Seven Films About People Coming Back From The Dead

Zombies! Zom-coms! Rom-coms! Musicals!

Apr 19, 2025

There are more variations on this theme than you would think, that is to say, they aren’t ALL zombie movies.

Although with the explosion of living dead films over the past ten years or so, you could easily pick seven - no, make that seventy-seven - worthwhile zombie movies that weren’t merely variations on the template established all those years ago by George Romero.

Here you will find some classic films in a variety of genres - zombie movie, rom-com, zom-com (but not zom-rom-com, not really), grand-guignol comedy and musical. All tremendous fun and well worth watching.

Judas (Carl Anderson) and Jesus (Ted Neeley) sharing an exchange of views.

A bus drives into the desert and pulls up at some ancient ruins. Hippies in 70s clothes pour out and begin unloading costumes more appropriate to Judea in AD30 and props too. The actors playing Judas and Pilate are clearly seen, as is Ted Neeley (Jesus), in a patterned paisley shirt, solemnly overseeing the unloading of a huge cross.

A guitar riff kicks in and the camera cuts to Judas singing the first song Heaven On Their Mind, then we’re into a solid, unrelenting hour and a half of songs, some fabulous, interspersed with often ropey attempts to link the songs in the classic operatic form, where literally every part of the plot and action advanced through the medium of music.

It is assumed that most viewers know the story on which Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s musical is based, so the film doesn’t really bother with too much exposition, but that’s fine. The songs are what we’re really here for - I Don’t Know How To Love Him, Everything’s Alright, The Last Supper (basically a drinking song for the Apostles), and of course Jesus Christ Superstar itself, which created any a football terrace chant.

It’s the best song, a proper funk workout that Stevie Wonder1 would have been proud of, and also the most interesting song lyrically, placed right at the end of the film, with Judas really laying into his friend, who has destroyed his illusions more than somewhat:

Every time I look at you I don’t understand
Why you let the things you did get so out of hand
You’d have managed better if you’d had it planned
Now why’d you choose such a backward time and such a strange land
If you’d come today you could have reached the whole nation
Israel in 4BC had no mass communication

Of course, the joke’s on Judas here because Jesus’ message DID reach the whole world.

The second verse is even more fascinating, referring to other religions - Tim Rice really nails this one:

Tell me what you think about your friends at the top
Now who’d you think, besides yourself, was the pick of the crop?
Buddha was he where it’s at, is he where you are?
Could Mohammed move a mountain of was that just PR?

It’s corny, it’s magnificent, the Israeli locations are amazing.

If Jesus saw this film, he would love it for what it is and forgive its faults.

Death Becomes Her (1992) - dir. Robert Zemeckis

“My ass! I can see my ASS!”

A Gothic horror screwbally comedy with some points to make about the lengths women will go to in order to turn the clock back, looks-wise.

The Substance (starring Demi Moore) occupies similar ground ,but Death Becomes Her is much funnier, and makes its points more slyly, concealed beneath a gloriously over-the-top plot.

Fading, ageing star of musicals Madeline Ashton (Meryl Streep) is insanely jealous of her friend Helen Sharp (Goldie Hawn), and steals her fiance, plastic surgeon Ernest Menville (Bruce Willis).

Years later, Helen, obese, psychotic and incarcerated in an asylum, drives the other staff and inmates mad with her obsession with getting her own back on Madeline.

A few more years pass by and Madeline and Ernest are still together but miserable. They attend a party promoting Helen’s new book and Madeline is devastated to see that Helen is now thin and gorgeous, looking considerably less than her fifty years.

With her career fading Madeline resolves to seek out a rejuvenative cure from the mysterious Lisle Von Rhuman, who claims she is 71 years old despite looking about thirty. Madeline drinks the potion, obviously.

Meantime Helen has won back Ernest and, still obsessed, persuades him to kill Madeline. What follows is hilarious, horrible and absolutely logical.

Streep and Hawn form a superb comic duo while Willis’s oleaginous Ernest, simpering and sucking up to both women in turn and sometimes to each in the presence of the other, is a solid attempt on his part to play against his usual type.

My Favorite Wife (1940) - dir. Garson Kanin

Every woman’s nightmare. The husband meets the hot bloke you were stuck on a desert island for seven years with. SOME women would be embarrassed by this but not Ellen (Irene Dunne). What a gal!

Now to a screwball comedy from an earlier era.

My Favorite Wife has the disinction of being one of few films to be adapted from a poem (Enoch Arden by Tennyson). Jabberwocky and Beowulf are the only others I can think of for the moment, but I’m sure there are more. Do let me know.

