A sequel to '28 Years Later' has already been filmed. Here's what to know about 'The Bone Temple'

Horror fans rejoice, the sequel to the long-awaited " 28 Years Later," "The Bone Temple," has already been filmed and is due out in theaters next year.
2002's " 28 Days Later" became a cult classic by taking a fresh bite out of the zombie movie genre: instead of a supernatural threat, the undead are infected by the Rage Virus.
"28 Years Later," out Friday, is the start of a new trilogy from the director and screenwriter of the original film, Danny Boyle and Alex Garland. It tells the story of 12-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams) who leaves the safety of the island where his family live to find a cure for his sick mother, Isla (Jodie Comer), on the UK mainland.
By the end of the film, Isla lets the mysterious Doctor Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) euthanize her after he diagnoses her with metastatic brain cancer.
Spike then roams the mainland instead of returning home, and in its final scene crosses paths with a man who calls himself Sir Jimmy Crystal (Jack O'Connell). The strange cult leader who has long blond hair are, as Boyle and Garland confirmed to Business Insider, dressed like Jimmy Savile, the infamous British TV presenter and prolific sexual abuser.
The film ends as Spike chooses to go with Jimmy. Here's what to know about "The Bone Temple."
The cast of '28 Years Later: The Bone Temple' includes Cillian Murphy, Alfie Williams, Jack O'Connell, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson
The plot for "The Bone Temple" is unknown, but presumably it will explore Jimmy's past after he escaped the Rage Virus following the initial outbreak, as seen in the violent opening scene of "28 Years Later."
His Savile-esque appearance raises an intriguing question: The Rage Virus outbreak started in 2002, meaning Savile's numerous sexual crimes may not have been made public in the film's timeline. In real life, the allegations were made in 2011 onwards, after Savile died.
Garland told BI that the story will examine how misremembering key events can drastically change the world."We are living in a time right now which is absolutely dominated by a misremembered past," he said.
Williams and O'Connell will return for "The Bone Temple" alongside Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who plays Spike's father, Jamie.
Boyle also confirmed to BI that Cillian Murphy will return as Jim, the main character from "28 Days Later."
'28 Years Later: The Bone Temple' is due in 2026
"28 Years Later: The Bone Temple" will be released on January 16, 2026, so there isn't long to wait after that surprising ending.
This is because "28 Years Later" and "The Bone Temple" were filmed back-to-back in summer 2024.
Boyle didn't direct the second film, but he did return as a producer. Nia Da Costa directed the sequel with a script from Garland.
Da Costa has previously helmed movies like "Candyman" and "The Marvels," as well as episodes of "Top Boy" and "Ms. Marvel."

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Aaron Taylor-Johnson's net worth: The ‘28 Years Later' actor's wealth & income

Aaron Taylor-Johnson takes to the screen in 28 Years Later, the third installment of the zombie franchise that started with 28 Days Later, released in 2002. In 28 Years Later, he plays a survivor of a virus that turns humans into zombies, almost three decades after the first infection in the U.K. Taylor-Johnson is no stranger to starring in action films, having played superheroes in Marvel movies. Related: '28 Days Later' franchise: Box-office success on modest budgets for the zombie apocalypse film series Here's how much Taylor-Johnson is worth and an overview of some of his most popular films. Don't miss the move: Subscribe to TheStreet's free daily newsletter Most sources put Taylor-Johnson's net worth at around $20 million as of mid-2025. His primary earnings have come from his acting career, though he does endorse products on the income largely comes from his career as an actor. His salary for 28 Years Later isn't known, but with a cast that features Ralph Fiennes and Jodie Comer and a $75 million budget, Taylor-Johnson's pay is likely to be modest. In Kraven the Hunter in 2024, while the box-office take was disappointing, Taylor-Johnson reportedly earned $2 million for