The only thing better than a new Vin Diesel action flick is a zombie Vin Diesel action flick. Fortunately, on March 13th, we’ll get just that when Bloodshot lights up the cinema screens everywhere!
Boasting the simple log-line of a slain soldier reanimating with superpowers, Bloodshot is just one in a long line of zombie-war films to hit the mainstream in the past few years. Whether it’s a big-budget Brad Pitt blockbuster or a German production from the 70s, zombie-war flicks have been around for quite some time. To get you pumped for Bloodshot, here are the ten best zombie war movies of all time!
Frankenstein’s Army
The Euro-American joint effort of Frankenstein’s Army offers a fun new angle on the zombie war subgenre, as it imagines how a fictional character might handle a lethal undead incursion.
The Richard Raaphorst film starts with the old chestnut of a secret Nazi lab undergoing grisly experiments. This time, however, it’s Russian soldiers who unwittingly find the bunker. When they do so, they discover S.S. brass taking cues from the notebook of Dr. Victor Frankenstein, cobbling undead soldiers together from spare body parts.
Exit Humanity
Exit Humanity offers a refreshing new angle on the zombie war flick. Instead of focusing primarily on Nazis, this one concerns a soldier negotiating a sea of undead ghouls during the American Civil War!
Written and directed by John Geddes, the Canadian film makes the most of its small budget and limited resources. And yet, with Brian Cox’s narration, the film about a man struggling to survive a zombie outbreak while the country is at war with itself is a worthy addition to the subgenre.
Dead Snow 2: Red Vs. Dead
Tommy Wirkola’s Dead Snow 2: Red Vs. Dead does everything a horror sequel should. It takes what worked in the original, expanded it, made it bigger, bolder, and most importantly, way bloodier!
Of course, the reason for the upgrade has everything to do with the budget. Whereas the original film cost roughly $800,000, the sequel upped the figure to roughly $3.7 million. As a result, Wirkola had more resources to play with. The sets are more elaborate, the visual effects are more refined, and the body count is ramped up.
Outpost
While the premise offers very little that’s new, it’s all about the splendid execution in Outpost, a low-budgeted UK zombie war movie every horror completist ought to see.
When a rag-tag band of grizzled soldiers stumbles on clandestine WWII bunker, they quickly discover a sordid spate of experiments. The result has left several S.S. soldiers in a rabid zombie state out to consume the flesh of any rivaling interloper they set their jaundiced eyes on.
Blood Creek
Before Henry Cavill donned Superman’s cape, before Michael Fassbender was considered one of the finest actors in Hollywood, both men explored the darkness of wartime experiments in Blood Creek!
Directed by Joel Schumacher, the film concerns a nefarious occult plot dating back to the Third Reich. When a young man goes off to find his missing brother, he stumbles on the frightening farmhouse where a twisted game of survival has gone on for years. When the man locates his brother, he’s a shell of his former self having been molded into a zombified captive.
Shock Waves
Despite limited screen time, the great Peter Cushing headlines one of the weirder zombie war movies of all, Ken Wiederhorn’s Shock Waves!
When a yachting crew is suddenly shipwrecked in the Caribbean, the sole survivors make their way to a remote island. Upon arrival, they discover a sadistic Nazi soldier who has been breeding Nazi-zombies in a secret compound on the island. Here’s the thing though. These aren’t flesh-eating zombies as we know and love, these zombies kill by drowning victims instead!
Dead Snow
Norwegian filmmaker Tommy Wirkola burst on to the international scene with his highly entertaining and cheekily irreverent Nazi-zombie-comedy, Dead Snow!
The simple set up involves a gaggle of medical students on a skiing vacation in the snowy mountains. When the students arrive, they’re warned of a leftover Nazi bunker from WWII, where heinous experiments left several soldiers in an undead state. Cue the carnage as a battalion of Third Reich bloodsuckers starts to invade!
Wyrmwood: Road Of The Dead
Horror fanatics take note. If there’s one title to take away from this celebratory list, it’s the ferocious and action-packed Aussie zombie-war film, Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead!
The gorily relentless movie follows Barry (Jay Gallagher), a mechanic who must traverse a gauntlet of uncouth zombie ghouls in order to find his kidnapped sister before an all-out apocalypse breaks out. With nary a dull moment, genuine bouts of humor and more gore than you’d ever hope for, Wyrmwood is the best zombie war movie you’ve never heard of.
Overlord
Once thought to be part of the super-secretive Cloverfield franchise, Julius Avery’s WWII zombie blitz Overlord is simply one of the best examples of the subgenre we’ve ever seen.
The J.J. Abrams-produced mash-up tracks a small troop of American soldiers who are dropped behind enemy territory on the night before D-Day. When two dedicated soldiers try to help a local family in need, a harrowing discovery takes place. The German government has built vicious zombie soldiers to combat American advances.
World War Z
Despite the monumental production woes that threatened to shut down the movie for good, Brad Pitt and director Mark Forster turned in the best, biggest and most ambitious zombie-war flick to date.
What makes WWZ so much better than the rest is, in addition to the number of resources a major studio production can afford, is the gravid tone the film adheres to. This isn’t a cheap, silly, gross-out B-movie as many zombie flicks tend to be, it’s instead an A-list production all around. The sheer size, scale, and scope of the zombie incursions remain unparalleled.
