Scariest Zombie Movies

[JonOfTheShred]

What do you feel are the scariest zombie movies ever made? I can't think of any at the moment, so I'll just leave this here for others to chime in.

[Rancid Carcass]

Day of the Dead 2: Contagium - It still sends a shiver down the spine to even think about that one, but for all the wrong reasons!

:eek:

[Neil]

What do you feel are the scariest zombie movies ever made? I can't think of any at the moment, so I'll just leave this here for others to chime in.

Going to be either Dawn or Day IMHO... And this is not just for their shock/terror, but more for their undercurrent or tone that seems to stick in your mind long after you've finished watching them. ie: They give you dreams/nightmares!

[paranoid101]

The Dead creepy as hell

[Mr.G]

As much as Ted Turner gets a bad rap...I watched the original Night on Goodtimes VHS (in living color!) and couldn't sleep for many nights. It still doesn't have the impact but as a kid....it messed me up something fierce!

[ProfessorChaos]

for me, it's either night or day.

night traumatized me as a kid, especially since i lived close to a cemetery. it still has a very creepy vibe to it for me, dunno if it's just because it was the original ghoul film and how awesome it was from start to finish, or if it's just nostalgia. the fact that all main characters die by the end was pretty crazy to me upon my first viewing....with the local militia taking charge of the situation by the end of the film, things almost looked under control, however. but as for that night, it was like hell on earth for those in the farmhouse.

as for day, i didn't catch it till much later in my youth, but that film has some teeth, for sure. such a sense of hopelessness and dread throughout. from the abandoned streets of the city fill with the dead, to the palpable tensions between the scientists and soldiers, the onslaught of ghouls at the end, etc. and the effects, music, etc. just fit that film perfectly.

unfortunately, no films since then have really came close for me as far as lasting impact or sense of dread. the walking dead is about the best thing since then, but since it's more of an ongoing series than a film, it's got a lot more time/budget/etc to work with so it doesn't really count.

[Neil]

as for day, i didn't catch it till much later in my youth, but that film has some teeth, for sure. such a sense of hopelessness and dread throughout. from the abandoned streets of the city fill with the dead, to the palpable tensions between the scientists and soldiers, the onslaught of ghouls at the end, etc. and the effects, music, etc. just fit that film perfectly.

Amen brother!

[shootemindehead]

'Day of the Dead' hands down.

Nothing comes close to it. Nothing at all. It's grim, dirty, depressing and hopeless.

Thank christ Romero didn't have the pennies to make the script he wanted and was forced to pare back, because he managed to deliver the greatest item in his whole catalogue.

The idea of being trapped in that silo when the lift is coming down with all the zombies on it still makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Basically, I agree with the Prof.

[AcesandEights]

I agree with a lot of the above on Day of the Dead. It's a great and engaging horror film for anyone who gives it a chance and holds up when looked at from several different angles. Even some of the things that I used to think were production detriments (such as the soldiers' acting, for example) when I was a younger, I have since realized were quite a boon to the overall feel of the film. Tension, frustration, fear, so many of the psychological and visceral touchstones of horror, only the barest shred of hope, isolation...I could go on and on.

[krakenslayer]

The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue is absolutely the scariest zombie film I've seen. It has the sense of darkness and primal fear that the first Night had, and plays the horror in a similarly modern fashion, yet it manages this whilst also keeping one foot firmly in the old-school "Gothic crypts n' foggy moonlight" camp, and the result is something entirely unique.

It also helps that the types of Lake District and Peak District locations used are very familiar to me from childhood holidays in those areas (and don't look a million miles different to some of the locations I grew up in), and I can distinctly remember being eight years old, sitting in the back seat of the car as it wound its way around those kinds of eerily desolate country roads, passing ramshackle old churches, ancient cemeteries and burial grounds, and scaring myself by imagining the dead rising from their tombs to chase us. Happening upon a horror film many year later that played upon the very same locations with that very same idea, well, as you can imagine, it had quite an effect on me.

The movie just manages to combine the outlandish with the (to me) mundane, in such an unsettling way.