his role, according to Showbiz Galore. Taylor-Johnson's brand is his name and face, and he has used both to earn additional income as a spokesperson. He serves as brand ambassador for OMEGA watches, Jameson Irish Whiskey, and Acqua di Gio, a men's fragrance brand by Giorgio Armani. Related: '28 Days Later' franchise: Box-office success on modest budgets for the zombie apocalypse film series Aaron Taylor-Johnson was born in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England, on June 13, 1990. He started out as a child actor on stage and television and eventually branched out into feature films. More on Hollywood and money: Gerard Butler's net worth: The A-list actor's wealth & incomeRalph Macchio's net worth: A revived career for the Karate Kid starTom Cruise's net worth: The 'Mission: Impossible' star's wealth in 2025 Taylor-Johnson has starred in more than 30 films since 2002, when he made his start in a biblical film titled The Apocalypse. His most popular films feature him in action roles. He started to gain traction as a lead actor by taking on the main character in Kick-Ass, a 2010 movie about vigilante superheroes, and its sequel Kick-Ass 2 in 2013. In 2014, Taylor-Johnson starred in two films that further widened his reach with audiences. In Marvel's Captain America: The Winter Soldier, he played Quicksilver, and reprised that role a year later in Avengers: Age of Ultron. In Godzilla, he portrayed a naval officer helping the U.S. military assist Godzilla in fending off other creatures to save San Francisco. The revival of the Godzilla franchise led to main acting roles, including The Wall in 2017, where Taylor-Johnson played a U.S. Army soldier targeted by a sniper during the Iraq War. In 2022, Taylor-Johnson joined an ensemble cast including Brad Pitt and Michael Shannon in Bullet Train, a film about hitmen at work on a speeding train in Japan. In 2024, he signed up again with Marvel to take on the role of Kraven the Hunter, a sort of anti-hero with powers who serves as a killer for hire. Media outlets have noted Taylor-Johnson as a potential successor to Daniel Craig in the James Bond series. Related: Which "Mission: Impossible" film made the most money? A retrospective of the Tom Cruise action franchise The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc.

Yahoo

2 hours ago

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Will '28 Years Later' take a bite out of ‘Elio'? Will ‘Dragon' continue to soar? Here's our box-office prediction

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Elio is certified "fresh" with a 86 percent score per the aggregated critic reviews at Rotten Tomatoes; "generally favorable" reviews compiled by Metacritic resulted in an overall score of 66 percent. Director: Simon West Distributor: Magenta Light Studios When a mercenary group takes a lavish wedding hostage, they have no idea what they are in for as the maid of honor is actually a secret agent ready to rain hellfire upon anyone who would ruin her best friend's wedding. The action-comedy, starring Rebel Wilson, Anna Camp, Anna Chlumsky, and Da'Vine Joy Randolph, has a running time of one hour, 45 minutes, and is rated R. Bride Hard is certified "rotten" with a 27 percent score per the aggregated critic reviews at Rotten Tomatoes; "overwhelmingly negative" reviews compiled by Metacritic resulted in an overall score of 15 percent. 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Paramount's blockbuster continues to draw audiences, amassing $509 million globally so far. It wouldn't be surprising if Cruise manages to overtake Materialists in the final rankings. Here are Gold Derby's predictions box-office rankings for the top five: 1. How to Train Your Dragon 2. 28 Years Later 3. Elio 4. Lilo & Stitch 5. Materialists Do you agree or disagree with those rankings? Make your predictions right now — it's fun and easy! Join the box-office discussion in our forums. Best of GoldDerby Tom Cruise movies: 17 greatest films ranked worst to best 'It was wonderful to be on that ride': Christian Slater talks his beloved roles, from cult classics ('Heathers,' 'True Romance') to TV hits ('Mr. Robot,' 'Dexter: Original Sin') 'It almost killed me': Horror maestro Mike Flanagan looks back at career-making hits from 'Gerald's Game' to 'Hill House' to 'Life of Chuck' Click here to read the full article.

