All of Us Are Dead hit Netflix in 2022. The new zombie series subverted many zombie tropes, creating something fresh in a genre that oftentimes feels worn and tired. Not only did the show take more the form of a coming of age story than a zombie apocalypse, but it also showed that the zombies were not always the bad guys, and in some cases, could be saved.
While it was nice to see something new and fresh in the zombie genre, there have been several movies over the years that have done the same thing. The zombie genre, as invented by George Romero with Night of the Living Dead created a set of rules and tropes that most movies followed. However, when movies subvert these tropes, magic can happen.
Uncontrollable Zombies - Fido (2007)
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The main trope when it comes to zombies is that after a person dies, their brains shut down. They are uncontrollable and only have one thing in mind and that is a thirst for human flesh. However, it is when a zombie movie makes them less than animalistic that it changes everything.
This happened in Fido. In this Canadian zombie movie, the apocalypse finally ended, and a company created collars that people could use to control the zombies. They became subservient to the living, but everything changed when one had a collar malfunction. However, with the zombies living in servitude, the movie was completely fresh.
Mindless Zombies - Army Of The Dead (2021)
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Just as the zombies were uncontrollable, they also lived in a state of constant aggression. While they have a thirst for flesh, the zombies also have mindless aggression that causes them to attack anything and everything that is still alive. They do this in a way that seems like mindless attacks.
However, things changed with them in Army of the Dead. The zombies in this movie subverted this trope by living in a type of hive mind. What really turned it on its head was that they followed the lead of a king zombie, one that still had the capability to plan out attacks, which made these zombies scarier than ever.
The Dead Zombies - 28 Days Later (2003)
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Ever since Night of the Living Dead, the main trope for regular zombies was that they were regular people who died and came back as the living dead. The first zombie movie took place outside a cemetery, and soon the movies showed people dying and instantly reviving.
28 Days Later subverted that trope by making their zombies infected people who were not dead yet instead of corpses. This has happened in the past with various horror movies, but it ended up as one of the most successful of its type.
Zombies Only Want To Eat - Dead Snow (2009)
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Zombies in the movies want nothing more than to feast on living people. The joke in some movies was that the zombies just want brains, however, it isn't brains that they want, it is just to eat human flesh.
That turned out to not be true in the zombie horror movie Dead Snow. Instead of flesh or brains, these Nazi soldiers returned from the dead as zombies who were looking for stolen gold. Seeing zombies with an eye for gold was nothing seen in a zombie movie before, yet it still ended up as one of the goriest zombie movies of all time.
Zombies Are Slow - Dawn Of The Dead (2004)
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The zombies from Night of the Living Dead were all slow-moving zombies, which meant that people could just run and escape them. However, this didn't mean they were safe. While this was an interesting trope, it was always the fellow living humans who ended up as evil and ruined things for everyone.
In the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead, director Zack Snyder chose to make his zombies fast-moving instead, and these zombies could run and catch anyone, many of them faster than the living humans. He kept this up in Army of the Dead and made his zombies more dangerous than any human left alive.
Zombies Are Deadly Serious - The Return Of The Living Dead (1985)
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In the George Romero zombie movies, which laid out all the rules for future movies from other directors, the zombies were lumbering dead people. They attacked living people and ate them before moving on. These zombies rarely showed emotions and remained deadly serious. Even in zombie comedies, the zombies themselves remained blank slates.
This changed with The Return of the Living Dead. Unlike other popular zombie comedies like Shaun of the Dead, this movie made the zombies funny as well. When a zombie got on a police scanner and called for more food, it subverted every trope in the genre.
Zombies Are Evil - The Girl With All The Gifts (2017)
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This year's Netflix series All of Us Are Dead showed that zombies are not always the bad guys. Yes, the ones who lose control are dangerous, but there are others who are victims with living humans as evil antagonists, such as in the movie The Girl With all the Gifts.
In the book that the movie was based on, the story is from the point of view of the young zombie girl, who had no idea what was going on. The military captured these children, and they found a way to keep them from losing control. However, the kids were not evil at heart, and the fact the government experimented on them to find a cure made even the zombies seem sympathetic in this zombie drama movie.
Being Bitten Is The End - Patient Zero (2018)
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The biggest trope when it comes to human survival in zombie movies is that one bite from a zombie means a person is a goner, either to be devoured or become a zombie themselves. All of Us Are Dead showed that not everyone bit in that world became a zombie or died.
The same thing happened in the 2018 movie Patient Zero. In the movie, most bitten people become a rabid zombie in 90 seconds. However, Matt Smith plays a man named Morgan who is bitten, and not only does he not change, but he can now communicate with the infected. This movie subverts the bites turning people into mindless zombies, as not only did Morgan not change, but the other zombies were calculating and manipulating creatures wanting to take over the world.
This Is The Apocalypse - Shaun Of The Dead (2004)
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When it comes to zombie movies, one trope is that it is often called the zombie apocalypse. This means the zombies' arrival marks the end of the world as anyone knows it. The Walking Dead is a great example of this.
Shaun of the Dead subverted this trope by the end of the movie. The battle with zombies lasted for a very short time in this movie before the government shut it down and reverted order. In the end, society used the surviving zombies in TV game shows and Shaun even had his best buddy left to play games with him, despite turning into a zombie.
Zombie Infection Is Incurable - Warm Bodies (2012)
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The zombie genre had one thing that pretty much was set in stone for almost every single movie. When a person dies or is turned into a zombie, they remain a zombie until someone shoots them in the head and ends their life. There was a lot of talk about finding a cure, in everything from Day of the Dead to Patient Zero. It never happened.
Warm Bodies subverted this trope. Instead of the zombies becoming mindless killing machines, some of them kept their brains and while they couldn't talk or do much of anything, they still had their thoughts and feelings. This was a romantic coming-of-age story, and in the end, the zombies ended up being cured and reverting to humans again.