9 Zombie Movie Plot Twists That Everyone Saw Coming
There was once certainly only George A. Romero’s initial “Trilogy of the Dead” for audiences to watch. Now, there seems to be a new zombie project published on streaming or theatres every week. Even with the inundation, filmmakers are finding new and inventive ways to both expand the mythos and provide audiences with startling curls.
The direction does not seem to be going anywhere any time soon because many of these programs have gone on to be well-reviewed, lucrative, or the combination of the two. Yet even in good zombie films, there can be plot curls that are so obvious, the audience can see them from a league away.
9. The Baby’s A Zombie – Dawn Of The Dead (2004)
Zack Snyder’s take on what is arguably George A. Romero’s best zombie movie, Dawn of the Dead, gives audiences a fresh modern improvement to the zombie lineup: a baby zombie. The undead baby makes an appearance halfway through the film as the terrified protagonists blockade themselves in a local mall to prevent being expended by a mob of zombies.
Adding an expectant woman to the narrative increases the urgency that’s been current from the tense emptying scene. Even still, the audience knew that the baby was going to be born. Considering it was a graphic atrocity film, it stood to reason that the baby would also be undead and would need to be eradicated just like any other zombie.
8. A Heroic Sacrifice – I Am Legend (2007)
The eponymous 1954 novel which I Am Legend was based on ends with some stunning prophecies. The cast and crew even shot this ending where Dr Neville is virtually the movie’s hero and sinner. Neville is the last human to die, and this evacuates him with a tarnished reputation.
The vampires (or zombies) see him as a sadist who takes pleasure in murdering their budding society. The final cut of the movie goes a more reliable route, with Will Smith’s Dr Neville finding a cure just before his heroic death. There’s no moral grey area for the hero; instead, the audience encounters a standard sacrifice for the greater good.
7. Dave Bautista’s Fate – Army Of The Dead (2021)
Scott Ward shooting in Army Of The Dead
Netflix’s Army of the Dead includes a cast of well-developed characters, so it’s never clear who will live and who will perish. This anxiety is overstated by the film’s intentional lack of simplicity as to the identity of the film’s true protagonist. It serves as an indirect yet obvious bait and shifts that occur at the end of the film.
The redemption and successive death of Dave Bautista’s Scott Ward appeared foreshadowed almost from the outset. When a narrative sets up greed as a character’s motivation in a zombie film, it implies the finished path their arc will take. Scott is no different, so his death wasn’t a surprise. It didn’t take long before the audience knew that this was the tale of Scott’s alienated daughter, Kate, who is more of a conventional hero and thus lives.
6. They’re Just Like Us – Land Of The Dead (2005)
LAND OF DEAD
The zombies in Night of the Living Dead staggered around groaning. The undead in Dawn of the Dead did just about a similar thing, save for the fact that they could recall their life’s habits. Then, Day of the Dead had one listening to music and congratulating an officer. It was a signifier that zombies exist more than they seem, and it’d yet to stray into unbelievability. Land of the Dead’s finding, with the zombies selecting not to eat one group of species because they’re non-threatening, is a far cry from the lumbering, teeth-gnashing nasties of Romero’s new.
It’s predictable, too, because the movie had so firmly established one zombie as the governor. If the zombies can have leaders, they can congregate and strategize. The intelligent zombie trope can be terrifying, but it’s fairly clear to the audience early on that Romero is going for a take on radiating nations living in peace.
5. The Soldiers Are Infected – Planet Terror (2007)
Robert Rodriguez’s best half of the 2007 double feature Grindhouse, Planet Terror, is almost entirely unpredictable. However, it’s pretty obvious from Bruce Willis’ snarling demeanour in the first scene that he and his soldiers are the main antagonists who have something to do with all the zombies wreaking havoc on the small Texas town.
This suspicion grows more apparent due to his departure from the script for the majority of the film. The audience gets the feeling that Willis, then a theatrical headlining star, is going to come back in a major way. He does so by the third act, where Willis’ Lt. Muldoon expounds upon how he and his men have infected themselves. They need the gas that initiated the infection because it is what staves off more severe effects. The “twist” here is obvious: the saviours sent by the government are there to kill the heroes. Audiences are used to distrusting authority in these types of films (with Night of the Living Dead being the most famous example), so this reveal wasn’t that shocking or convincing.
4. Flagstaff & Albuquerque – Zombieland: Double Tap (2019)
Zombieland: Double Tap is a film packed with new cast members. Some, like Rosario Dawson, seemed pretty certain to survive until Zombieland 3. When Luke Wilson and Thomas Middleditch pop up around the midway mark of the sequel, the viewer doesn’t get the same feeling.
The narrative is about the established quartet, not Flagstaff (Middleditch) and Albuquerque (Wilson). It’s as if they’re mirror images of Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) and Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) that serve no narrative need other than to add to the film’s body count. There’s no way all four of them will get along until the conclusion, even if it isn’t the zombies that do the homicide. When they die, it’s both graphic and expected.
3. Some Endings Can’t Be Remade – Night Of The Living Dead (1990)
Tom Savini’s 1990 remake of George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) sticks to the narrative whacks of the original almost to the letter. The ending, however, couldn’t and arguably shouldn’t have been remade.
The original’s ending was a fairly subtle but definitive statement on race relations in the United States. The remake (also written by George A. Romero) alters Ben’s fate. The character of Ben is played here by Tony Todd, who provides many of Night of the Living Dead’s best minutes. He dies in both, but his demise here is more conventional for horror. What’s new is Barbara’s fate as she is turned into a tough “final girl” character that is now standard in the atrocity genre. It works in the movie, but compared to the abrupt, gut-wrenching ending of the original, it’s predictable.
2. There’s A Cure! – World War Z (2013)
In a scene from World War Z Brad Pitt
As the film sprints toward its climax, World War Z’s audience becomes increasingly aware of the fact that a sequel is already set up. This is part one of a series.
Not all movies abstract nicely and neatly, be it a three-act structure or something a little more subversive. With World War Z, there’s not much of an ending at all. Rather, Brad Pitt’s Gerry Lane injects himself with a vaccine to fight more zombies. World War Z’s original ending was more complicated and almost certainly would have proven less predictable to the audience.
- The Professor’s Intentions – Patient Zero (2018)
This star-studded sci-fi zombie movie from 2018 mostly flew under the radar. Amongst some of its perceived problems was a reliable plot thread. Matt Smith (Doctor Who) plays Morgan, a character who hovers between infected and fully human. Fairly late in the film, Stanley Tucci comes into the narrative playing a similar character phoned the Professor.
It’s clear from the moment he asks for Morgan by name that he knows additional than he should. Morgan has been established as the hero, and the Professor’s sly demeanour spells out that he has ulterior intentions aside from simply meeting someone similar to himself. This is substantiated when he calls his fellow infected to the base for an assault. As this plot twist was expected due to Tucci’s telegraphed villainy, the film’s conclusion feels rushed and generic.