The 40 Best Zombie Movies of All Time

Ah, zombie movies. There's nothing quite like witnessing a crowd of ravenous, flesh-hungry creatures to brighten your day. But if you're wondering just why people find zombie movies so fascinating, Stanford literary scholar Angela Becerra Vidergar once explained that, "We use fictional narratives not only to emotionally cope with the possibility of impending doom, but even more importantly perhaps to work through the ethical and philosophical frameworks that were in many ways left shattered in the wake of WWII [when the genre became popular]...In a way, survivalism has become a dominant mode of self-reference for a greater number of people. You see that in the obsession in apocalypse and disaster in the fictional stories we tell." Plus, zombies are just plainly scary. They're unfeeling, and that's maybe the scariest thing of all.

And while the coronavirus pandemic has led many people to reach for happier, lighter movies to watch, there's also a good reason why you're reaching for your favorite post-apocalyptic flick: "There is this glimmer of hope that I am really interested in," Vidergar explains. "Even if as a society we have lost a lot of our belief in a positive future and instead have more of an idea of a disaster to come, we still think that we are survivors, we still want to believe that we would survive."

That's right, behind the gory, bloodthirsty tales we can't get enough of is proof that the human spirit just might be able to survive anything–even the undead. So if you're looking for a new zombie flick to watch, we have some picks for you–here are the 40 best zombie movies of all time.