I never thought I would be happy to be back in school. These winter months can be long and dragged out, but at least over the snow days I was able to catch up on some great movies, many of which were of the zombie nature. I’m not the biggest fan of horror movies because outright I believe they are pointless and a waste of money these days, but there’s nothing better than watching some zombie’s face being blown off with a shotgun. Below here is a list of my favorite zombie thrillers.

• “Zombieland”
• “Dawn of the Dead” (2004 remake)
• “Shaun of the Dead”
• “28 days later”
• “28 weeks later”

There’s a fine line between good zombie flicks, like the list above, and ones that are just unfortunately made like the Resident Evil series. George A. Romero, “the Grandfather of the Zombie,” made films with underlying messages, taking a complex idea like consumerism and using a simple peril plot of a zombie apocalypse to explore it. The film “28 days later” took a look at survival and how no matter how alone you might be there is a need for some type of connection with others to keep your sanity and get through whatever problems you have. Trust me, I’m not that much of an in-depth thinker when it comes to underlying messages, but by just watching that film and how the characters interacted with each other there was that simple sense of humanity’s need for community. These things are just the icing on the cake of zombie movies because really the only reason why people watch them is to see a group of survivors take down the undead and watch the jerk in film get eaten. I believe the best achievement of any “superficial” film, is to have an audience walking out of the theater having taken away a profound understanding they didn’t expect to get out of a purely entertaining movie. I leave you this week with other zombie movies that are worth a look. Don’t be so surprised these are all done by the same guy; George A. Romero knows how to make a good thriller.

• “Night of the Living Dead”
• “Dawn of the Dead”
• “Day of the Dead”
• “Land of the Dead”
• “Diary of the Dead”