Romero created the modern zombie film during times of great social change in the world, they resurfaced at the height of the recession and war on terror in the early 2000s, and now that we're in the midst of an era of international political turmoil, I've noticed some pretty good zombie movies popping up again. It's likely the success of that series has a role to play in the way zombie movies have withered at the cinema, either because audiences are burnt out or zombie fans are getting their fix at home. Is it genre burnout? Did audiences tire of the undead the way they tired of Westerns? It's possible, but unlikely considering the success of one pop culture juggernaut: AMC's The Walking Dead, which has triumphed in ratings since it debuted back in 2010. But, in terms of volume and often quality, the zombie movie has taken a backseat in recent years. There's still a lot of, ahem, hunger for the genre in indie cinema. In the years since, the production on zombie movies has drastically slowed, especially at the studio level. There were post-modern deconstructions ( Cabin in the Woods, Zombieland), clever mutations to the DNA of the creatures ( Mulberry Street, Pontypool), foreign films ( Rec, The Horde), remakes of foreign films ( Quarantine), and animated films ( ParaNorman), not to mention all the straight-up entertaining low-budget shlock that was hitting DVD shelves en masse. What was even more amazing was how many of them were worth watching. By the end of the early '00s, there were literally dozens of zombie movies a year (and more of them than ever had the word "zombie" in the title). If the godfather of zombies was back, Zombies were definitely back. Edgar Wright's meta zombie comedy was a love letter to the genre, a razor-sharp deconstruction of the zombie classics, and a zombie classic in its own right. The next year, Romero released Land of the Dead in theaters, his first directorial return to zombies in three decades. Then Shaun of the Dead happened, and the genre shifted once again. At the same time, indie zombie movies started getting really good, pushing the boundaries of the conventional zombie mythology and using the narrative format to tell strange original stories. All were big-budget studio films with nationwide theatrical rollouts. First Danny Boyle's genre-evolving 28 Days Later set the stage, then came the Resident Evil adaption, and Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead remake. Until the new millennium hit and then, hot dog, zombie business wasn't just booming again - it was bigger than ever. The creature had become a core concept in the genre, but outside of ongoing horror sequels ( Return of the Living Dead, Zombie) low-budget fright flicks, and the occasional genre oddity ( My Boyfriend's Back, Cemetery Man and Dead Alive), the undead walked the earth no more. Then, as quickly as it exploded, the zombie went out of fashion. Filmmakers like Dan O'Bannon, Fred Dekker, and Stuart Gordon came along and toyed with the genre constructs fans of Romero's work who built off his foundation to further explore and expand what a zombie movie could be. Italian horror legend Lucio Fulci picked up the concept and ran in his own direction with it, first with Zombi 2(aka Zombie), then with his much more bizarre and experimental "Gates of Hell" trilogy. At the same time, an entire genre sprung up around Romero's works, spanning the globe.
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