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The 25 Best Zombie Movies of All Time

It's fitting that, much like the walking dead themselves, zombie movies just can't stay down. The latest major example of this reliable horror subgenre shuffling (or in this case running) into theaters is 28 Years Later. Coming not quite 28 real-life years after 28 Days Later but basically close enough, the new film is a long-awaited continuation of one of the iconic zombie franchises. It's credited as being among the few movies that revolutionized the subgenre—and given how many times the undead have been reinvented on the big screen, that's saying something. Why are zombie movies so enduring? The central themes at play are undeniable. Zombies confront us with death, our universal, ultimate fear, in a very literal and visceral way. They're metaphors for disease and social unrest, capable of horrifying audiences or delighting them with gory, over-the-top gags. It makes sense that so many zombie movies are comedies; it feels good to laugh in the rotting, decaying face of death. The fact that zombie movies are not inherently especially expensive to make also must account for their popularity. The only real special effects you need to make a cheap-o zombie movie are a little makeup and some fake blood, which a bunch of buddies with a camera can easily do. There's a whole horde of cheap and/or forgettable zombie movies, but these 25—whether their budgets were in the tens of thousands or tens of millions—are the ones that have resisted decay and stood the test of time. All 25 of these movies are good; but just as crucially, they're all important to the history of zombie cinema, starting with black-and-white movies about the voodoo zombies of Haitian folklore. This sort of zombie—which originated the term—brings up the surprisingly tricky question of determining what counts as a zombie movie. It can't just be any undead being—ghosts don't have a body and it's not always clear if a demon from hell was once a person or if they're just some devilish entity. In theory, mummy movies and Frankenstein adaptations could count as zombie flicks, yet they seem like their own thing. Does a zombie need to have originated from a viral outbreak or can some magic be animating the dead? Do the zombies need to be dead or can they just be infected with a virus that turns them into mindless cannibals? There's no cut and dry definition for a zombie movie; you've just got to trust that you know one when you have it in your sights—and that you're aiming for the head. White Zombie (1932) White Zombie is widely regarded as the first zombie movie, though walking dead did appear in cinema before, as in a silent adaptation of Frankenstein or the 1919 French film J'accuse, which ends with countless World War I dead rising up and returning home. But White Zombie was certainly the one that codified so many of the zombie tropes later movies would follow. Inspired by an American occultist's 1929 book documenting a real (but much exaggerated and misunderstood) old Haitian form of religious punishment where people were drugged, buried alive, and then dug up and ordered around in a dazed state, White Zombie has been criticized for offensive and racist depictions of Haitians, very much a product of a different era. Under the thrall of evil voodoo practitioner "Murder" Legendre (Dracula himself, Bela Lugosi), dozens of zombified Haitians mindlessly follow his orders, shuffling around ominously with vacant dead-eyed stares. The 1932 film's zombies don't eat people or spread out of control—those traits would come later—but it's easy to see White Zombie's influence in the nights, dawns, and days of the dead that would follow. As a movie on its own terms, White Zombie (which would be followed up by something of a sequel, Revolt of the Zombies) can at times feel a bit stagnant, a trait that's not uncommon in these early '30s horror movies where the cinematic language of the genre was still being developed. At its best, though, White Zombie turns its lethargy into something akin to a surreal dream whose nightmarish qualities are slow but undeniable and inescapable. I Walked With a Zombie (1943) Although voodoo zombies were the original zombies, this version of the walking dead linked to Caribbean folk tradition would eventually fall out of vogue—though tropical islands would continue to be a frequent haunting ground for the undead, and there were a few scattered later efforts like Wes Craven's 1998 movie The Serpent and the Rainbow. The greatest of the traditional zombie movies has to be I Walked With a Zombie, from director Jacques Tourneur. A Gothic story about a wealthy family, dark secrets, an innocent young nurse and a reclusive, unwell wife that's set in Jamaica rather than some English moors, I Walked With the Zombie is a chilling tale that's features some legitimately haunting imagery, like actor Darby Jones' bug-eyed, deathly stoic zombie-like guard of the crossroads, Carrefour. Also notably, it's one of the great early examples of how well