[rongravy]

I can't really give a full movie, because I'm not really scared by any of it like I was when I was a kid.
But...
There are a few scenes that I feel funky watching alone.
1. The scene in Reanimator where the bodies rise from the tables. I went to a cousin's anatomy class when I was 13, and would've shat myself silly if anything had twitched.
2. The first zombie being reanimated in Return of the Living Dead 3. That emaciated guy is one of the best zombies I've ever seen. Not sure I'd do anything more than curl into a ball if that guy was coming at me. I'm pretty sure my shorts would be choked with poo, though.

I will try out a few of these suggestions in the thread. I'd love to see something that could still scare the crap out of me.

[MoonSylver]

Yeah, no zombie movies really SCARE me any more like when I was younger, but there are some that did that still hold moments of dread & creepyness that are effective. Night, Dawn & Day for sure. Fulci's "Zombie" (Zombi 2, Zombie Flesh Eaters) still has some great moments to it. (Same w/ The Beyond & Gates of Hell. While on Italian ones, Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror has some effective creepy scenes as well. The Spanish Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, as Krackers mentions, fits in here well also.)

The Dead, as mentioned, is one of the best of modern times. The end of of the BBC miniseries Dead Set was pretty edge-of-your-seat stuff for me.

Childern Shouldn't Play With Dead Things also as some good creepy stuff for an older flick.

[REC] would be an appropriate one to mention here as well.

That's all I can think of off the top o' me head for the moment. Have to check de collection to see if there are more. Got burned out on zed flicks for awhile & haven't watched them in a long time.

[El Horror]

1 Day of the dead 1985
2 Lucio Fulci's Zombi 1979
3 Return of the living dead 1985
4 Night of the living dead Remake 1990
5 Dawn of the dead 1978

[shootemindehead]

[REC] would be an appropriate one to mention here as well.

Aye, good call Moon.

The ending of 'REC' was some of the creepiest minutes put into a recent horror film. That night vision thing with that creepy bitch knocking around in the background was well done.

[Wyldwraith]

1) Dawn and Day, pretty much a straight tie for grim onslaught and being the ultimate siege models. Eclipsing even Night. (Each gets 4.5 out of 5 skulls for horror, atmosphere and overall impact)

2) The Night remake. I don't know what it is about that film..maybe the color, maybe the far superior zombie appearances/makeup...but I do know that having a Barbara who was the tough, quiet survivor and observer throughout the carnage made it even sadder and more horrifying to me. Sure, the first time you see the house breach in the Original Night has epic punch. Yet Barbara WALKING away from the house, and NUDGING zombies out of her way with the barrel of her revolver while weeping.....It was the first example of a "Not Everyone Dies" zombie movie model that still had a major emotional effect on me. IMO, The Night remake is hands down the best retelling of a great original movie I've ever seen. (4 out of 5 skulls, sadly not because of its quality, but because by definition a remake, however well-done, has lost at least a LITTLE of the original's dread and emotional impact, simple because you've seen it before.

3) The Dead. I JUST got finished watching this on SyFy (which out of respect cut the commercials by at least 2/3), and let me tell you. I THOUGHT I was beyond the tense, heavy ball-in-the-gut anxiousness and general FEAR the ABSOLUTELY PERFECT SHAMBLERS of this movie evoked in me. Add to that the African environment being an AWESOME atmosphere for a slow-zombie film, if for nothing else the amazing use of that environment in keeping the pressure on and the anxiety wired tight to your brainstem. I actually SHIVERED when Daniel yelled to have the lights turned on, and when they were it was like WHAM, there they all are and you two are five seconds reaction time from being hopelessly mobbed. This scene was heightened for me by their earlier argument over using the water to get the truck running because the dead were all over the place there as well...that time Brian was right and Daniel was wrong. However, come nightfall and the truck wreck, Daniel was right and Brian damned near got them massacred with his "The lights will draw them in" thinking...when the lights going on made it obvious the horde was WELL AWARE of PRECISELY where they were. The back and forth here got to me...as did the rock climbing to get away from the zombies in the Devil's Claw...and the camp with the string-can-rock alarm and all. (5 out of 5 Skulls. This movie may actually give me nightmares.)

