Zombie Movies and Christianity

I love zombie movies. The classic battle between good vs evil, life vs death, humanity vs carnality. Lots of action. Jump-out-of-your skin frights. Plenty of blood and guts. Explosions. Gritty stories of survival. Hollywood entertainment at its best. 

Countless zombie movies have been released in the last sixty years, with spin-offs and spoofs galore. Here are some of the most memorable:

Night of the Living Dead (1968). Seven people are trapped in a farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania, constantly under attack by “ghouls”. Radiation from the explosion of a space probe returning from Venus has reanimated the dead into flesh-eating zombies. The excessive violence and gore were highly controversial for its time, but the film quickly became the template for all zombie films that would follow, including a follow-up ten years later. 

Dawn of the Dead (1978, 2004). Director George Romero struck cinematic gold once again when a mysterious plague turns much of the population into zombies. Social order collapses and millions die. A group of four people barricade themselves inside a shopping mall, where they indulge in every earthly pleasure with all the commercial goods available. Of course, the zombies find a way in. Main characters die, then turn into zombies to attack other main characters. Lots of violence. The film was remade decades later to great acclaim. 

Resident Evil (2002 and beyond). What started as a gore-filled video game evolved into a series of zombie films. Alice, a former covert operative, battles the Umbrella Corporation, whose bioweapons have triggered a zombie apocalypse. She shoots, kicks, and blasts her way through hordes of the undead and the repercussions of corporate greed. The common plot of each film in the series is pretty simple: virus-infected zombies and Alice engage in vicious, bloody battles while every other character gruesomely dies. The same formula, repeated seven times over has made this the highest grossing zombie film series in history. 

28 Days Later (2002). Highly-aggressive chimpanzees transmit a highly-contagious “Rage Virus” to their human keepers, and thus begins the apocalypse. A bicycle courier, Jim, awakens from a coma to find London deserted. He wanders the empty streets and discovers the aftermath of a mysterious massacre. Soon the zombies (who can run like Olympic sprinters) find him and give chase until he's rescued by other survivors. A military unit takes them in, which has its own dark agenda. Jim and his friends manage to escape as the outpost is overrun with bloodthirsty zombies. Two sequels make this series a must-see for zombie fans.

Shaun of the Dead (2004) follows a downtrodden salesman who finds himself in a zombie apocalypse. It cleverly balances violence and scares with witty dialogue and comedy. Eventually the zombies prove to be useful slaves and entertainment for the remaining humans.

The Walking Dead (2010-2022). This longstanding TV series follows Rick, a sheriff's deputy, over 11 seasons. He and a rotating group of friends must fight to survive being eaten by “walkers”, enslaved by corrupt warlords, starving to death due to lack of provisions, and (gasp!) relationship drama. In each episode the main characters manage to evade one disaster only to find themselves facing another. 

Warm Bodies (2013). What could be more heartwarming than a zombie romantic comedy?! “R” is a zombie in the early stages of decay that eats a brain and starts experiencing the memories of the young man he consumed. Falling for the dead man's girlfriend, R saves her from a zombie attack. Their blossoming love begins to convert R back to a normal human and proves to be a cure for zombie-ness. 

I'm sure you get the idea: a highly-infectious disease reduces humanity to flesh-eating hordes of the living dead. Society collapses, resources are scarce, and danger lurks everywhere. Those not infected struggle to survive against all odds. Most don't make it, but the lucky few who manage to evade  contact with zombifying bodily fluids or violent deaths are able to retain their senses and maintain some semblance of order, at least until the next wave of undead appear. 

Awesome.

ABOUT ZOMBIES

Not alive but not completely dead, zombies are the perfect movie villains. Rotting and senseless, they have no souls, so they’re completely expendable. Neither human characters nor film watchers have any remorse in seeing them die (usually). 

Each film has its own pathogen, some form of a contagious virus that converts the living into the walking dead. Any contact with zombie blood or saliva quickly infects the whole person. In some movies, the conversion takes days; in others, seconds. Either way, the death and subsequent reanimation into the walking dead is inevitable. 

