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Zombie Fans, Netflix Has You Covered With These 19 Shows & Movies
These picks are a real no-brainer for your night in.
If your idea of a perfect night in involves dimming the lights, snuggling under your favorite blanket with a bowl of popcorn, and screaming your head off as zombies shamble across your TV screen, then Netflix has the perfect selection for you. There is never a bad time for some good old-fashioned zombie fun, whether it’s during the chilly nights of Halloween season or the mid-summer heat. Whenever the mood strikes you, settle in for all the best zombie movies and TV shows Netflix has to offer. Maybe you are a traditionalist who likes their zombies slow and craving brains, or maybe you prefer a more sympathetic take on the undead. Either way, the streaming service has a zombie treat waiting for you.
A word of warning: Many of these shows and movies are on the gruesome side. Most zombies just can't shake their love of brains — even the heroic ones who solve crimes. The genre is full of blood and gore, but a good zombie story can transcend the ick factor to delve deep into the nature of life and death. Zombie stories can also be wonderfully silly fun. This list features plenty of options for people looking for meditative zombie tales and those who just want to bask in a horror comedy drenched in blood and full of terrible zombie puns.
These 19 zombie shows and movies will satisfy the cravings of everyone who loves stories about the undead.
1. The Walking Dead
The main gang of survivors have had an up-and-down-mostly-down journey over the course of 10 seasons, but there's no denying the cinematic brilliance of The Walking Dead. The show made zombies cool again and sneakily made a story about running from the undead one of the best examinations of the modern human condition. It may be graphically brutal at times, but it still remains riveting after a decade.
2. Army of the Dead
Dave Bautista carries Zack Snyder’s Vegas-themed zombie romp on his massively toned shoulders. Army of the Dead combines two of cinema’s most reliable genres: zombie and heist. It’s your classic tale of a band of ragtag mercenaries trying to steal a fortune currently locked away underneath a Las Vegas casino — all while the world is populated with zombies. In a twist, the movie’s undead are far more athletic and intelligent than your average zombie, proving formidable foes against Bautista’s crew.
3. Dead Set
Think UnReal with zombies. This five episode miniseries blends reality TV culture with a zombie outbreak to startling, terrifying effect. While filming a reality television show, a cast and crew are rendered oblivious to Britain becoming overrun with zombies. By the time they can figure out what’s going on, havoc is unfortunately already on its way. Created by Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker, Dead Set is a perfect example of Brooker’s unnerving prowess.
4. Patient Zero
When a virus strikes the population, humans morph into extremely intelligent killing machines. One human, played by Matt Smith, remains asymptomatic despite being infected. He also may be the key to survival, given that his infection allows him to communicate with zombies. Natalie Dormer and an increasingly shouty Stanley Tucci round out the cast of survivors as they look for salvation with the help of a zombie-whisperer.
5. #Alive
After a rapidly spread virus ravages a major South Korean city, one video game streamer finds himself locked in his apartment, entirely alone and even more desperate. #Alive is the zombie movie for the social media age, playing on our ability and propensity to broadcast anything and everything about our daily lives. The horrors and capabilities of our digital connectivity are on full display and are, at times, more unsettling than the zombies themselves.
6. iZombie
Based on a comic series of the same name, iZombie follows Liv Moore (played by Rose McIver), a once bright-eyed medical resident turned part zombie after attending a party and being infected by the undead (they always said grad school would be hard). iZombie upends the crime-drama genre, following Liv as she works at a coroner’s office, feeding on brains for sustenance. Surprisingly, her grey matter diet allows her to absorb the memories of the departed, which she uses to help solve homicides.
7. Pandemic
Filmed like a first person shooter video game, this movie drops you into a recon mission to save as many survivors of the zombie apocalypse as you can. The best part is that Game of Thrones' Alfie Allen is one of your teammates. It may be a little hard to research the title, given everything that has happened, but Pandemic’s claustrophobic, stylized production is worth the viewing.
8. Cargo
It might not be so bad to be stuck with the ever-charming Martin Freeman, so long as you weren’t trying to traverse a zombie-infested Australia. Cargo swaps the usually populous environments of Zombie movies for the sprawling and already terrifying terrain of the Australian Outback. It’s a brutal and exhausting look at one father’s will to protect himself and his infant child after being stranded by the zombie apocalypse.
9. Kingdom
Netflix’s first original Korean series is a fantasy-horror thriller that’s equal parts action-packed and bone chilling. It’s full of resurrections, dying kings, and mysterious plagues that give rise to the undead. Princes come to power, wars are waged, and massively choreographed set pieces show off production’s skill and budget. It’s all very Game Of Thrones, with fewer dragons and a lot more zombies.
10. The Girl With All The Gifts
Based on a science-fiction novel by the same name, The Girl With All The Gifts switches the usual trope of a super-virus that shatters humanity with a much more moderate fungal disease… that shatters humanity. One young girl — the one with all the gifts — is one of several children immune to the cannibalistic disease, all of whom are being held in a special bunkered school as the keys to humankind’s survival. If that’s not enough, Glenn Close also gives a dynamite performance, as always.
11. I Am Legend
A zombie movie staring Will Smith would seem, on paper, to be a combustible action movie. I Am Legend is not that. In fact, this movie subverts Will Smith’s action persona to create a film that’s much more meditative and pensive. It’s one in a long line of zombie movies that takes aim at exploring human capacity for isolation and loss, doing so with the advent of an adorable German shepherd.
12. The Ravenous
The zombie outbreak is already old news, humanity has been reduced to ash, and our survivors are living in the rural Quebec wilderness. Despite the title, the zombies in The Ravenous are anything but, instead presenting the undead as thinking, gathering beings who build monuments and traps. The movie does well at playing into the juxtaposition between humans and zombies, highlighting the undead’s mundanity and our survivors’ savagery.
13. Zombieland
Rarely will you find a zombie movie — or any movie — with this much talent. The lead quartet of Emma Stone, Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, and Abigail Breslin have a combined eight Academy Award nominations between them. What’s more impressive is their ability to flesh out the decaying world of Zombieland, where there are rules for survival, no one uses a real name, and Bill Murray shows up sometimes. Zombieland deftly splits the difference between action and comedy thanks entirely to its cast’s commitment to the rollicking premise.
14. Day of the Dead: Bloodline
It’s the most recent film in the sprawling story originally created by the godfather of zombie movies, George A Romero. It’s also technically a remake of Romero’s 1985 classic, Day of the Dead, which follows a similar plot of military personnel, scientists, and survivalists living in an underground bunker, looking for a cure. Science takes center stage in this one, as our main characters spend less time trying to kill zombies than they do trying to fix them.
15. The Santa Clarita Diet
Drew Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant star as married realtors living the quiet life in Santa Clarita — that is, until unforeseen events turn Drew Barrymore into a de facto Zombie. The titular diet itself consists of brains, organs, and whatever human flesh Drew Barrymore can ethically and unethically get her hands on. Like many modern Zombie stories, The Santa Clarita Diet combines light horror with comedy, keeping it fresh — even if Drew Barrymore’s character technically isn’t.
16. Black Summer
Set in the Z Nation universe, Black Summer follows a team of special forces as they attempt to quell the storm of zombies overrunning humanity. Black Summer is a bleak and brutal take on the darkest days of the apocalypse. It sets its characters at an interesting time in humanity’s eventual downfall: right on the precipice of total collapse, yet still praying for recovery.
17. Sweet Home
Based on a webtoon of the same name, this Korean apocalyptic thriller follows a young man trying to escape tragedy. The series uses the end of the world as a backdrop for a deeply personal story of a young adult facing personal misfortune. As is the case with most tales of the undead, society is overrun, and our main character is trapped. This iteration sees him stuck in an apartment building infested with monsters, as grotesque as they are lethal.
18. Daybreak
Imagine Stranger Things meets Mad Max. Daybreak follows marauding gangs of teenagers as they try to navigate what’s left of civilization in the wake of a zombie apocalypse. The series is similar to Netflix’s Love and Monsters, as it also follows an outcast traversing a ferocious world looking for his lost love. This one just swaps mutated insects with homicidal adolescent renegades.
19. Anna and the Apocalypse
The rare Christmas-based zombie movie. Anna and the Apocalypse follows the titular Anna and her friends as their tiny town of Little Haven is leveled by the zombie apocalypse. The movie is able to juggle the horrors of the undead with the sensibilities of Christmas cheer, while still packaging itself in the tone of a coming-of-age movie.
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