The 35 Best Zombie Movies That Will Have You Crawling Out of Your Skin

Cause this is Thriller… Thriller Night. Welcome to the land of zombies, the creatures who have the pleasure in defining the horror genre. Love them or hate them, no horror movie is complete without them, and seeing as though zombie films have been a part of entertainment culture since practically the beginning of the filmmaking era, along with the success of shows like The Last of Us, it’s only right that we take a look at the best zombie movies of all time. As with any all time ranking, there’s no possible way to include every single film ever made, but we’re going to give it a solid shot with our list of 35. Hopefully in the process of reading this, you’ll be tempted to check out some of the films you have never seen before as well. 

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Now what exactly makes a zombie film great, or an “all timer” to say the least? For us, the setting and the believability of the storyline are factors. Does the movie genuinely make you feel as though zombies are actually imposing into your town, city, neighborhood, and that they are legitimately causing danger? If not, it’s not a good zombie movie. Does the movie make you get scared or creeped out? If not, it’s not a good zombie movie. By now you should get the point, so kick back, relax, and enjoy the list.

• Director - Ken Wiederhorn
• Stars - Peter Crushing, John Carradine, Brooke Adams

We gotta start with the old school first. If you haven’t seen Shock Waves, then it’s definitely worth checking out as it is a classic film about an old Nazi (Crushing), who’s sunken battalion rises from the sea as a group of death corp begoggled zombies causing widespread terror.

• Director - Marc Forster
• Stars - Brad Pitt, Mirelle Enos, Matthew Fox

There’s only two options here for World War Z—you either liked the movie, or you absolutely positively hated it. If you are in the latter, then just go on ahead and skip to the next movie on our list. If you are in the former, then stay here for a second because this movie still holds the record as being the most commercially successful and highest-grossing zombie film of all time, grossing over $540 million. Men lie, women lie, but numbers don’t, which is why this chaotic film about a lethal virus being spread from a mysterious bite did so well.

• Director - Zack Snyder
• Stars - Dave Bautista, Ella Purnell

While some might argue that Army of the Dead is too new of a film to potentially be included on an all time greatest list, but we beg to differ. Focusing on a zombie outbreak in Viva Las Vegas, a group of mercenaries are tasked with venturing into the quarantine zone to pull off the impossible.

• Director - Pupi Ava
• Stars - Gabriele Lavia, Paola Tanziani, Maria Teresa Tofano

Released in 1983, Zeder centers around the story of a young journalist named Stefano (Lavia) who upon buying a used typewriter, discovers readable text from a 1950s scientist who theorized that certain terrain holds the ability to revive the dead buried within them. Refusing to let it go, Stefano continues his investigation, which brings him into contact with renegade scientists who have the ability to perform experiments with the corpses.

• Director - Tommy Wirkola
• Stars - Vegar Hoel, Stig Frode Henriksen, Orjan Gamst

When a group of eight Norwegian medical students travel to a remote Arctic mountain for what they think is going to be a relaxing Easter weekend on the ski slopes, they soon discover it is going to be anything but as one of the members of their group goes missing. After crossing paths with a mysterious local resident who tells them that in the final days of World War II, soldiers would disappear and turn into zombie corpses, the group realizes they have a situation on their hands.

• Director - George A. Romero
• Stars - Lori Cardille, Joseph Pilato

Released in 1985, Day of the Dead is about a small team of scientists, civilians, and soldiers locked in a battle to ensure the survival of the human race, and along the way have to deal with tension inside the base, while the zombies are gathering on the outside. 

• Director - Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
• Stars - Jeremy Renner, Imogen Poots, Robert Carlyle

The official sequel to 28 Days Later, this follow-up is set after the events of the first film depicting the efforts of NATO military forces to salvage a safe zone in London, which in turn causes two young siblings who break protocol in the effort to find a photograph of their mother. In doing so, they accidentally unleash the Rage Virus into the safe zone, and all hell breaks loose.

• Director - Drew Goddard
• Stars - Kirsten Connolly, Chris Hemsworth, Jesse Williams

When five college friends decide to vacation at a remote forest cabin, they soon find out that they are about to be victims as they fall one by one to backwoods zombies. But that’s not all, there’s also two evil scientists that are manipulating the ghouls and goblins of the woods, causing the death toll to rise even more.

• Director - Jacques Tourneur
• Stars - Christine Gordon, Frances Dee, Tom Conway

When a Canadian Nurse (Dee) is hired to care for a woman named Jessica Holland (Gordon) who lives in the Caribbean and suffers from a bizarre unheard of health condition, she attempts to find the answers. Now here’s where things get a little bit tricky. The only reason why the nurse is willing to find the answers is because she’s in love with Jessica’s husband (weird we know). So in the midst of searching for a cure, she gets sucked into the Island’s zombie and voodoo culture, leading her to uncover some strange family secrets.

