Zombie cinema began in 1932 with White Zombie, featuring voodoo-raised corpses but no flesh-eating.

 Zombie cinema began in 1932 with White Zombie, featuring voodoo-raised corpses but no flesh-eating. In 1968, George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead defined the modern zombie—transmission by bite and attacks in hordes—and his 1978 Dawn of the Dead layered on a consumer-society critique, inaugurating the social horror subgenre. During the 1980s and ’90s, Italian splatter films and comedies like The Return of the Living Dead ran in parallel, with advances in home video and special makeup effects fueling ever more extreme gore. In Japan, late-night cult screenings proliferated, and the 1996 game Resident Evil sparked a resurgence in zombie visuals.

The 2000s saw Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (2002) redefine fear with fast-moving “infected,” while Zack Snyder’s Dawn remake and Britain’s Shaun of the Dead (both 2004) balanced panic and parody. The 2010s brought Korea’s Train to Busan (2016) and the Zombieland films, infusing family drama and coming-of-age themes, and The Walking Dead (2010–) pioneered long-form zombie storytelling. In the 2020s, streaming platforms have enabled a flood of low-budget productions—Nordic Handling the Undead and Apocalypse Z (2024) stand out—and the upcoming 28 Years Later (2025) reportedly centers on a mother-son bond. Recent innovations include AI-generated visuals, metaverse screenings, and interactive live-stream events.

Zombie subgenres now span panic-survival, black comedy, romance, and POV found-footage. As enduring metaphors for societal anxieties—from slavery to nuclear war to pandemics—zombies let audiences confront ethical fractures and solidarity under extreme stress, delivering both terror and catharsis. Their universal appeal transcends borders and budgets, spawning endless spin-offs and games in a perpetual cycle of undead revival.