zombies work as a vehicle to explore societal themes. It's almost surprising how earnestly and respectfully this horror-drama engages with the legacy of slavery, racism, and the religions of the African diaspora, including vodou, though its handling of race—including the way it centers a white woman who is at best a tourist in this complex Black tradition—is not without critique. Night of the Living Dead (1968) Undeniably the most important and influential zombie movie ever made (not to mention terrifying), George A. Romero's indie horror masterpiece established the modern idea of a zombie, one no longer tied to folklore and a master controlling mindless slaves but a flesh-eating menace whose greatest threat might come from how it could not be controlled. Shot on a meager budget in a condemned farmhouse not too far outside of Pittsburgh, Night of the Living Dead has "ghouls" rising from their graves to feast on the living—a level of gore that's both unshowy and unflinchingly upsetting. A random assortment of characters all take refuge in the farmhouse as the dead descend on it; a representative smattering of America and the societal unrest that comes with it. Duane Jones, a Black actor, plays Ben, the film's protagonist—a bold first for horror filmmaking, which Romero says was only due to Jones having the best audition. Whatever the reason, the casting adds so much more weight to Night of the Living Dead's gut-wrenching ending. After surviving the undead, Ben emerges only to be shot by some good ol' boys who mistake him for a zombie. If Night of the Living Dead's greatest legacy is how it shaped all the living dead to come in the days that followed, it's no less important for how it didn't let the living off the hook. Shock Waves (1977) Zombies and Nazis are the two villains that you're supposed to feel no remorse for killing in genre fiction, so it makes sense that plenty of movies (and video games) have combined the two, creating a Nazi zombie foe that's twice as scary and that you can feel twice as good about headshotting. Later films like Dead Snow and Overlord would have bloody fun with this premise, but Shock Waves, an under-appreciated 1977 movie, deserves the spot on this list. One of the earlier Nazi zombie films (though The Frozen Dead beat it by a decade), Shock Waves is notable for how little zombie-slaying its protagonists do. Instead, the stranded vacationers find themselves fleeing goggle-wearing undead in the Caribbean where a former SS commander (Peter Cushing) is hiding out. In the war, he'd been in charge of a Nazi Death Corps of zombie troopers who specialized in aquatic warfare, though they proved impossible to control, leading him to sink their ship by this remote island. It's a weird, uncanny film. Dawn of the Dead (1978) There's a credible case to be made that Romero's 1973 movie The Crazies, about a biological weapon that causes residents of a small town to go feral, qualifies as a zombie movie. His official return to the living dead came a few years later, though, resulting in one of the greatest horror movies of all time. A clear indictment of the consumerism that had shoppers shuffling mindlessly through malls, Dawn of the Dead is a masterpiece of makeup and grotesque effects, following a group of survivors as they take refuge inside of a mall while hoards of dead mull about outside. This seeming paradise of capitalism soon curdles into a prison that strips the survivors of their humanity, yet at the same time Romero never forgets the humanity that the mass of zombies once had. Dawn of the Dead has been parodied and referenced many times since, including Shaun of the Dead, the video game series Dead Rising, and a remake that's good enough to appear later on this list, but none of its successors quite captured the level of dread and malaise the original does. Zombi 2 (1979) Also known as Zombie Flesh Eaters but named Zombi 2—despite there not being a Zombi 1 because Italian copyright law allowed for any film to be marketed as a sequel to any other film, regardless of any association with the original—this unofficial follow-up to the Italian release of Dawn of the Dead is a shockingly effective movie in its own right. Lucio Fulci, well known in the giallo genre, directs an English-speaking cast in a story about a woman, accompanied by a journalist, investigating her missing father on a remote Caribbean island. Turns out the island's rotting dead are rising from the grave—the result of a voodoo curse. (If movies and the '30s and '40s were actually engaging with Haitian tradition and spiritualism, for better or worse, by this point most movies used it as a cheap plot device.) Zombi 2 is legendary for a couple of extreme scenes, like one where a zombie's decaying hand slowly pulls a woman's head into a jagged piece of wood as it pierces her eyeball, and another where a zombie fights a shark. (The very real tiger shark, to the credit of sharks everywhere, seems entirely unaggressive and mostly just annoyed that some guy in a costume is trying to manhandle it.) These