Zombie fans everywhere have been waiting on a World War Z movie, and yet the project seems to hit problem after problem. The adaptation of the book, which is a realistic account of a zombie war, is unfortunately still in the writing phase, and needs revision after revision. Marc Forester (Quantum of Solace) was the man pegged to direct the project, but because of its endless rewrites, he passed World War Z up for Disconnect, a total chick flick about love over the Internet or some crap. He took that over (fake) real-life accounts of zombie attacks! What is the matter, guys, get it together! According to Dark Horizons, Forester hasn’t totally abandoned the script; rather, he has put it on hold until the scriptwriters get their act together. Hurry up, boys, we need our zombies! Until then, I guess we’ll just have to quench our zombie lust with these classic movie tales of the undead.

28 Days Later

Fast-moving zombies scare the piss out of us. Normally, the only defense you have against the walking dead is that they are slow, mindless shamblers that can be mowed down with automatic firearms. But put together zombies, speed, and rage, and you have a definite recipe for apocalypse. You don’t take these guys out with a chainsaw. Nope, you see them, you run, and you hope to God that not even a speck of their blood got inside you.

Resident Evil

Resident Evil is kind of iffy on the zombie territory. OK, you know how 28 Days Later wasn’t really about the walking dead, it was just about a disease that made you mindless. Well, Resident Evil is about the walking dead … sort of. It’s just that they are walking because of a virus, or a parasite, or something. The games have since strayed off the beaten zombie path into more … ahem … racial territory, but the movies seemed to always keep it real with walking corpses. Resident Evil was also the first series to really popularize the idea of “zombie mutants,” more powerful zombies that could kill you in a heartbeat even though their organs are on the outside. Gross.

Shaun of the Dead

It might be a comedy, but Shaun of the Dead showcases how normal people would probably handle a classic George Romero–style zombie outbreak. They are slow, they are dumb, and you can hit them in the head with anything you have around, such as cricket bats, toasters, and LPs (hell of a waste of good records, though.) In conventional zombie movies, the protagonists always seem to find a way to get loads of firearms, but all that Shaun has is his homemade melee weapons and an old rifle that he isn’t even sure works. Hope to God and buckle down, Shaun; it’s all you or any of us could do. (Well, not us at 30 Ninjas, actually; we have katanas and semi-automatics.)

Dawn of the Dead

This movie taught us why a mall is both a good and bad place to hold off the zombie invasion. Tons of resources, plenty of weapons, several good ways to construct a fort, and way too many wide open spaces, oof. Max Brooks, the writer of World War Z, disagrees with the Dawn of the Dead cast, believing that buildings with heavily armored fire doors, like schools with roof access, are better holdouts. Though Dawn of the Dead might not be strategically sound, it was an awesome movie, and the remake was way better than the original.

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