Angry, bloodthirsty, and mindless. Doomed to aimlessly wander the earth, zombies search for anything to satisfy their insatiable appetite for living flesh — especially brains, maybe because their own brains are barely functional. Death and destruction are their calling cards. Staggering, they limp along with uncoordinated movements. Dead eyes, decaying flesh, dirty, disheveled, open wounds. There is nothing attractive about being a zombie. 

Perhaps their most striking feature is how they look just like regular people… only deader. T-shirts, hoodies, jeans, pajamas, hard hats, hair curlers — however they were when they ceased to be human is how they remain forever. This is a stark contrast to other movie monsters. Dracula is immaculately dressed and well-groomed, but his pale skin and pointy teeth give him away — he’s not fooling anyone with that fancy cape and aversion to sunlight. Werewolves are more like dogs than regular people. Supervillains have superpowers, and they wear those ridiculous skin-tight outfits. Godzilla and King Kong are just enormous versions of earthly animals; not relatable, unless you have a thing for lizards. Aliens can be humanoid, but with those huge eyes and green skin they’re not really like earthlings at all. Who ever felt sorry for bug-like creatures from another planet when they get blown away at the end of a movie? Orcs, goblins, and gremlins — there’s no mistaking their sinister nature. But every zombie movie has a scene where a character has difficulty determining whether the person standing in front of them is human or not. Zombies are eerily like us. It hits close to home. 

The emotional turmoil of having to shoot the undead version of a beloved family member is also played out in every zombie film. In 28 Days Later, Frank kicks a gate that holds a dead body suspended above it, unleashing a single drop of blood that falls down and lands in his eye. He frantically pushes his daughter away, throwing her to the ground, knowing he’ll soon turn into a bloodthirsty monster. As Frank erratically writhes around, transitioning into a zombie, Jim wrestles with the decision to attack him with a baseball bat. But before he even takes a swing, soldiers pop out of the forest and gun Frank down, all while his daughter looks on helplessly.  Heart-wrenching stuff.

Sometimes the infection is hidden away. In Dawn of the Dead (2004 version), pregnant Luda is scratched by a zombie, but her husband hides her in a storage room. Nevertheless, she turns into a zombie and gives birth to a zombie baby. Before long, they all die, but not before killing others. 

There’s no hiding the evidence. Infection spreads, rage takes over, and soon all that’s left is a dead-eyed, snarling shell of the once-sane loved one. Any attempt to hold onto the old person is futile. The secret comes out in the end; in fact, the secrecy often results in more people dying. We’ve all felt the anguish of watching a tearful actor struggling to pull the trigger on their beloved family-member-turned-zombie. Just moments before they were a regular human just trying to survive! Now the only solution is a bullet to the brain. Awful! Makes for gripping cinema. 

Through all this, we get the sense that it could happen to any of us. We could be the most careful, zombie-conscious character and still get infected by a stroke of bad luck. All are susceptible to time and chance. 

Zombie movies are all about the survivors and how they interact. After the apocalypse, all social discriminators mean nothing. Race, age, money, education, prior employment… none of that matters anymore. The zombies are after everyone. The ensemble of main characters are often a mishmash of people from different walks of life — police officers, nurses, delivery cyclists, parents with young children, soldiers. They all work together to survive… or die trying. 

Moreover, every zombie movie illustrates the depravity of humanity. Forget the flesh-eating monsters out there, the remaining humans are just as bad! Violent, jealous, lustful, disloyal, abusive, and murderous. In Resident Evil, the CEO of the corrupt Umbrella Corporation leverages power to control an entire city.  In Shaun of the Dead, David becomes increasingly homicidal due to his feelings for Shaun’s girlfriend, Liz. In The Walking Dead, Rick’s wife is sleeping with his best friend. In Dawn of the Dead, hedonism rules — trapped in an empty shopping mall with every material good and luxury available, the cast indulges in every excess. In 28 Days Later, a rogue military unit tries to capture women to use as sex slaves. 

The dire circumstances of a zombie apocalypse brings out the worst in human nature. And it’s not pretty. 

DEAD... ACCORDING TO THE BIBLE

Zombie films illustrate how wicked everyday people can be, both through the unrestrained appetites of the undead and the immorality of the living. This lines right up with Christian theology. The Bible doesn’t pull its punches with regards to human depravity.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? (Jer 17:9)

You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked… carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. (Eph 2:1-3)

However, Hollywood has it backwards. At the start of each movie, everyone starts out normal until the apocalypse begins and a killer virus reduces them to bloodthirsty monsters. As the virus takes over society, humanity decays. 

