Friday Top Five - Zombie Movies!

Last week, I counted down my Top Five Superhero Movies in honor of the very bland and disappointing (read: BAD) Man of Steel. This week, in honor of World War Z (which I'm super psyched about and hope it doesn't disappoint me), I'm counting down my Top Five Zombie Movies.

5. Planet Terror (2007, Robert Rodriguez)
Planet Terror was the first half of 2007's badass awesome Grindhouse (the second half was Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof, also great, in a different way). Technically, it is a zombie movie but I forgive you for forgetting that. You may have been distracted by Marley Shelton's needle wheeling nurse. Or Freddie Rodriguez's bad ass, kick ass character. Or, more likely, Rose McGowan's stripper turned one legged victim turned hero with a machine gun leg. Planet Terror is over the top, for sure, but all Rodriguez movies are and that's what makes them so damn fun.

4. Dawn of the Dead (2004, Zack Snyder)
I'm no fan of Zack Snyder's. To me, he is too manic, too style over substance, too visual without regard for plot. His other movies (including Watchmen, 300, Sucker Punch and last week's hot mess Man of Steel) have all disappointed me or angered me in various ways. But his remake of Dawn of the Dead is the best thing he's ever done. He manages to capture the intensity of a zombie attack and still make us care about these character stuck inside a mall fighting for their lives. It's the first time his style worked perfectly with the movie he was trying to make and Dawn of the Dead manages to be even better than the original, which doesn't happen very often. Perhaps it's that whole sequence with the pregnant lady turned zombie giving birth to a zombie baby that has something to do with it.

3. Zombieland (2009, Ruben Fleischer)
Zombieland proved you can make a funny zombie movie successfully (although I hear Amazon's attempt at making a TV version of this movie failed miserably). Perhaps it was the absolute perfect cast: ultimate badass Woody Harrelson paired with two of the hottest up and comers at the time: Emma Stone and Jesse Eisenberg. Or maybe it was the pitch perfect script that managed to mix laughs and wit with seering action and great zombie kills. Or it also could have been that extended Bill Murray cameo which would probably top the list if I made a best cameo Top Five list.

2. 28 Days Later (2002, Danny Boyle)
The Walking Dead sort of ripped off the beginning of this film: Cillian Murphy's character awakes in a hospital, seemingly alone, unaware that the end of the world has taken place while he lay inside. It's a great premise and Boyle at his absolute finest nails the empathy and emptiness of this post-zombie attack scene. I haven't seen this movie in quite a few years and it's not as fresh in my memory as I would like, but just making this list makes me want to Netflix it and relive how I felt while watching it the first time- which was utterly devastated. Plus, you can't top that heartbreaking ending.

1. Night of the Living Dead (1968, George Romero)
You just can't top the classic. Without Romero's quintessential iconic zombie movie, we would never have had any of these other zombie movies. As far as movie making is concerned, Romero invented zombies. He certainly changed the landscapes of horror movies in particular, and movies in general, when he released his black and white opus, with (GASP!) a black man as THE hero! That, along with just about everything else Romero did in this film, was utterly unheard of in 1968. This man is an icon of horror film for a reason.