My Favorite Wife stars the incomparable Irene Dunne as Ellen Arden, missing for several years, but has in fact been shipwrecked on a desert island. Ellen returns home after seven years to pick up where she left off with her husband Nick(Cary Grant), but he has declared her legally dead and has just married his new love Bianca Bates (Gail Patrick, whose college background in law led her to contribute to the writing of the judge’s dialogue).

Showing impressive tenacity, Ellen then tracks the newlyweds to their honeymoon hotel in Yosemite and follows them there, confronting Nick.

The film proceeds from there at a high pace, with smart dialogue and civilised exchanges all round, until Nick is made aware that Ellen was not alone on the island, and that her companion Stephen Burkett (Randolph Scott) is in love with her.

A rom-com for the ages, never sentimental, always smart and always funny, the film was remade as Move Over, Darling with Doris Day and James Garner, an inferior movie but possessing one of the great theme tunes.

The Dead Don’t Die (2019) - dir. Jim Jarmusch

“This isn’t gonna end well”. Cliff (Bill Murray) is mildly irritated by Ronnie’s (Adam Driver) seeming prescience. Hank (Danny Glover) is thinking he’s too old for this shit. Possibly.”

You know those ridiculously star-studded films with huge casts? Yeah, I don’t like them as a rule.

Those ridiculously overstuffed movies that, taking their cue from the comics that spawned them, feature twenty-three Avengers, ten Guardians Of The Galaxy, seven or eight members of the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, Deadpool, Mickey Mouse, Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, the Crazy Gang, the Carry On team and the Three Stooges.

The theory is that if you like a couple of the actors or characters you’ll happily shell out your three and nine to watch the film at your local Googleplex. Unfortunately the theory is rewarded repeatedly by increased Box Office success.

Hence the crowded cast list of The Dead Don’t Die, which includes Adam Driver, Bill Murray, Steve Buscemi, Tom W.aits, Tilda Swinton, Chloe Sevigny, Selena Gomez, Carol Kane and Iggy Pop. But no Stooges.

And to be fair to Jim Jarmusch, assisted by the very nature of zombie films, the movie never feels crowded, since the characters are zombified and despatched at regular intervals throughout the film, like an old-school variety bill - there’s Carol Kane, oh she’s been behaeaded! - ooh the racist Farmer Miller (Buscemi) has gotten his just desserts - and so on.

The cause of the zombie outbreak is firmly pegged early on as polar fracking. There’s a lot of deadpan social comment but the film never teeters over into polemic.

The people who die are (mostly) painted as sympathetic, with the minimum of exposition, dialogue and expression. The film stayed with me for a long time after the first viewing, and I think the main reason is probably that you don’t really get the huge visceral gut punches that are normal in a Z-movie. Folks are beheaded and go to their reward in quite a matter-of-fact manner, with barely anybody even raising their voice.

It’s the dialogue that stays with you.

Cliff - “So what are you thinking?”
Ronnie - ”You… you really wanna know”
Cliff - ”Uh huh”
Ronnie - ”I’m thinking zombies”
Cliff - “What?”
Ronnie - ”You know zombies, ghouls, the undedad”
Cliff - ”Are you…you’re trying to tell me… you’re thinking zombies did this?”
Ronnie - “Yup”

The only thing that annoyed me was the explanation for Ronnie’s prescience, which seemed forced, but ultimately this is just a minor quibble.

Never seen a Jim Jarmusch movie before this one, but I will be seeing more very soon.

Hermit Bob - “Zombies. Remnants of the materialist people.
Namelessness of the numberless mortals
What a fucked up world.”

Just Like Heaven (2005) - dir. Mark Waters

From the very first scene, you’re hooked.

The Dreamworks logo - always a good sign in itself - appears to Katie Melua’s impossibly lush version of The Cure’s Just Like Heaven which, unusually for these covers of old songs, works magnificently.

Then you see Reece Witherspoon sitting in a beautiful garden with her eyes shut as the music swells, the camera pans round, we see she’s sitting on a - say wha’? - plastic chair…then her colleague wakes her up and she’s in green scrubs in a medical staff common room saying “how long was I out for that time?” and that’s it, you’re hooked.

Based on the novel Et Si C’etait Vrai (If Only It Were True) by Marc Levy, and set in San Francisco, the movie concerns a landscape gardener David Abbott (Marc Ruffalo) who sublets an apartment after his wife passes away.

However, the prevous tenant, ER physician Elizabeth Masterson (Reese Witherspoon), who was in a car crash three months earlier, is still hanging round the apartment, despite nobody being able to see her apart from David.

Elizabeth can’t quite remember who she is, so David tries asking around the neighbourhood to find out. No joy - until he enlists the help of the guy who runs the local alternative bookshop, who just happens to be a psychic.

So far, so Patrick Swayze / Demi Moore, but this film - did I mention it was based on a book? - takes a less-trodden turn.