over-the-top moments and the absurdity of its title may be the elements that made Zombi 2 famous, but beneath them is a movie with an eerie, uncanny vibe that's shockingly easy to get lost in. Day of the Dead (1985) "Perhaps the real walking dead is us!" is at this point such a well-established zombie trope that it might as well be decaying itself, but Romero's third Dead movie pulled it off early and extremely well. (Romero has the distinction of appearing three times on this list because of how undeniably important he was to zombie cinema.) Set after the undead have already overrun the world, Day of the Dead focuses on a remnant of humanity living inside a missile bunker in Florida. The scientists there are trying to find a cure for zombism—or at least that's what they're supposed to be doing, as lead scientist Dr. Logan has gotten fixated on training zombies to be docile. The soldiers protecting them, meanwhile, are led by Captain Rhodes, who is itching to exert his authority with force now that society has fallen. With the zombies already having essentially won over the living, Day of the Dead lets mankind finish the job for itself. The zombies in Day are almost heroic—especially "Bub," the somewhat intelligent undead that Logan trained. Tellingly, he's more sympathetic than most of the living, breathing cast. The Return of the Living Dead (1985) John Russo, co-writer of Night of the Living Dead, retained the rights to the "Living Dead" portion of the title, a deal that eventually led to the visceral punk zombie movie The Return of the Living Dead in 1985. It was this movie that popularized the idea of zombies who specifically crave "brains," and Return has a sense of humor that in retrospect feels like the patient zero for The Simpsons' "Treehouse of Horror" episodes' entire sensibility. Following a group of punks as they hang out in a cemetery (as one does)—unaware that two bumbling employees at a medical warehouse have accidentally unleashed a corpse-reviving toxic gas—Return of the Living Dead manages to strike the right balance between gleeful absurdity, knowing silliness and legitimately gross gore and decaying zombies. This sort of wry boundary pushing, elevated by the great and goopy practical effects of the '80s, would largely define the zombies in the decade to come—reaching a peak (or maybe a nadir, depending on your taste), with Peter Jackson's 1992 New Zealand splatterfest Dead Alive. Evil Dead II (1987) The first Evil Dead is a straightforward horror movie, following Bruce Campbell's Ash Williams as he and some friends spend the night in an old cabin in the woods, read from the Necronomicon, and unleash zombie-like demons upon themselves. For Evil Dead II, Sam Raimi had a larger budget and essentially remade his original film, though this time around it was much more of a comedy, full of Looney Tunes-esque gags and spooky pratfalls. Your mileage may vary on whether or not Evil Dead's "deadites" should count as zombies; there's a whole mythology and other sorts of supernatural evil like menacing, living trees to account for, too. What's undeniable is Evil Dead II's impact; it may represent the purest example of '80s filmmakers using the undead as a playground. Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island (1998) The '90s were something of a fallow period for zombie movies. A glut of undead films from the previous decade—many of which were overtly comedic, gory to the point of absurdity, or extremely cheaply made (or all of the above)—had given the subgenre a trashy reputation even by horror standards. So it's a bit ironic that one of the best zombie movies of the '90s was a direct-to-video Scooby-Doo feature. Every episode of the original, charmingly formulaic Scooby-Doo series had the Mystery, Inc. gang unmasking the very-real perpetrator of whatever spooky phenomenon they were investigating and in doing so undermining the scares. Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island does the opposite. After going their separate ways for many years, Shaggy and Co. reunite and go to a bayou island outside of New Orleans. Once there, they discover very real zombies, voodoo curses, and werecats who have been luring victims to Moonscar Island for decades. It's an earnestly effective (and kinda scary!) bit of kid-friendly horror, one that does justice to the history of zombie movies despite Scoob's silly TV origins. Wild Zero (1999) Although the zombie movie genre in the West was mostly rotting in a creative grave, so to speak, during the '90s, things were happening in the East. In Hong Kong, movies featuring jiāngshī like Mr. Vampire had been popular in the previous decade. (Jiāngshī, also known as hopping vampires, are really more like zombies than bloodsuckers, though you'll find Mr. Vampire on TIME's list of the greatest vampire movies rather than here all the same.) Then, in 1993, Capcom released the first Resident Evil video game in Japan, the success of which would inspire a wave of Asian zombie movies and whose impact would eventually reach the states, including