[AcesandEights]

^^ What Wyld listed above! I mean, seriously, those are, to my mind anyway, all classic, scary-as-hell zombie movies. And yes, The Dead is a classic...an instant classic! :D

[Trin]

night traumatized me as a kid ... the fact that all main characters die by the end was pretty crazy to me upon my first viewing...
Geez man, Spoiler Tags! I haven't seen it yet!
(hahahah - j/k)


as for day, i didn't catch it till much later in my youth, but that film has some teeth, for sure. such a sense of hopelessness and dread throughout. from the abandoned streets of the city fill with the dead, to the palpable tensions between the scientists and soldiers, the onslaught of ghouls at the end, etc. and the effects, music, etc. just fit that film perfectly.
Right on!


'Day of the Dead' hands down.

Nothing comes close to it. Nothing at all. It's grim, dirty, depressing and hopeless.

Thank christ Romero didn't have the pennies to make the script he wanted and was forced to pare back, because he managed to deliver the greatest item in his whole catalogue.

The idea of being trapped in that silo when the lift is coming down with all the zombies on it still makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Basically, I agree with the Prof.
I agree with Prof and ShootMe... Day wins, hands down. It captures the stress, dread, and hopelessness of it all.

There are still sections I cringe to watch. Like when they get put in the zombie pen with no weapons? I usually turn off the movie at that point because it leaves me feeling so unsettled.

And of course no thread about scary zombie movies would be complete without mentioning 28 Days/Weeks Later.
(grabs some popcorn and waits for the zombie vs. infected flame war)

[Wyldwraith]

If we're going for One Zombie Movie to Scare Them All:
For me it's gotta be original Dawn, or The Dead. Day is cool and all, but I actually ended up feeling that the meltdown of Rhodes and insanity of Miguel ended up dominating the plot so thoroughly that by that point the zombies almost seemed beside the point. By that I mean I could have just as easily accepted Rhodes going on a shooting spree, while a deranged Miguel ran around with a gas can splashing gasoline everywhere and then torched the place to kill them all in the blaze.

The breakdowns of Rhodes and Miguel's dive into insanity became forces unto themselves, that while related to the zombie apocalypse so far as fueling their aberrant behavior(s), IMO ended up making the zombies in the end little more than self-guided murder weapons unleashed by the Psycho and the Madman. Don't get me wrong, the elevator scene and the scientists forced running of the zombie gauntlet in the mine-tunnels....or the initial scene of the street filling with zombies when the female scientist calls out using the bullhorn are prime zombie horror...It's just that, in this case, and for me at least the human on human conflict pretty much eclipsed the reality of the zombie apocalypse for me.

Just my .02

[Neil]

^^ I agree! As I've said before, the original Dawn or Day for me too!

[Buzzbomb]

I thought the original Night was the scariest... I had to watch it in bits the first time I saw it & the ending was/is awesome. Dawn / Day and Zombie Flesh Eaters were all close seconds. (That scene with in Zombie Flesh Eaters with the Doctors Wife still make me wince every time I see it...)

More recently, I've enjoyed Dead Set and The Horde a great deal (not to mention the infected 28 days/weeks), but can't see what's so good about The Dead. I guess I've got to empathise with the characters to some extent, even if they are scumbags (as in The Horde), and I thought the acting in The Dead was pretty dire. Towards the end I was cheering on the Zombies...

On the Horror Comedy front - Black Sheep / Juan of The Dead & would get my vote... Scary but funny. Cockneys vs Zombies also has a magnificent 'How to be a Zombie" featurette which was dead funny (sic)...

And another thing - in The Dead - their zombies walk slow but are perfectly co-ordinated rather than dragging/lurching/stumbling toward their next meal - they're just too well poised. I also miss GAR's underlying social comments in most Zombie fare - and there's a shit load of stuff that could be done with the rich nations interference of Africa, that The Dead really could have sunk it's teeth into....

At least the Zombies were slow though!

[ICF_Hooligan]

Day... complete helplessness