Tag: zombies

Monday Morning Movie Review: 28 Weeks Later (2007)

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This summer’s 28 Years Later may have been the best film of 2025.  Apparently, the film is already getting a sequel, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, slated for release in 2026:

I’m excited to see that sequel, so I was even more excited to see 2007’s 28 Weeks Later on Shudder.  Shudder experienced a bit of a dry spell this summer, with basically just a bunch of low-budget French and Indonesian films from the the 1960s and 1970s.  I like foreign flicks, but sometimes I just want to watch a movie, not read one.

I’ve still got to see 28 Days Later (2002), but I enjoyed Weeks immensely.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: 28 Years Later (2025)

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Yours portly and his brother made it to a couple of movies during this most recent trip to Indianapolis.  While we were up in Chicago, we beat the heat with a viewing of 28 Years Later (2025), the third film in a long trilogy spanning back to 2002 with 28 Days Later (2002) and 28 Weeks Later (2007).  Apparently, this third installment lingered in development hell for two decades.

It was well worth the wait.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: In the Flesh (2013-2014)

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Today’s movie is not a movie, but rather a two-season miniseries that aired on the BBC from 2013-2014.  In the Flesh consists of nine total episodes (three in season one, six in season two), and aired during the Silver Age of Zombie Films (during the great revival of the genre, when it seemed that zombie films, like their subject matter, were inescapable).

In the Flesh introduces a bit of a twist to the traditional zombie formula:  it takes place after a zombie uprising, known as “The Rising,” took place, and a treatment—not a cure—for zombification has been found.  With a daily dose of medicine, former zombies (called “the Risen” or, derogatorily, “rotters”) can live as humans.  That said, they are not human—they cannot eat or drink food without getting violently ill, for example—and can revert to their “rabid” state if they miss a dose—or if they take an illicit street drug called “Blue Oblivion” that, for some reason, a quasi-terrorist organization called the “Undead Liberation Army” (ULA) distributes to its fanatical members.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Train to Busan (2016)

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In a comment on last Monday’s review, Audre Myers asked if I would write a review of Burnt Offerings (1976).  I’ve seen the film and intend to fulfill Audre’s request posthaste, but I a.) need to rewatch it and b.) I wanted to get this review of 2016’s Train to Busan out while it’s still fresh in my mind.  That said, I always encourage requests, so if there’s any film you’d like me to review, leave a comment below!

That disclaimer aside, on to the review!

The first couple of decades of this century saw a renaissance of sorts for zombie films.  Myriad thought pieces and cultural analyses have been written exploring why, and the mass cultural appeal of zombie flicks is certainly a fascinating topic.  There is a sort of fantastical, apocalyptic element to zombie films, television shows, books, and comics that speak to the fundamental questions of humanity and civilization.  Why are we here?  How do we handle stressful, life-threatening situations?  Is civilization a shield against our baser urges?  When it collapses, do we give into those urges, or do our higher moral beliefs prevail?  Are those moral beliefs merely a mask that life in a stable, prosperous society makes the wearing of easier to achieve?  Or do we really believe in these higher ideals, even when they are battered and threatened on all sides?

It’s been written before, and I’ll write it again:  the real threat in zombie movies are not the zombies themselves, but the surviving humans.  Yes, the zombies are dangerous—and in Train to Busan, they’re quite deadly, and move with astonishing speed—but many of the film’s deaths are due to human ignorance, fear, callousness, and selfishness.  Sheer panic does much to end lives and lead to poor (and wicked) decisions, while levelheaded thinking and restraint—coupled with astonishing courage—often, though not always, lead to better outcomes.

By this metric of zombie-movies-as-movies-about-ourselves, Train to Busan succeeds wildly.  But the film is much more.

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Lazy Sunday CC: Myersvision, Part II

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Lazy Sunday turns 200!  It’s hard to believe that I’ve been phoning it in for 200 Sundays now, but here we are.

In celebration of this milestone, I’ve decided to highlight some more features from our senior correspondent, Audre Myers, who contributes her Myersvision pieces roughly every Wednesday (or whenever the muses move her).  Here are three more of her excellent pieces:

Here’s to many more editions of Myersvision to come!

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

Myersvision: Shaun of the Dead (2004)

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Audre Myers is offering up an unusual-for-her pick in this week’s edition of Myersvision—a comedy horror flick!  Given the time of year, it’s even more unusual, but who says yuletide can’t become ghoultide? [I originally had this review scheduled for the week leading up to Christmas, but pushed it to January due to the various Christmas movie reviews Audre, Ponty, and I wrote in December.  I liked my “ghoultide” pun too much to revise it, and it is technically still the Christmas season through 6 January 2023, Epiphany (and Audre’s birthday!). —TPP]

Ponty picked Shaun of the Dead (2004) as his Number 9 Best Film, so it’s interesting to compare his review to Audre’s.  Ponty (and myself, I should add) loves this film; Audre’s take is altogether different.

I don’t want to spoil too much of her—let’s call it “scathing”—review, but I’m going to chalk up the difference of opinion to the generation and gender gaps.  While I have known plenty of women who enjoyed Shaun of the Dead, it definitely has more of a “guy” vibe to it.  I find Pegg and Wright’s antics hilarious, and am a big fan of their so-called Cornetto Trilogy, of which Shaun is the first installment.

I also think that the title character does show some growth and transformation, going from being little more than a shuffling zombie himself to rising to the occasion to help save his friends.  The duress of a zombie outbreak forces this loser to change his ways to protect himself and his loved ones, even if he makes mistakes and reverts to old habits along the way.

But I digress.  Audre offers up a good counterbalance to the fanboyish enthusiasm of Ponty and myself.

With that, here is Audre’s review of 2004’s Shaun of the Dead:

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Eat Brains Love (2019)

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There are a lot zombie movies.  There are quite a few zombie comedy movies.

Slicing that down further—like a machete slicing through the neck of an undead corpse—is the zombie romantic comedy subgenre.  Perhaps the best example of this extremely specific subgenre is 2013’s Warm Bodies, which I believe Helen Liptak recommended I review at some point (I probably should be reviewing that today instead!).  That is, indeed, an excellent, heartwarming (pun intended) film.

Instead, I’m reviewing 2019’s Eat Brains Love (also stylized as Eat, Brains, Love), a far inferior film that, despite some poor acting and writing, is not without its own shuffling charm.

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Delayed Monday Morning Movie Review: Day of the Dead (1985)

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After much delay, here is this week’s Monday Morning Movie Review of George A. Romero‘s 1985 zombie classic Day of the Dead (not to be confused with the festive Mexican holiday of the same name).

When I first pulled up the flick on Shudder, I was hoping for 1978’s Dawn of the Dead, the supposedly “fun” Romero Dead movie.  That’s the one with survivors of a zombie apocalypse live it up in a mall, enjoying all the materialism the late 1970s could afford.

Despite my efforts, though, I can’t seem to locate that flick on any streaming service I use, so Day of the Dead it was.  By now the trope of “humans are the real monsters” is familiar to viewers—and readers of virtually any Stephen King novel—but Day of the Dead delivers that trite message in a taut, unsettling way.

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