The biblical perspective is the opposite. We’re all the walking dead right from the beginning. We may have healthy bodies and functional minds, but our souls are lifeless and our behavior is helplessly bent toward sin. 

The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one. (Ps 14:2-3)

Unlike zombie films, we were never alive. We are all born into sin because of what happened in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were the only two people to be born with a vibrant, spiritually-alive soul. They had direct access to God and food that enabled eternal life (see Gen 1-2). However, sin infected them. Death entered the world and killed their souls, thereby enslaving them to carnal desires. 

Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned… Death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. (Rom 5:12-14)

Just like the pregnant Luda in Dawn of the Dead gave birth to a zombie baby, the same thing happened to all of us — we were born spiritually dead, slaves to sin. 

The unsaved don’t realize they’re dead on the inside because they’ve never known life. And yet, there’s a lingering emptiness. Like zombies, they try anything to satisfy the hunger in their souls, but no earthly indulgence ever lasts. In fact, it only leads to more death and destruction. 

We can all relate to spiritual zombiness. Anyone who remembers life before Christ can never forget the deep emptiness and aching hunger for “something more”.

The insatiable hunger of our souls can only be filled by God (“Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!” Ps 34:8). The zombie must come alive. And the only way to do this is to eat the Living One.

THE ONLY CURE: JESUS

Again, the solution for our spiritual zombiness is backwards to how it is in the films. In movieland, a living person who gets attacked and eaten by a zombie soon turns into a zombie himself. However, as strange as this may sound, the Bible says that the dead must eat from Jesus — the only fully living person to ever walk the earth — to become alive. 

Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day… As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me.” (Jn 6:53-57)

Wild! This certainly ruffled some feathers when Jesus first spoke it (“This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” Jn 6:60), but he wasn't kidding. Spiritually-speaking, we must eat Jesus. 

This sort of thing happens in Warm Bodies, when R eats the young man’s brain and a drastic change starts occurring inside him. He feels things. He becomes capable of love. The deadness starts to die and he experiences true life. 

In the majority of zombie movies there is no cure for the undead, but here on earth Jesus is the cure for spiritual death. We don’t have to be doomed to wander aimlessly, feeding our fleshly lusts, wreaking death and destruction. No! Life and freedom are possible through Jesus! We just have to keep eating the Son of God. 

Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” (Mt 26:26-28)

“Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” (1 Cor 11:25)

Finally, something that will satisfy our dead hearts! 

O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. (Ps 63:1)

Taking Jesus’ spiritual body and blood into our hearts changes us from the inside out.

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. This is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. (Jn 6:35,40)

We are all familiar with the depravity of our own sinful hearts. When we look in the mirror, we see frightening reflections of ourselves because we know the ugly things we’ve done, things we’d expect from a remorseless, self-seeking monster. A dead-eyed zombie lives in each of us; the Bible calls this our “flesh”.

Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. (Rom 8:5-8)

Praise the Lord for the body and blood of Christ. No need to chase after our fleshly desires anymore. Salvation is available right where we are. 

SUMMARY

Zombie films aren’t for everyone. Dark, violent, gory, scary. And the themes about human depravity are seriously uncomfortable. Zombies, and how survivors react to them, show us the very worst parts of ourselves. However, there are deep spiritual truths hidden in those bloody films. In fact, many passages in the Bible take on whole new meanings in light of zombie films. 

We are all the undead. But thanks to the boundless grace of God, we can be fully alive. This isn’t just the reanimation of dead bodies but a full spiritual resurrection. We just need a single drop in our eye, a single bite of his flesh. From there, our hearts will transform from wicked to good, from sinful to godly, from dead to fully alive. 

God’s kingdom is spreading to all corners of the earth, resurrecting the undead to life. We don’t have to be afraid of a zombie apocalypse happening. It’s already here. The undead are among us, staggering under their senseless pursuit of selfish desires. 

But there’s a cure.

© D. B. Ryen Incorporated, September 2025.

All Scripture quotations are from The English Standard Bible (ESV), Crossway, 2001.