an American film adaptation of the game (more on that in a minute). The 1998 Hong Kong movie Bio Zombie is one key example of this era of Asian zombie horror, but no zombie movie rocks harder than the '99 Japanese film Wild Zero—literally. An over-the-top romp with horror, sci-fi, and comedy elements, Wild Zero stars the Japanese rock trio Guitar Wolf as themselves, heroically leaping into action to help a fan when the dead start attacking. Motorcycles belch fire from their exhaust pipes, zombie heads explode with just the right level of CGI cheesiness to make it fun, and Guitar Wolf's lead singer uses a sword sheathed in his guitar to take down a UFO. It's a lot, but gloriously so, and it's also a righteous display of trans allyship. When the young fan is initially repulsed to learn that a girl he's fallen for is trans, he sees a vision of Guitar Wolf, his idol, who tells him that "love has no borders, nationalities, or genders." Hell yeah. Resident Evil (2002) Almost certainly the worst movie on this list of great movies, Paul W. S. Anderson's Resident Evil is nonetheless hugely important to the history of zombie cinema, as it was the one-two punch of Resident Evil and 28 Days Later in 2002 that revived the subgenre in the West and gave it some critical legitimacy. (Well, perhaps not so much Resident Evil on the latter front.) The (loose) adaptation of the video game series is an action-packed bit of schlock with a handful of engaging setpieces, baffling narrative choices, and some poor-looking early-'00s CGI. Milla Jovovich stars as Alice, an amnesiac ass-kicker who goes into a secret underground Umbrella Corporation lab following an outbreak of their corpse-reviving (and corpse-mutating) T-virus. It's nu-metal zombies for a new age, one where zombies weren't just metaphors for societal ills but enemies for gamers to mow down, and Resident Evil and its many sequels reflected this. 28 Days Later (2002) Although credited with popularizing "fast zombies" (though its infected are not technically undead but humans turned into mindless flesh-eaters by a Rage Virus), what makes 28 Days Later so hauntingly effective are its many slower moments. Filmed on digital cameras that give the entire movie an uncanny, slightly fuzzy look (and whose light weight compared to film allowed director Danny Boyle to shoot unbelievable footage of Cilian Murphy's recently awoken coma patient wandering a deserted London in the wee hours of the morning), 28 Days Later is full of eerie tranquility until the infected rush in. The September 11th attacks occurred while the movie was filming, and as a result 28 Days has an additional resonance; an all-too-familiar picture of societal fear and unease. The Rage Virus, too, worked as a metaphor for America and its allies' seeming bloodlust for retaliation and the forthcoming war in Iraq. 28 Days Later, the only real rival to Romero's zombies in terms of importance to the subgenre, was groundbreaking in the way it was made and in how its zombies behaved. It was still very much in the tradition of using the undead (or close enough) as a means to examine the failings of the living, and 28 Days Later would mark the start of a zombie renaissance that would last more than a decade. Dawn of the Dead (2004) Zack Snyder's debut film, a remake of Romero's zombie masterpiece of the same name, has no right to be as good as it is. Taking the trapped-in-the-mall premise of the '78 film and adding fast zombies and a heavy dose of post-9/11 America, the '04 Dawn of the Dead is an intense, mean, and unrelenting experience. After an opening sequence where Sarah Polley's protagonist comes home from her hospital job, goes to bed, and then wakes up to discover that the world as she knew it has ended (a sequence that's up there with the single greatest 10-minutes of any horror movie), Dawn of the Dead plunges into violent, action-packed nihilism. If Romero's Dawn was about what happens to the living when they give their brains over to consumerism, Snyder's looks at a nation in crisis, one whose residents are grappling for any sort of safety—and any power they can grasp as the ground crumbles beneath them. Shaun of the Dead (2004) The final of the three most important zombie movies of the '00s, Shaun of the Dead is as cheekily referential to the history of zombie cinema as you'd expect with a punny name like that. Directed by Edgar Wright, the horror comedy follows Simon Pegg's titular slacker as he and his buddy Ed (Nick Frost) slowly realize they're in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. Shaun's plan is to head to the local pub with his ex-girlfriend to wait it out. Extremely funny before a climatic turn that gets a bit too suddenly depressing, Shaun of the Dead knowingly uses all the zombie tropes as a vehicle for comedy and the outbreak as a setting for a very human character-based drama. It's the type of deft genre-blending that can only land when the audience is familiar with the material it's sending up. Fido (2006) This Canadian zom-com basically takes the final