by Tim Baker

Created on: August 12, 2011   Last Updated: August 17, 2011

1932’s “White Zombie”, directed by Victor Halperin, gave birth to one of the most popular of sub-genres in horror movies; zombies. Reanimated corpses rising from their graves either from some kind of black magic or scientific experiment gone wrong has a top spot among horror movie denizens. The zombie reached this high position in great part because of George A. Romero’s classic, “Night of the Living Dead”, which had a group of people holed up in a farmhouse and trying to stay alive through the night after a zombie outbreak. This black and white film broke many boundaries on what was shown in films of that day and brought an unprecedented amount of popularity to the genre. Today, the movie market is flooded with bad zombie movies that are just gore and bad acting. They have no atmosphere, no feel of real danger and most of the characters are so annoying you are hoping that the zombie horde rips them apart the first time they get a chance. This is a sad truth because of how much potential a zombie movie has for producing a truly phenomenal horror movie. Zombie movies are in essence, monster movies, but in these monster movies the monster is your next-door neighbor, the garbage man or even a little girl. So let’s talk about three things that make a good zombie film.

First, a good zombie film will put an emphasis on the character’s struggle with the morality of killing the zombies. The characters are being forced to defend themselves against crowds of people whom they have no problem with, people who have never done anything to them. This is a theme covered a lot in war movies, the protagonist or one of his acquaintances struggles with the fact that he is killing other people who have families back home. Normally the answer is just the simple truth that it is kill or be killed, which is the same in a zombie movie except it’s kill or be eaten. Then the movie can introduce a zombie that the character knows personally, ranging from a love interest to a family member. People might be willing to kill a complete stranger if they are faced with their own death, but how will someone react if they are in that same situation with the risen body of a loved one. These moral dilemmas are a great source of drama for a zombie movie to use towards creating a compelling experience.

Second, a good zombie movie will have a situation where a situation goes from seemingly harmless to deadly in a short period of time. This works

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