Zombie dramas have always been a unique way to show people what the world would look like without modern amenities, and with The Last of Us set to premiere in 2023, fans of the horror genre are excited to see another unique and fresh take on the topic.
Yet, The Last of Us isn't the first subversive zombie story, though the game series it's based on is certainly one of the best. Fans on Ranker have taken to voting to compile a list of some of the greatest zombie dramas of all time, and each choice perfectly subverts the standard zombie formula.
Note: Ranker lists are live and continue to accrue votes, so some rankings may have changed after this publishing.
The Returned (2012)
Most zombie dramas tend to start from the point of the first infection or at least the first major epidemic of the zombie threat. They like to show the panic, the terror, the initial days of survivors scraping by to get out of cities and into habitable zones. The Returned took a very different approach.
Long after the discovery of the cure to the zombie infection, supplies of the cure began to run low. Now left desperately trying to survive, an infected teacher tries to hold himself together as the virus begins to take hold of him. It's more of a psychological horror than most zombie films, but one which leaves the viewer with a long-lasting impression.
The Cured (2017)
While the vast majority of zombie-driven content focuses on an outbreak in the United States, The Cured is another post-cure story that focuses on the effects on Ireland specifically. The majority of the population has already been cured, but a large percentage aren't exactly affected by the vaccination.
Though The Cured is definitely a zombie movie, it isn't about zombies. Instead, it's about the social response to individuals resistant to the cure. How should they be dealt with? How can they be prevented? What is the most ethical way of helping them? The film asks a lot of questions and answers them incredibly well.
The Girl With All The Gifts (2016)
There's a standard formula to zombie movies that The Girl With All The Gifts deliberately circumvents. The humans escape the zombies, the humans are on the run, the humans try to survive, and they are either killed to reach comparative safety. The zombies are the clear enemy, and the humans need to stop them.
The Girl With All The Gifts instead presents a human-zombie hybrid, who realizes that hybrids like her will be the dominant species of the Earth. Having had that realization, she turns on the humans who intended to dissect her, and she and her fellow hybrids take over the world and make zombies scary again.
Maggie (2015)
Some films have the zombie infection take seconds or minutes. A few involve days of deterioration, while the victim works to put their lives to right. Maggie involves an infection that takes weeks to sink in, leaving victims slowly decaying and growing more and more zombie-like with every day.
While it's a zombie outbreak that would be easy to survive, when the titular character is infected, her father has to decide whether to protect his daughter or turn her over to the authorities for quarantine. It's a tragic film, and every moment just gets more depressing until the ultimate heartbreaking end.
Cargo (2017)
A slow sad journey of a man trying desperately to take his child to safety in a post-apocalyptic world, Cargo sees the death of two-thirds of a single family, while onlookers do their best to aid and protect them along their travels.
The ending of the film is incredibly painful, and the surprisingly star-studded casting means that each traumatic moment screams through the screen. While Martin Freeman tends to be typecast, he broke his mold with Cargo and managed to serve as a family man with a painful ending offering his gratitude to those around him.
28 Weeks Later (2007)
The sequel to 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later does exactly as the title suggests. Picking up 28 weeks after the initial zombie infection, fans were horrified to watch as zombies charged into a safe zone and turned one of humanity's refuges into a veritable slaughter.
The film shows the slow downfall of society, thanks to the reintroduction of the virus (and of asymptomatic carriers). While some aspects of the 28 Days Later sequel didn't make sense, like the asymptomatic Alice being entirely unguarded, the weight of the aesthetics and plot helped to carry the film anyway.
Warm Bodies (2013)
An entirely different type of zombie movie, Warm Bodies showcases the life of an infected zombie falling in love with a human woman. A disguised Romeo and Juliet adaptation, the movie adds comedy to the drama, even as the infected R desperately tries to defend his human love from the other zombies.
The movie twists the typical zombie storyline by eventually allowing R to return to life and shed the virus. Rather than a scientific solution to a supernatural virus, the true solution was love. While it's a somewhat corny ending, the movie is still fun and enjoyable enough that most won't mind.
Pride And Prejudice And Zombies (2016)
Most zombie movies happen to take place in modern times with modern weaponry and modern people. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, however, takes a different approach entirely. Depicting a world with a zombie invasion in the 1800s, the Bennet sisters must survive a harrowing apocalypse.
Often funny and with a thoroughly interesting premise, the film left its mark on viewers who were drawn in by the title as much as the zombies. It's also nice to see a fresh set of characters and weaponry thrown against zombies, given that the genre has grown somewhat stale over the years.
I Am Legend (2007)
The lone survivor in a city of zombie-like vampires, the protagonist of I Am Legend tries to survive in a city with his dog at his side. The story is a slow crawl that turns into an incredibly tragic one as soon as the protagonist's pet is infected with the zombies' virus.
Now utterly alone, after having lost his dog, Neville is left to take on the vampiric zombies after meeting a few more human survivors. From there, Neville truly discovers the way to save the world in one of the most tragic moments in a post-apocalyptic film.
28 Days Later (2002)
Fans often consider 28 Days Later to be one of the best zombie films, solely due to the aesthetic of the franchise. The quiet and lonely London is a haunting sight, and each horrifying foray into the world after the zombie epidemic struck is one that sticks with fans for years.
It's no wonder fans considered it such a fantastic film, especially given that it helped reshape the genre entirely. No longer are zombie dramas about the zombies. Now, it's all about the human reaction to them — and to each other.