My all-time favorites:
Three of these four make the list not just because the first movie is good, but because the franchise has held up over time. These are movies I own and watch regardless of whether it’s October or not.
The Crazies (2010)
This is the only one-shot film on my “favorites” list (as opposed to a series), but man, it’s good.
This “turned up to 11” twist on Outbreak stars Timothy Olyphant as a small-town sheriff, and it’s like watching Raylan Givens take on a town full of zombies. (No, they’re not technically zombies, but the overall effect is similar.) Much like Hush (which I talked about in Part 2), the thing that makes The Crazies so good is that the characters aren’t idiots. They’re smart people trying to find their way out of a truly scary situation where the government and military hold all the cards. My daughter and I just watched this movie again yesterday, and one line caught our attention: “What would you have preferred, a global pandemic?”