The 12 Greatest Zombie Movies for Grownups

Whether they’re sprinting like ravenous jackals or lumbering like they’re half-asleep, onscreen zombies are hungry — and they’re coming to get you! Ever since George Romero kicked off the modern zombie craze with 1968’s low-budget midnight-movie staple Night of the Living Dead, these insatiable monsters have had a permanent place in our collective nightmares, and they genre is popular with the 50-plus audience. Now, as the latest 28 Days Later zombie sequel 28 Years Later stalks into multiplexes, it’s high time to present our list of the best undead-monster movies of all time. So lock the doors, turn off the lights, and check out these grisly, ghoulish gems. Bon Appetit!

Night of the Living Dead (1968) 

This is where it all begins. Pittsburgh’s George Romero was a young director of industrial films who cobbled together $114,000 and a few pals and forever changed the face of horror. Night of the Living Dead established the genre’s ground rules, as a mysterious plague makes the dead rise from their graves and panicked, paranoid survivors barricade themselves in an old house, fighting off hungry hordes. By casting African-American actor Duane Jones as the film’s hero, Romero was making a statement during the Civil Rights era, and alluding to the televised violence in the Vietnam War. The scares still scare, but be warned: Some streamers like Tubi and Prime Video offer this for free, but in a lousy colorized version. Stick with the original black and white. It’s a million times creepier.

Where to watch: Peacock

World War Z (2013)

Hollywood backed up the money truck to cash in on the walking-dead trend with this razzle-dazzle, special-effects-festooned zombie blockbuster. Brad Pitt, 61, wonderfully plays a UN investigator forced to choose between staying with his family and saving the world from a zombie pandemic. Since he’s Brad Pitt, he finds a way to do both. This is less a run-of-the-mill zombie flick than a big-budget disaster epic, with zombies. It’s a shock-and-awe blast.

Where to watch: Paramount Plus

Note: Paramount+ pays AARP a royalty for use of its intellectual property and provides a discount to AARP members.

28 Days Later (2002) 

Director Danny Boyle, 68, made a major contribution to the zombie genre: taking the antiquated trope of slow-moving stalkers and transforming them into super-fast killing machines, replacing Romero’s lingering sense of dread with zapped-up white-knuckle terror. Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer) plays a British bike messenger who wakes from a coma in a desolate hospital only to find the world has become a barren, inhospitable place all but wiped out by a rage virus that turns the infected masses into chilling carnivorous marauders. Followed by 2007’s 28 Weeks Later and 2025's 28 Years Later.

Where to watch: Prime Video

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

Some argue that George Romero’s follow-up to Night of the Living Dead is better than the original. But why pick sides? Working in color (the film’s copious blood resembles melted red crayons) and with a much bigger budget, Romero sets most of this apocalyptic siege thriller in an abandoned Pennsylvania shopping mall. The sly cultural subtext here is that even the undead will find their way back to where they spent so much of their time as mindless consumers. The gore is more graphic and the whole thing looks slicker and more professional (in a good way). I watched this in a friend’s basement when I was 11. Huge mistake.

Where to watch: Prime Video