So we decided to sort the sharp from the shambling and come up with a list of the greatest zombie flicks ever made. Of course, they’ve also produced a mass grave of schlock. Whatever the reason for its enduring popularity, zombies have exerted a powerful pull on movies for decades now. The concept is malleable enough to serve as allegories for real-world issues from racism to consumerism, and also naturally gory enough that if you simply want to make (or watch) a disgusting splatterfest, well, there’s no better genre. (Okay, it’s technically about a ‘fungal apocalypse’ that turns people into murderous mushrooms, but c’mon: it’s a zombie show at heart.) Ever since 1968’s Night of the Living Dead established the modern template for the zombie movie, the undead have continued to walk among us, with HBO’s The Last of Us being only the most recent example. Perhaps that bit of shared lineage – the knowledge that, no matter how rotted, feral and brain-hungry they become, they’re still humans at heart – explains why zombie mythology persists in popular culture. In fact, they literally are us, just, y’know, a bit slower, in both senses of the term.

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