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Best Zombie Movies

Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of zombie cinema — measured across 4,444 indexed frames from 58 films, against a 408,752-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.

Zombie films over-index on blood, tactical vest and teeth — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.

  1. 1

    Resident Evil (2002)

    Paul W. S. AndersonDP David JohnsonIMDb 6.6TMDB 6.6See in full on FrameThrower →

    A virus has escaped in a secret facility called "The Hive," turning the staff into hungry zombies and releasing the mutated Lab "Animals" that they were studying. The complex computer shuts down the base to prevent infection. The parent corporation sends in an elite military unit, where they meet Alice, who is suffering from amnesia due to exposure to nerve gas. The military team must shut down the computer and get out, fighting their way past zombies, mutants, and the computer itself, before the virus escapes and infects the rest of the world. Alice must also come to terms with her slowly-returning memories.

  2. 2

    Ghosts of Mars (2001)

    John CarpenterDP Gary B. KibbeIMDb 4.9TMDB 5.2See in full on FrameThrower →

    In 2176, a Martian police unit is sent to pick up a highly dangerous criminal at a remote mining post. Upon arrival, the cops find the post deserted and something far more dangerous than any criminal — the original inhabitants of Mars, hellbent on getting their planet back.

  3. 3

    Train To Busan

    Yeon Sang-hoDP Lee Hyung-deokIMDb 7.6TMDB 7.7See in full on FrameThrower →

    Sok-woo, a father with not much time for his daughter, Soo-ahn, are boarding the KTX, a fast train that shall bring them from Seoul to Busan. But during their journey, the apocalypse begins, and most of the earth's population become flesh craving zombies. While the KTX is shooting towards Busan, the passenger's fight for their families and lives against the zombies - and each other.

  4. 4

    Dawn of the Dead (2004)

    Zack SnyderDP Matthew F. LeonettiIMDb 7.2TMDB 7.0See in full on FrameThrower →

    Ana goes home to her peaceful suburban residence, but she is unpleasantly surprised the morning that follows when her husband is brutally attacked by her zombified neighbor. In the chaos of her once picturesque neighborhood, Ana flees and stumbles upon a police officer named Kenneth, along with more survivors who decide that their best chances of survival would be found in the deserted Crossroads Shopping Mall. When supplies begin running low and other trapped survivors need help, the group comes to the realization that they cannot stay put forever at the Shopping Mall and devise a plan to escape.

  5. 5

    Shaun Of The Dead (2004)

    Edgar WrightDP David M. DunlapIMDb 7.8TMDB 7.5See in full on FrameThrower →

    Shaun (Simon Pegg) doesn't have a very good day, so he decides to turn his life around by getting his ex to take him back, but he times it for right in the middle of what may be a zombie apocalypse. But for him, it's an opportunity to show everyone he knows how useful he is by saving them all. All he has to do is survive, and get his ex back.

  6. 6

    The Beyond (1981)

    Lucio FulciDP Sergio SalvatiIMDb 6.6TMDB 6.9See in full on FrameThrower →

    The cellar of an old hotel is built on top of the door to the beyond. Bloody zombies roam there. A young woman who is heir of the hotel wants to restaurate it. She is confronted with strange events. A painter has a lethal fall, the plumber vanishes and her friend breaks his neck. When she escapes to the hospital of a friendly doctor she doesn't know what a nightmare is waiting there...

  7. 7

    Creepshow 2 (1987)