• Director - Edward L. Cahn
• Stars - Autumn Russell, Allison Hayes, Gregg Palmer

Sometimes these older films tend to get overlooked because they don’t have the technological elements that newer films do. That said, the storytelling element unfortunately gets overlooked because of that, and the classics aren’t given their just due. Zombies of Mora Tau is a neat little film about a fortune hunter (Palmer) leading a search for diamonds guarded by undead sailors off the coast of Africa, and is met by zombies along the way.

• Director - Abe Forsythe
• Stars - Lupita Nyong’o, Alexander England, Josh Gad

Starring Lupita Nyong’o, Little Monsters is the story of a teacher, a struggling musician, and a kid’s show television personality who join forces to protect children during an unexpected zombie invasion. The film received positive reviews from critics, and was a favorite amongst movie lovers the year it was released, so it’s definitely worth checking out if you haven’t seen it already.

• Director - Wes Craven
• Stars - Wes Craven, Bill Pullman, Cathy Tyson

Based on the book of the same name, The Serpent and the Rainbow is about an anthropologist named Dennis Alan (Bill Pullman) who travels to Haiti ​​to study a Voodoo drug used in religious practices that transforms victims into zombies. Working with a witch doctor (Jennings), and fellow researcher (Tyson), Dennis works to put together the pieces of this disturbing puzzle.

• Director - Sam Raimi
• Stars - Bruce Campbell, Ted Raimi, Dan Hicks

Part two of the three films in the Evil Dead series, Ash Williams once again finds himself battling horrifying demons at a secluded cabin in the woods. Upon encountering an audio tape by a college professor that contains voices reading from the Book of the Dead, Ash’s girlfriend (Denise Bixler) becomes possessed, and in turn Ash realizes that escaping the woods is impossible.

• Director - Sam Raimi
• Stars - Bruce Campbell, Ivan Raimi, Embeth Davidtz

Some might rank Evil Dead II over Army of Darkness, but nonetheless the third movie of this series is a good ending to the trilogy as Ash goes back to the medieval times where he is captured by the feared Lord Arthur. Becoming friends with a deadly chainsaw, Ash is sent on a mission to recover the Book of the Dead, a powerful tome that gives its owner the power to summon an army of ghouls.

• Director - Tom Savini
• Stars - Patricia Tallman, Tony Todd, Tom Towles

A remake of the 1968 film of the same name, recently deceased are rising from the grave as flesh-hungry zombies, and a small group of survivors forced to sequester themselves inside a farmhouse as they try to figure out a way to escape the growing zombie situation outside alive.

• Director - Yeon Sang-ho
• Stars - Gong Yoo, Dong-seok Ma, Yu-mi JeongTrain

Centering around a zombie outbreak in South Korea, Train to Busan focuses on a gentleman (Gong Yoo), his estranged daughter, and numerous others who become trapped on a speeding train during a zombie outbreak. Yikes.

• Director - Jeff Barnaby
• Stars - K. Devery Jacobs, Kiowa Gordon, Natalie Liconti

What do you do when the dead come back to life, and almost all of the Earth’s population is decimated due to a zombie virus. Well, you try to figure out what's working amongst the small percentage of survivors that are immune, and along with that you do what you can to take the zombies out of business.

• Director - Zack Snyder
• Stars - Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames

When a woman named Ana encounters her husband being attacked by a neighbor who’s turned into a zombie, she runs out of the house only to realize her entire Milwaukee neighborhood has been overtaken by the walking dead. Joining a group that relocates to a shopping mall for safety, they band together to fight the undead hordes.

• Director - Zack Snyder
• Stars - Nicholas Hoult, Teresa Palmer, Lio Tipton, Rob Corddry

Zack Snyder sure does love him a horror film does he? So this is the deal with Warm Bodies, there is a terrible plague that has left the planet’s population divided between zombies and humans. An unusual zombie named R (Hoult) sees his walking-dead brethren attacking a living woman named Julie (Palmer) and proceeds to rescue her. From there they develop a slightly strange relationship, and as they are developing their bond, the world is kinda self-destructing behind them per usual.

• Director - Colm McCarthy
• Stars - Gemma Artertron, Paddy Considine

Released in 2016, The Girl with all the Gifts is about a girl that is one of several children immune to a mutated fungal disease that has eradicated free will and turned the rest of humanity into cannibalistic zombies. However, this girl isn’t like the other six, she’s especially gifted, and uses her gifts to escape the safety of a special school and helps guide mankind's survival.

• Director - Kiah Roache-Turner
• Stars - Bianca Bradley, Jay Gallagher

Wyrmwood chronicles the survivor of a zombie plague, who is prepared to do anything possible to rescue his kidnapped sister. Of course this means battling sinister soldiers and monsters, but no big deal right?