joke of Shaun of the Dead—a reveal that zombies are being used for mindless manual labor—and makes a feature-length romp out of it. Drenched in a '50s-style Americana with shades of Tim Burton's early work, Fido takes place in a world where pet-like zombies are the norm and special collars inhibit their flesh-eating tendencies, making them useful labor. When young Timmy starts forming a bond with his family's new zombie, which he names Fido, hijinks ensue (including Timmy's mom, played by Carrie-Anne Moss, basically cucking his dad with the zombie). Fido is mostly content to be a clever, splattery spoof. It's smartest when it contrasts the walking dead with the conformity and repression of the 1950s. [Rec] (2007) This Spanish movie, remade in the U.S. with the name Quarantine, represents two '00s horror trends: zombies and found footage. [Rec] happens to be one of the best examples of both subgenres. Told from the perspective of a TV cameraman filming a reporter for a news show about what happens in Barcelona at night, [Rec] has the pair tagging along with some firefighters when they get a call about a woman needing medical assistance. Once inside, they and the residents of the apartment building realize they're trapped—and that there's an outbreak of something that's making people mindlessly violent and aggressive. Once the action starts, it's terrifying and relentless, and [Rec] uses its unique format to make audiences feel like they're right there with the zombies in a way that no other movie really has. Pontypool (2008) Though undermined by a pretty dumb ending, the majority of Pontypool is a gripping and intelligent twist on traditional zombie movies as it relies on language—in more ways than one—rather than gore. Grant Mazzy is a shock jock radio announcer in the small town of Pontypool, Ontario, and while recording an episode of his show, he and his producers start catching wind of strange occurrences. From the (seeming) safety of the sound booth, Grant starts fielding calls from listeners and the station's helicopter reporter about an outbreak of madness, cannibalism, and dismemberment among the town's residents that seems to be spreading. Eventually, Grant learns that the infection is spread not through a virus but through words, as the English language itself has been infected. The ending really is a tremendous letdown that saps the incredibly narrated tension of the rest of the movie and replaces it with too-neat explanations. Until that point, though, Pontypool is like no other zombie movie you've seen because you're mostly just hearing the terror, which makes it all the more horrific in your mind's eye. Zombieland (2009) If Shaun of the Dead was a horror comedy built on the knowledge of zombie tropes, Zombieland went a step further, venturing beyond homage into making the "rules" of the walking dead explicitly part of the text. Zombieland makes its post-apocalyptic setting, where the undead lurk around every corner, look like a pretty fun hang, following Jesse Eisenberg's neurotic Columbus and his traveling companions (Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, and Abigail Breslin) as they road-trip across the country seeking refuge. Even when Zombieland does get serious or lean more into horror, it's still a pretty breezy time, full of jokes, a killer Bill Murray cameo, and the possibility that awaits young folks when the undead have eaten through any chance of them having to assume societal responsibilities. After decades of zombie movies, Zombieland looked on the bright side of a zombie apocalypse. Train to Busan (2016) The zombie virus infected South Korean cinemas in the 2010s, resulting in one of the best modern zombie films, Train to Busan. A masterful blend of character drama, societal critique, and white-knuckle zombie action, Train to Busan follows white-collar workaholic Seok-woo and his estranged young daughter as they board the titular train—just as an undead outbreak begins to overtake South Korea. When one bitten person boards just as they're leaving the station, it soon spreads throughout the train, forcing Seok-woo and some other survivors to band together and keep moving forward on the train, hoping they'll eventually find some safe place to stop. Many zombie movies focus on the horrible things that selfish people do in times of trouble, and Train to Busan has plenty of that in the form of the rich elites who care only about their own safety at the expense of others. What makes Train to Busan special is how it also keeps highlighting selflessness from normal, working-class people, eventually helping Seok-woo learn to do the right thing. That, and an absolutely terrifying depiction of zombies that sprint and crawl over one another like a wave of gnashing undead rather than individuals. (It's worth noting that the 2013 adaptation of World War Z did put an ant-like swarm of zombies on the big screen before Train to Busan—a legitimate innovation when it comes to depicting the undead. The rest of the film is a generic letdown despite the unusually high