I’m not going to say another thing about it because, if you haven’t seen it, it is absolutely beautiful, funny and life-affirming.

For example - David persuades his buddy to help him remove Elizabeth’s body from the hospital:

David - We’re really grateful Jack.
Jack - I’m not doing it for you.
David - Then why are you doing it.
Jack - Because some day, trust me, I’m gonna need help moving a body, and
when that day comes, I don’t want to hear any shit from you!

I’d say Notting Hill’s position in our house as the “Most-watched romcom” is under threat.

Or at least, it would be if Notting Hill didn’t have a twenty-five-year plus start.

Zom-100: Bucket List Of The Dead (2023) - dir. Yusuke Ishida

What exactly is Akira Tendo (Eiji Akaso) looking at that is more scary that what is just in front of him, behind those bars?

The basic premise of this unusual zombie movie is one of those where even the very worst possible realisation of the idea would still be worth watching. Zom-100: Bucket List Of The Dead is close to the best possible realisation.

The film opens with office worker Akira Tendo (Eiji Akaso) leaving his flat and being chased down the landing by a horde of zombies. He shouts “At this rate theyre gonna mark me late at work!” which sets the tone.

Cut to a year earlier as Tendo lands his dream job with a large Tokyo production company. However, the day-to-day reality is far from what he envisaged.

Employees are worked into the ground, expected to put in all-nighters at short notice, abused by the managers, credit for their contributions stolen by their middle-managers. After three years of this treatment, Tendo has become nothing more than a…well, you know the rest.

So when the zombie apocalypse hits Tokyo, his reaction is relief that he doesn’t need to go back to work for The Man any more, and he can now do pretty much anything he wants before his inevitable conversion to the ranks of the Living Dead.

His first step is to create a bucket list:

100 Things I Want To Do Before Becoming A Zombie

Tell someone I’m in love with them
Clean my room
Go Stay-At-Home Camping
Relax In A Hot Spring
Have Drinks With A Flight Attendant
Ride A Motorcycle
Put Things In Shopping Cart Without Caring About Price
Dye Hair
Paint Self-Portrait
Set Off Fireworks Display
… (we don’t see any more)

It isn’t too much of a spoiler to reveal that he does most of the first ten items, mostly within the first ten minutes of the film, with some frightening encounters with zombies which he takes in his stride.

Tendo takes the trouble to loot the ingredients for a steak dinner, but finding he has no condiments, he moans to himself:

“If I have to eat this delicious steak plain after all the effort I went through to get it, I’m better off as Zombie food”

Mate, talk about yer First World Zombie Apocalypse Problems.

He is rescued from a horrific death by zombie by a woman who imparts the crucial information that sound attracts the zombies, which saves his life, while not going to the lengths a similar plot device necessitates in John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place(2018).

Thank goodness for that because we’d have missed out on some epic dialogue and gags.

Tendo seeks out and finds his former work colleague and old football team-mate Kencho in a Love Hotel that has been taken over by zombies.

You don’t see a semi-naked zombie woman tied to an X-shaped cross every day, to be fair.

Together they head for a fabled “safe place” they have heard of called The Aquarium, which they do locate eventually but is it the haven they were expecting? Mild spoiler - Zombie Shark. That is all.

The film ends on quite a positive note for a zombie movie. It’s like nothing else I have every seen.

Carousel (1956) - dir. Henry King

Stonecutters cut it on stone
Woodpeckers peck it on wood
There's nothin' so bad for a woman
As a man who thinks he's good!”

So, this piece started with a football song, so it seems fitting that it should end with a football song, one of the most famous ones of all, sung by Liverpool fans from the early 60s to this day. It’s safe to say, this will carry on as long as there is football.

Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote many great musicals in the 1940s and 1950s, all with relatable stories that are capable of standing on their own even without the incredible songs, and all remaining staples of stage and Christmas TV screens to this day (Oklahoma!, South Pacific, The King And I and The Sound Of Music)

Carousel stands proud in this company. It tells the story of carousel barker Billy Bigelow, who dies while attempting to rob the local mill owner, but gets to go back for a day fifteen years later, when he witnesses the daughter he never knew graduate High School.

But that’s no reason to deny how great the songs are - June Is Busting Out All Over with its ten-minute dance routine A Real Nice Clambake, and especially the bonkers chorus to Stonecutters Cut It On Stone (above).

And of course You’ll Never Walk Alone, sung first by Julie’s cousin Nettie to comfort her after Billy dies, and then right at the end at the graduation ceremony with Billy, his work done, happily off back to…well, heaven, we presume?

Hope you’ve enjoyed this swift journey through the born-again, in more ways than one, I guess.

Let me know any I’ve missed out, I’m sure there’s hundreds.

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