    Michael GornickDP Tom HurwitzIMDb 6.0TMDB 6.2See in full on FrameThrower →

    "Creepshow 2" is divided into three stories, conducted by a leading segment where a boy that loves the horror comic book Creepshow buys seeds of carnivorous plant and is bullied by four teenagers. Meanwhile the Creep tells the tales of Creepshow: (1) "Old Chief Wood'nhead" - The elders Ray (George Kennedy) and Martha Spruce (Dorothy Lamour) have lived their whole life and raised their family with their small store in an Arizona town. Now the town is economically decadent and Ray gives credit to his customers; including the Indians of Ben Whitemoon's tribe. When Ray is repairing the wooden statue of an old chief in the front door, Ben (Frank Salsedo) arrives and asks him to keep the jewels of his tribe as a guarantee for their debts. However, Ben's nephew Sam (Holt McCallany) unexpectedly arrives with two other punks to steal Ray, and he kills the elders. They expect to travel to Hollywood, but the Old Chief Wood'nhead will not let them go. (2) "The Raft" - The teenagers Deke (Paul Satterfield) and Randy (Daniel Beer) travel with Laverne (Jeremy Green) and Rachel (Page Hannah) to a lake expecting to smoke weed, swim and get laid. They swim to a raft that is floating in the middle of the lake, but they discover a carnivorous blob in the lake that is hungry. (3) "The Hitchhiker" - In Maine, the unfaithful Annie Lansing (Lois Chiles) stays too long having sex with her escort and is late to meet her husband in the airport. She drives her Mercedes Benz in a hurry and loses control on the road. Annie runs over a hitchhiker, but she does not help the man and hit-and-run, questioning whether she can live with the situation. She discovers that the hitchhiker will not leave her.

  8. 8

    Night of the Creeps (1986)

    Fred DekkerDP Robert C. NewIMDb 6.7TMDB 6.7See in full on FrameThrower →

    In 1959, an alien experiment crashes to earth and infects a fraternity member. They freeze the body, but in the modern day, two geeks pledging a fraternity accidentally thaw the corpse, which proceeds to infect the campus with parasites that transform their hosts into killer zombies.

  9. 9

    Planet Terror (2007)

    Robert RodriguezDP Robert RodriguezIMDb 7.0TMDB 6.7See in full on FrameThrower →

    After an experimental bio-nerve gas is accidentally released at a remote U.S. military base in Texas, those exposed to the gas turn into flesh-eating, mutating zombies out to kill. An assortment of various people who include stripper Cherry, her shady mechanic ex-boyfriend Wray, a strong-willed doctor, the local sheriff, and an assortment of various people must join forces to survive the night as the so-called "sickos" threaten to take over the whole town and the world.

  10. 10

    Mayhem (2017)

    Joe LynchDP Steve GainerIMDb 6.4TMDB 6.5See in full on FrameThrower →

    Mayhem tells the story of a virus that infects a corporate law office on the day attorney Derek Cho (Yeun) is framed by a co-worker and wrongfully fired. The infection is capable of making people act out their wildest impulses. Trapped in the quarantined building, our hero is forced to savagely fight tooth and nail for not only his job but his life.

What zombie films are made of

How much more often each element appears in a zombie frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — blood is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.

  • blood4.5×
  • tactical vest4.0×
  • teeth2.7×
  • handgun2.3×
  • skin1.9×
  • asphalt1.7×
  • leather jacket1.7×
  • person1.6×

How zombie films are shot

Weaker signals than the objects above, and worth saying so: most dramatic genres skew dark and night-heavy, so these numbers separate zombie from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.

  • 30%dayvs 42% baseline
  • 33%naturalvs 43% baseline
  • 51%low keyvs 40% baseline
  • 54%nightvs 43% baseline
  • 25%closeupvs 21% baseline

What breaks the pattern

Hotel Transylvania is the least typical film here — it carries the least of what the rest of this list is made of. Which is either a failure of the genre label, or the most interesting film on the page.

Method

Every frame in the FrameThrower catalogue is tagged for shot size, lighting, time of day, camera angle, colour and the objects visible in it. This page aggregates those tags across 4,444 frames from 58 films carrying the zombie label, and compares each figure to the same measurement across the whole catalogue (408,752 frames). Films are ranked by how closely they match the theme’s over-indexed elements, weighted by how distinctive each element is; one film per series. Only films with at least 20 indexed frames and 500 TMDB votes are listed.

Machine-readable: /api/list/zombie

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These are real movie frames, shown at reduced resolution. All rights remain with their respective owners; they appear here for study, commentary and education under fair-use principles. How these are meant to be used