Mmmm, braaaaaaaaaains…
To celebrate the news that EA released the highly-addictive Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare to Xbox One and Xbox 360, JOE decided to side with the zombies this week and pick our three favourite films starring the wonderful walking dead.
You can also check out our favourite killer plant films by clicking here.
28 Days Later (2002)
A plucky band of heroes try to survive scary zombie attacks.
Believe us, we’re more than ready for the onslaught from the hordes of zombie enthusiasts who will inevitably shout “THAT’SNOTAREALZOMBIEFILMJOESOSHUTUPJOEBECAUSEYOU’RESTUPIDJOE.”
We realise that 28 Days Later isn’t a zombie film in the traditional Geroge A. Romero “re-animated corpse” sense of the word, but director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland set out to reinvigorate the zombie genre and they most certainly succeeded with this post-apocalyptic horror film.
Plus, it stars Cillian ‘The Human Cheekbone’ Murphy and Brendan ‘father of Domhnall Gleeson’ Gleeson so we’re claiming it as Irish.
Following the release of the terrifying ‘Rage’ virus, society has broken down with survivors attempting to hide from huge numbers of the mindless, rage-fuelled drones known as the ‘Infected.’
And no, your ‘infected’ ex-lover probably isn’t one of them…
As Boyle correctly demonstrated in 28 Days Later, there’s only one thing scarier than a zombie shuffling towards you to munch on your brain-parts… and that’s a zombie sprinting towards you to munch on your brain-parts. That’s right, ridiculously-terrifying running zombies.
We’ve a stitch just thinking about them, especially when listening to John Murphy’s now-iconic and fear-inducing ‘In The House – In A Heartbeat’ from the film’s original soundtrack.
Shaun Of The Dead (2004)
A plucky band of heroes try to survive scary zombie attacks. Again.
The first of JOE’s two featured ZomComs (zombie comedy, duh) and the first of the Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy, Shaun Of The Dead was Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s debut feature film and told the tale of Shaun (Pegg) trying to win back the girl of his dreams… all whilst trying to survive a zombie apocalypse.
Sheesh, trying to get a girlfriend can be so goddamn difficult sometimes.
The film proved to be one of the best additions to the Zombie genre in manys a year and also proved that, after the excellent TV series Spaced, Wright, Pegg and Frost had exactly what it took to make it on the big screen.
The film, which has achieved a deserved cult status, is (quite literally) a side-splitting homage to the Romero zombie films of old and is most certainly one of the finest examples of the hilarious horror-comedy genre, brilliantly pointing out that, with our dead-end jobs and our relationships dying on their feet, aren’t we all just modern-day zombies anyway?
You’ve got red on you…
Zombieland (2009)
A plucky band of heroes try to survive scary zombie attacks. Starting to get the hang of this yet?
As the fancy trailer voiceover guy rightly points out, the very existence of the human race is threatened by epidemics, climate change and dwindling resources… but those are the least of our problems because this is Zombieland:
Ruben Fleischer’s directorial debut was a ZomCom of the highest order starring an understandably-scared-of-zombie-clowns Jesse Eisenberg, a banjo-playin’-zombie-killin’ Woody Harrelson, and Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin as surviving sisters of a zombie apocalypse. Together, the four take an excellent extended road trip across United Shtates Of Zombie in an attempt to find sanctuary, free from the undead.
Not only that, the film has officially thee greatest cameo by any Hollywood star. Ever. We don’t want to reveal who the magnificent mystery movie-person is but click here if you want to see for yourself.
If you haven’t seen the fantastic film yet then don’t worry, let JOE get you started with the flick’s excellent and innovative opening credits sequences in which nice, friendly human people are viciously and gorily attacked by brain-starved zombies, all in superdeedooper slow motion with a heavy rock soundtrack.
Now THAT’S how you kick off a zombie film…
LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge
