Dawn Of The Dead: 5 Reasons It’s The Greatest Zombie Movie Ever Made (& Its 5 Closest Contenders) – Screen Rant

Dawn of the Dead is considered to a bona fide zombie epic, but there are other undead films that could dethrone it.

The zombie genre is one of the most popular subcategories of horror cinema. Swarms of the undead can be used as a metaphor for any number of social issues, while the immense pressure of surviving in a post-apocalyptic wasteland presents the living characters with real challenges that force them to grow as people if theyre written well.

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George A. Romeros zombie-infested masterpiece Dawn of the Dead is arguably the greatest zombie movie ever made, but it faces stiff competition from some of the genres other offerings. There have been plenty of great zombie movies from around the world that have given Dawn of the Dead a run for its money.

With Night of the Living Deads allegory for contemporary racial tensions in the United States, Romero established that an essential component of any zombie movie is a sprinkling of sharp social commentary. In Dawn of the Dead, he tackled the zombie genres ultimate satirical target: consumer culture.

Amidst the blood-soaked carnage of Dawn of the Dead, Romero buried a bitter critique of the end-times terror of living in an increasingly capitalist society.

Danny Boyle denies that 28 Days Later is a zombie movie, but cmon, its a zombie movie. With its gritty visuals, ultrarealistic tone, and visceral editing, 28 Days Later brings a sobering reality to the Hollywood fantasy of a zombie apocalypse.

In response to zombie movies that had made survival in a zombie-infested world look fun or easy, Boyle reminded viewers that it would be utterly terrifying.

Stylistically, Dawn of the Dead has its cake and eats it, too. It doesnt choose between the grindhouse thrills of the midnight movie circuit and the sophisticated edge of so-called elevated horror. Instead, it exhibits both beautifully. It revels in gore, but its also a respectable work of art.

Very few horror movies have managed to pull this off, with almost every horror film falling into one of these two categories, but Romero nailed that balance effortlessly in Dawn of the Dead.

The found footage subgenre of horror cinema can be truly awful if the execution is lazy, but if as much attention is paid to the composition of a found footage movie as any other movie, then it can be a captivating moviegoing experience that puts the audience right in the protagonists shoes.

Such is the case with REC, which revolves around a news crew that gets quarantined in an apartment building being consumed by a zombie virus. The quarantine creates an intense cinematic claustrophobia, while the dawning realization that everyone in the building is being left to die as collateral damage to prevent further contamination is seriously haunting.

Dawn of the Dead is technically a sequel to Night of the Living Dead, although the only connective tissue is the zombie apocalypse; the movies have no characters in common besides the hordes of flesh-eaters. But still, its a perfect sequel to that movie.

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In Night of the Living Dead, we saw this apocalypse from the perspective of a few people stranded out in the countryside, which was certainly terrifying, but in Dawn of the Dead, that fear was amplified by showing the more chaotic response in heavily populated urban areas. James Cameron did a similar thing in another perfect horror sequel, Aliens, replacing the single xenomorph from the first Alien film with a colony of dozens of them.

In a post-Walking Dead world completely desensitized to zombie movies, the best zombie movies are simply the ones that manage to make zombies scary again. Yeon Sang-hos Train to Busan does just that. It takes the sprinting zombies of World War Z and usesa more lenient age rating to make those sprinting zombies feel like a real threat.

Train to Busan has some of the zombie genres signature social commentary, too, as the class divisions of the train graduallybegin to represent the class divisions of society and the viral outbreak is revealed to be a result of corporate greed.

George A. Romero is the godfather of zombie movies. The idea of the undead originated from Haitian slaves, decades before Romero was born, but Romero defined the modern zombie movie with Night of the Living Dead. Since then, zombie stories have generally revolved around a band of survivors struggling amid a widespread apocalypse in which the dead rise from their graves and eat peoples brains.

Every zombie movie is a different take on Romeros (admittedly flexible) formula. So, it makes sense that the official best zombie movie ever, if there was one, would be a Romero film. Every non-Romero zombie film is fundamentally derivative of Romeros work.

The hilariously dry Shaun of the Dead is a comedy, but it works so well as a zombie movie that it could arguably take the top spot. Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg have always been hesitant to call Shaun of the Dead a parody of zombie films, because that implies that theyre making fun of zombie films, when they actually made the movie for the opposite reason: its a love letter to zombie movies.

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By the 2000s, the genre had become inherently self-awareafter hundreds of zombie movies followed Romeros basic outline.Wright and Peggs script takes a lot of affectionate jabs at zombie movies, but it also has characters and situations that feel real. It hits all the familiar beats, but develops enough of its own identity to feel fresh. Its a perfect example of the Romero formula being redone right.

Post-apocalyptic America has been depicted in a ton of different ways across decades of horror cinema, but the definitive portrait can arguably be found in Dawn of the Dead, with the overmilitarized response to the zombie uprising and the salvation found in a shopping mall, a monument to capitalism.

Romeros movie is an incisive satire of the American Dream, turning the countrys optimism on its head in a disturbing gonzo nightmare-scape.

The masters of any genre sci-fis Ridley Scott, the westerns Sergio Leone, comedys Mel Brooks etc. ironically compete with themselves for places on lists of the best movies of that genre. George A. Romero may have perfected the zombie movie with Dawn of the Dead, but he defined it with Night of the Living Dead.

If it hadnt been for all the ground that Romero broke with Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead wouldnt have been able to exist. And Night of the Living Dead is a near-perfect movie in its own right.

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Ben Sherlock is a writer, filmmaker, and comedian. In addition to writing for Screen Rant and CBR, covering a wide range of topics from Spider-Man to Scorsese, Ben directs independent films and takes to the stage with his standup material. He's currently in pre-production on his feature directorial debut (and has been for a while, because filmmaking is expensive). Previously, he wrote for Taste of Cinema and BabbleTop.

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Dawn Of The Dead: 5 Reasons It's The Greatest Zombie Movie Ever Made (& Its 5 Closest Contenders) - Screen Rant

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero