Tag: Zombies

From Black Zombie to Lost Wax, This Pairing Shows How Death Can Never Die

Maya Annik Bedward’s Black Zombie explores the walking dead’s journey from African spirituality and Haitian Vodou to Hollywood. This thoughtful documentary reclaims the zombie as a symbol shaped by colonialism, slavery and cultural survival.

Black Zombie Poster
Played at Fantasia Film Festival on July 29, 2026 at the Salle J.A. De Sève

Nearly everything you want to know but were afraid to ask about the authentic history of how the walking dead came to be gets nicely tracked in Black Zombie. From their African roots to Haiti to Hollywood and back, it’s neatly explored. This Canadian documentary, directed by Maya Annik Bedward, covers all the gamut needed to understand why it is universally regarded as a metaphor for how those early slavers regarded their cargo. It’s also about how the Yoruba religion became syncretized with Caribbean culture, forming Vodou.

Ultimately, what this work claims is how it all evolved from when Africans brought to America were tossed to the mines rather than dressed to the nines, because of who they are. The root cause considers the fear Europeans had for the spirituality of a world colonizers never bothered to truly understand.

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Why Unholy Night’s Italian Family Zombie Curse Is Surprisingly Effective

A folk curse turns Gino’s Italian family into a hungry ghost festival rather an an Unholy Night. It’s not your traditional celebration either when grandma is that zombie!

Unholy Night Poster ImageNot to be confused with the 2019 film of the same name, this 2026 version of Unholy Night needs a suffix to distinguish it from the earlier work. The earlier take is an anthology, and the latest from freshman Michael Gabriele seems to riff on the idea of why hungry ghosts must be respected. Technically, the undead featured here are zombies, and since everyone knows from the title that this film takes place over the winter holidays, just why an Italian family looks targeted is obvious.

There’s a folk curse going on that has Gino (Marc Bendavid) targeted, and his family is fair game in a cat and mouse run around the block. With Nonna (Jacqueline Robbins) uttering death threats, slowly succumbing to old age, and threatening violence to the entire family, we should all worry. When Rene (Shailene Garnett) gets involved, she learns from her boyfriend that they are not alone. Just how much they do to help the neighbourhood sets this film’s tone.

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Is There Paradaïz with TheNFB in Part Two, When Bread Will Walk Steals The Show?

Surreal migration meets flour-dusted apocalypse in this second NFB spotlight. When Bread Will Walk is the definitive highlight of the shorts program, we’re sure that you’ll reconsider buying Wonder Bread too.

National Film Board of Canada LOGOIn part two of my look at the National Film Board of Canada shorts playing at the Victoria Film Festival,  I turn my attention to one art piece and one very creative riff on the zombie genre. I highly recommend checking out Bread Will Walk, and hope it hits streaming soon. And with the former, there’s more than an existential crisis going on as an individual tries to make sense of chaos theory. After fleeing one world to live in another, this is a work people need to see to be understood. Continue reading “Is There Paradaïz with TheNFB in Part Two, When Bread Will Walk Steals The Show?”

We Bury The Dead, In Lest We Grieve

A restrained zombie drama led by Daisy Ridley, We Bury the Dead trades splatter for grief, memory, and moral unease, following a woman searching for closure on the edge of a disaster zone where the dead may not be fully gone.

We Bury the Dead Movie PosterVertical, Umbrella Entertainment
Mild Spoiler Alert

Daisy Ridley is an actress who’s selective about the roles she takes on. Whether she’s carrying the weight of the Skywalker name or stepping into something far more grounded, her presence brings a quiet gravitas that helps sell the story. In We Bury the Dead, she plays Eva, a woman suspended between grief and hope, unsure whether to mourn her husband Mitch (Matt Whelan) or believe he might still be alive.

Mitch was working in Tasmania when an EMP device accidentally detonated. With communications crippled and information scarce, Eva fears the worst. As media coverage reveals the scale of the devastation and the number of lives lost, the only certainty she has is uncertainty.

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2 Reasons on Why Disney’s Marvel Zombies Fails to Surprise and Deliver

When Marvel Zombies on Disney Plus feels very compressed and is not part of the comic book canon, this entry feelslike Halloween-season fan service instead of a bold new chapter.

Marvel Zombies PosterWhen Captain America sinks his teeth into his comrades, the Marvel Universe stops being heroic and starts being hungry. Not every zombie-head will appreciate what Marvel Zombies on Disney Plus is really about. When the story first appeared in 2009, I was mildly curious but hardly impressed. The premise seemed like a marketing stunt to boost sales—and to be fair, there’s some truth in that. The early 2000s saw zombie fiction claw its way back into the mainstream. With 28 Days Later and The Walking Dead reviving the genre, it wasn’t shocking that Marvel tapped Robert Kirkman to script a tale where the world’s greatest heroes became the world’s hungriest monsters.

The concept endures because it’s more than gore; it’s shock, novelty, and a grim fascination with corrupted heroism. Seeing Spider-Man or Iron Man as cannibals turns morality inside out. These aren’t mindless corpses but beings who keep shards of their conscience even as hunger consumes them. Those too far gone devolve into primal predators, while the surviving humans live in a shattered world that’s no longer theirs—a true Zombie Earth where no refuge lasts.

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All The Scary Details You May Want To Know About Vampire Zombies From Space with Michael Stasko

In part two, fans might want to be careful in what gets revealed concerning all those Easter eggs that can be found in Vampire Zombies From Space.

Mike Stasko - WRITER_DIRECTOR_PRODUCERWhen Mike Stasko makes up one third of the core team who helped fine tune what Vampire Zombies From Space is, I’m really hoping for more! His latest film is almost similar to Casey Walker’s A Little Bit Zombie, a movie made more than a decade ago. Both deal with how victims eventually become a member of the walking dead, and to find a cure is rarely explored. I will post an old interview I did with him and include updates regarding his next horror movie, which is currently in post-production. And please visit this link to read part one with writer Jakob Skrzypa.

While the circumstances are completely different between these two particular films, I’m a sucker for zombie comedies. It’s a subgenre that gets a movie made at least once every two years, but not a lot of them stand out because they lack originality. The last time I laughed out loud was with Anna and the Apocalypse! The fact that it’s also a musical says it all.

There are honestly not enough movies being made that marry random genres together. I have to say it was by sheer luck that this movie and Night of the Zoopocalypse released nearly back to back. The dose of nostalgia and euphoria I had was on cloud nine. Afterwards, I had to fall back to the animated medium to rewatch Monsters vs Aliens to round out what I feel are in my top five favourites of this subgenre. 

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