budget for a zombie movie, especially considering that the book it's loosely based on is one of the great works of undead fiction.) The Girl With All the Gifts (2016) Part of what makes zombies such scary monsters is the knowledge that they were once people like you or me, only now they're mindless flesh-eating corpses. A few zombie movies have explored the idea that zombies might still be people inside and shown sympathy towards them. (Romero's Day of the Dead famously suggested this with the somewhat intelligent zombie Bub.) A pair of movies in the mid-'00s, the zombie rom-com Warm Bodies and the post-apocalyptic movie The Girl With all the Gifts, both focused on this theme. The former is fun but fairly disposable; the latter follows a scientist and a teacher who are trying to understand—and protect—a girl infected with the parasitic fungus that turned most of mankind into zombies. Despite her infection, she can suppress the hunger it brings (to some extent). Is she still a monster, then, or something more? The Girl With all the Gifts confronts the audience with difficult questions about the nature of humanity. (The movie also feels especially relevant given the popularity of The Last of Us and the HBO adaptation of the video game, which also feature fungus zombies.) One Cut of the Dead (2017) The history of zombie movies is littered with cheap, DIY horror flicks by low-budget filmmakers with inventiveness and gusto. One Cut of the Dead is a joyful, exuberant (and fittingly scrappy) celebration of zombie movie-makers. The first half hour of the 90-minute Japanese movie is a single take, following a group of actors and filmmakers as they attempt to make a cheap zombie movie—only for real zombies to descend on the set while the camera is running. At the risk of spoiling One Cut of the Dead's delightful twist, the second act reveals a whole different story that recontextualizes the opening action, and the final half hour is just a wonderfully inventive ode to a genre filmmaking. Blood Quantum (2019) It's always a thrill when a genre sinks its teeth into a novel premise or brilliant metaphor that hasn't been done before. Such is the case with Blood Quantum. When a zombie pandemic breaks out in 1980s Canada, the residents of a First Nations tribe discover that those with Indigenous blood are immune to the infection—a reversal of the incredibly tragic historical reality, as countless native populations were decimated by disease brought over by white settlers. Safe from being turned into zombies by a single bite but still at risk from all the other horrors a post-apocalyptic world entails, the members of the Red Crow Indian Reservation fortify themselves, trying to determine what to do about the undead and the many white people who are coming to them for supposed safety. Blood Quantum isn't perfect—despite the inspired premise it does at points get a little lost in generic zombie plot beats—but it shows just how much life there still is in the undead genre. #Alive (2020) The only way #Alive could've been a more perfect COVID-19 movie would have been if the South Korean zombie movie had actually been made for the pandemic instead of just presciently filmed the year before and released in 2020. (Its global premiere was on Netflix in September, just about when people were more than stir-crazy and starved for something new to watch.) Protagonist Oh Joon-woo is a gamer who is forced to hide in his apartment after a zombie outbreak seemingly overtakes Seoul, and he finds himself isolated, bored, and scared about an unsure future since there's no timeline for when (or if) things will ever go back to normal. Pretty relatable stuff! Luckily, #Alive is not nihilistic nor does it summon memories that are too unpleasant to return to. Instead, it's about the importance of human connection, and the lengths to which we'll go to find another person in scary times. Handling the Undead (2024) When zombies rise from the graves in most movies, it's immediately understood to be a bad thing. But don't those who have lost a loved one want nothing more than for the deceased to be back in their lives? The recent Norwegian movie Handling the Undead uses zombies as a profoundly upsetting exploration of grief. When the dead inexplicably come back to some semblance of life in Oslo, three families—a bereft mother whose son is dead and buried, an old woman whose partner recently passed, and a husband whose wife died in an accident on the very day the dead rose—grapple with this grotesque disruption of the stages of their grief. The returned dead haven't been miraculously resurrected; they're decomposing, they don't speak, and they display no emotion. It's worse having them here than when they were actually dead, but what are their loved ones supposed to do? It's almost a relief at the very end once the undead start displaying more traditional zombie tendencies and begin eating the living. That sort of horror is much easier to sit with than grief and the slow, undeniable realization that what is lost really can't ever come back.