• Director - Jim Jarmusch
• Stars - Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Steve Buscemi

The dead don’t die….or do they? Released in 2019, The Dead Don’t Die features an ensemble cast who lives in the small town of Centerville. It doesn’t take long for its residents to realize something is off as the moon is hanging a little different, and the animals are beginning to act strangely. What is this sign of? None other than Zombies and the dead rising of course.

• Director - Ruben Fleischer
• Stars - Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin
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While slightly on the funnier side compared to the other movies listed, Zombieland is still quite scary, as it focuses on the world’s surviving humans locked in an ongoing battle against the hungry undead after a virus turns the majority of the world into zombies. The four survivors make up a list of survival rules and zombie-killing strategies as they make their way around Los Angeles.

• Director - Victor Halperin
• Stars - Bela Lugosi, Madge Bellamy

Murder Legendre is the menacingly named zombie master of Haiti, and Charles Beaumont is the man that comes to him with a plan. Scorned in a failed marriage to Madeline Short, Beaumont has decided on a simple solution: kill Short and bring her back as a zombie. Then he can be with her forever. If he can’t have her, no one can. 

• Director - Franco Delli Colli
• Stars - Vincent Price, Franca Bettoia, Giacomo Rossi Stuart

Dr. Robert Morgan (Price) is the last man standing of a plague that has spread across the world. In the meantime, Dr. Morgan thinks that the entire population of Earth is dead, but he comes to realize that they actually aren’t…

• Director - Franco Delli Colli
• Stars - Kelli Maroney, Catherine Mary Stewart, Robert Beltran

Teen sisters Regina (Stewart) and Samantha (Maroney) discover that they’re one of the few survivors of a zombie attack. Together they partner with another survivor Hector (Beltran) in the attempt to avoid the zombies, but unfortunately they are also being targeted by scientists who want to experiment with their bodies, so now they have to run from both.

• Director - Lucio Fulci
• Stars - Ian McCulloch, Richard Johnson, Tisa Farrow

Released in 1979, Zombie Flesh Eaters is about a New York reporter (McCulloch) who follows a young woman (Farrow) to an island where a doctor (Johnson) is kinda sorta struggling with a zombie epidemic. So now they’ve kinda sorta got to help him ya know?

• Director - Stuart Gordon
• Stars - Jeffery Combs, Bruce Abbott, Barbara Crampton

Loosely based on 1922 H. P. Lovecraft serial novelette Herbert West–Reanimator, this film is a classic horror tale about a young scientist named Herbert West (Combs) and his girlfriend (Crampton) becoming involved in a series of bizarre experiments centering around the reanimation of dead tissue, which sounds a tad bit peculiar to say the least.

• Director - Yolanda Ramke, Ben Howling
• Stars - Martin Freeman, Simone Landers, Finlay Sjoberg

Any movie that has an illustration with a singular hand in it, is bound to be a bit creepy. Centered around an infected father stranded in rural Australia in the aftermath of a violent pandemic, Cargo is about the desperate search for a new home and protection.

• Director -  Paco Plaza, Jaume Balagueró
• Stars - Manuela Velasco, Pablo Rosso

When late night television host Angela (Velasco) and her cinematographer are following the fire service on a call to an apartment building they find that Spanish police have sealed off the building after an old woman is infected by a virus which gives her inhuman strength.

Year: 1973

• Director -  George A. Romero
• Stars - George A. Romero, Harold Wayne, Lane Carroll

When a military plane crashes near a small town it infects the water supply with a deadly virus that causes insanity then death, and as you can imagine, the result is pure chaos.

• Director -  Sam Raimi
• Stars - Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, Richard DeManincor

Ah! The one that got the entire series going. You might as well see how Ash got tangled up in this non-stop zombie web that never seems to end right? You won’t be disappointed. Trust us on this.

• Director -  Lucio Fulci
• Stars - Lucio Fulci, Catriona MacColl, David Warbeck

When a young woman inherits a hotel, she finds that it sits atop a gateway to Hell and all manner of creatures lurk in the darkness. What happens next? You have to watch to find out.

• Director -  George A. Romero
• Stars - David Emge, Tom Savini, Ken Foree

It’s the 1978 version of Dawn of the Dead! Come on! Who wouldn’t want to watch a hoard of zombies swarm the U.S. while terrifying everybody as they try to escape?

• Director - Paul W.S. Anderson
• Stars - Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez, Eric Mabius

Okay putting Resident Evil is very millennial of us we have to admit. That said you can deny the series power as it's still going strong. 2002 was the year that kicked everything off, as it was an adaptation of the video game where the leaders of the commando team (Jovovich & Rodriguez) are tasked with breaking into “the hive,” the place where a deadly virus has been unleashed. And well, you know the rest.

If you walked away with some more movies to add to your list, then that means we did our job. Make sure to stay tuned for entertainment content and updates.