “Zombieland” in search of sanctuary from the ravenous undead (Columbus), one last hurray at Pacific Playland in LA (Little Rock and Wichita), and, in the case of Tallahassee, a goddamn Twinkie!
The zany characters are everything in Zombieland. Packing heat and hilarity in nearly every scene they’re in, the fab foursome has the kind of innate chemistry together than many actors would dream of. Their camaraderie and zingy one-liners are made all the more powerful by Eisenberg’s physical comedy and dead on comic timing. Columbus’s hyper-vigilance and dedication to following his list of rules for survival — Limber up! Cardio! Avoid bathrooms! Always! Wear! A ! Seat! Belt! — make him one of the most lovable disaster dorks in current pop culture.
Along with its stellar larger-than-life characters Zombieland’s action sequences and locations are totally out of this world. Forget shoot outs in abandoned warehouses, grim research labs, or decimated corn fields. Zombieland’s most unlikely final destination is, spoiler alert, an amusement park. Courtesy of a major brain fart on Wichita’s end (hint: next time a zombie apocalypse ravages the entire North American continent, maybeeee don’t turn on glaringly bright ferris wheels, roller coasters, and merry-go-rounds) we get one of the most epic scenes in the entire movie. We witness Tallahassee, already a beast in combat, go ham on the zoms. Gating himself in a plushie filled game booth, the urban cowboy unleashes a rain of bullets on hungry zombies and plushie prizes alike, leaving dozens of zombie bodies and exploded bear plushies in his wake. Grab some friends, a box of Twinkies, and get your game face on ‘cuz this fast-paced, laugh-till-you-cry zom com deserves the highest of places on any Halloween or paranormal movie must-see round up.
Paranorman
The 2012 claymation film Paranorman centers around a young boy named Norman (voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee) who has the uncanny ability to see and speak with ghosts. An ominous message from his recently deceased (and total weirdo) Uncle Prenderghast (voiced by John Goodman) sets Norman on path to the, well, paranormal. It turns out that Blithe Hollow, Massachusetts, Norman’s picturesque New England town is home to a centuries long witch’s curse. A curse that, Uncle Prenderghast warded off every Halloween…until his untimely death. Equipped with a book with the power to subdue the vengeful Blithe Hollow witch (one that he had to pry out of the rigor mortised hands of his dead uncle) only Norman can carry on the protective tradition.
Things turn dire though, when Blithe Hollow is suddenly overrun by witch hunting Puritan zombies. Gathering his best friends (and bratty big sister) Norman sets out to send them back to their graves and save the town in his own haphazard and hilarious way. A PG dark comedy featuring the voice talents of Leslie Mann and Anna Kendrick among other comic actors, Paranorman is exceptionally underrated animated flick.
Laika Studios, the animation team behind 2009’s Coraline — the film adaptation of British author Neil Gaiman’s supernatural horror novella — is known for their peculiar claymation aesthetics, dark humor that occasionally edges towards the macabre, and wacky characters. Paranorman hits all the marks and takes it even further by taking creative risks that bigger animation studios like Disney wouldn’t dare to. No Halloween movie marathon would be complete without this frightfully fun flick!
The Dead Don’t Die
In the 2019 zom-com The Dead Don’t Die takes place in the rural, sleepy town Centerville in Pennsylvania. Chief of Police Cliff (Bill Murray) and his officers Ronnie (Adam Driver) and Mindy (Chloe Sevigny) find themselves dragged into a mass zombie invasion. One that puts them in a real pickle and according to Ronnie’s cynical one-liners “ is all going to end badly”.
With its unabashed peculiarness and refusal to contort itself into the confines of a rigid reality and star powered ensemble which includes the likes of Bill Murray and Tilda Swinton The Dead Don’t Die is reminiscent of a Wes Anderson film. Take Swinton’s Zelda, a Scottish mortician who paints garish makeup on the bodies in her care, wields a katana with lethal skill, and has an encyclopedic knowledge of Centerville and all its inhabitants. Then there’s the curmudgeonly forest-dwelling Hermit Bob and his (on point) doomsday predictions, and Steve Buschemi’s despicable “Make America White Again” baseball-cap wearing resident racist.
The Dead Don’t Die bucks the one-size-fits-all zombie trend– Iggy Pop’s zombie has a hankering for diner coffee, Carol Kane’s disheveled and recently deceased town drunk cries out for Chardonnay, and a horde of zombies closing on the town’s only motel groan and grumble for wifi and free cable. Sure, these zoms nom brains and take a hearty, fleshy, chunk out of their victims, but they’re ultimately more about reclaiming the possessions taken from them in death. There’s something so cheekily meta about zombies shuffling forward in pursuit of iPhones.
A surprisingly effective political and social commentary The Dead Don’t Die addresses the problem with fracking, racism, and the dangers of climate change– specifically, the polar ice caps melting. What other zombie films dabbled in the socio-political landscape while also serving up bloody, gory, supernatural action and plentiful baseball bat decapitations?!
Warm Bodies
Before Nicholas Hoult struck it big in the X-Men reboot, Rebel in the Rye, The Favourite and Tolkien, he lurched across the screen as a red hoodie wearing zombie named R. The 2013 zom rom-com (say that five times fast) Warm Bodies directed by Jonathan Levine takes the boy-meets-girl trope to a new level when boy saves girl from becoming meat when his zombie pals hone in on her in search of a snack. R is no ordinary zombie. He’s not as mindless as the undead around him. And, he doesn’t want to nosh on her brains. He’s actually, well, smitten with the zombie slayer.
What sets Warm Bodies apart from other zombie movies, beyond how zombies are capable of forging bonds with other zombies, is how it’s told from R’s perspective. Instead of vilifying him as a mindless killer, Warm Bodies plays on what’s left of his humanity. Eating the brains of whomever happens to be his unfortunate victim allows him to fully experience the memories of that person and for a few moments, feel alive again. Instead of being a one-dimensionally terrifying creature, R and the rest of Warm Bodies’s zombies are reimagined as more of a tragic figure than anything. They cling to what little humanity they have left while being tormented by their insatiable cravings for flesh.
Warm Bodies also stands a cut above the typical zombie flick with just how much attention to detail was put into creating the appearance of the legions of undead. The artistry and impressive makeup design is no joke. Nearly translucent with bright blue veins bursting throughout their gray pallor, bruise tinged lips and darkly shadowed eyes, Warm Bodies eschews the decaying body look of many zombies, opting instead for a “fresher” corpse look that’s just a little bit Tim Burton. They have a far more distinctive look than say, the grotesque and decomposing Walking Dead variety of zombies and the countless incarnations they spawned.
Had enough of mindlessly ravenous zombies lurching across the screen? With its striking cinematography, alternative perspective and charming characters Warm Bodies is a sweet and surprisingly romantic take on the zombie genre.