2026’s Underrated Near-Perfect Zombie Movie Proves The Best Change In The Genre

Published Sep 20, 2026, 12:40 PM EDT

Zoë Miskelly is an editor and second in command for Screen Rant's Movies team, having covered the entertainment industry for almost 10 years now. Zoë's love of superheroes and all things Marvel & DC started out in childhood, and has blossomed into a career getting to talk about some of the biggest and best movies and shows of all time, having previously focused on comics while working at WhatCulture.

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2026's well-regarded but less well-known zombie movie continues one of the best new developments in the genre, as many films involving protagonists facing off against the undead have headed further and further in this direction. While zombie movies are a subsection of horror that is perhaps one of its most popular, the genre does vary wildly in terms of how its stories are told, and how said zombies are depicted.

For example, the more serious and unsettling zombies depicted in the likes of the 28 Days Later series or Train To Busan are decidedly different from the more playful way that comedies like Shaun of the Dead or Paranorman explore the concept and where stories can be taken, ensuring that two people could both be huge fans of zombie films while still enjoying totally different movies.

With that said, zombie films do of course have trends and changes that can be seen in the genre more broadly speaking on a wider level. One of the best of these has gotten more and more attention in recent history, and is a huge part of what sets one of 2026's latest and best zombie movies apart from much of its peers.

Colony Continues One Of The Best Zombie Movie Trends To Have Come Out Of The Genre

While Colony has been a more underrated movie in the wider scheme of things thus far when it comes to its theatrical release, the reviews it has garnered during this time have painted a decidedly positive picture for the film with critics and more casual moviegoers alike. This is clear from Colony's Rotten Tomatoes scores, with the film having netted an 82% Tomatometer score with critics, and a 94% Popcornmeter score with broader audiences.

One of the aspects of Colony that has been most praised across the board when it comes to reviews has been that of the way the film sets up its zombies. Rather than making them the mindless shambling hordes that are so often used in zombie movies and shows that want to center on their human protagonists more, Colony explores the idea of the undead being more sentient and sinister entities, that work less as a senseless group of walking corpses, and instead function as a hive mind of sorts that is altogether more troubling to deal with.

This keeps the story of Colony fresh, and ensures that audiences can't necessarily predict the behavior of this antagonistic force in the film the same way they might be able to in some more classic-style zombie films, as while these beings are capable of evolving and developing more advanced tactics, they're also able to be outsmarted by using their hivemind senses and unique setup against them.

Colony Is One Of 2026's Best-Rated Zombie Movies Because Of How It Plays With The Genre

Colony's approach to the zombie genre continues a stellar movie trend that's developed in this category over the course of the past decades, having arguably had its first major steps with the likes of I Am Legend's 2007 film adaptation, as there's been an increased focus on releases of this kind delving into the idea of zombies that are far more than the dead having risen once more with a taste for human flesh and no sentience outside of this.

2026 kicked off with an interesting exploration of this via 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple - which delved into the idea that the series' own zombies maintain some memories and sense of who they are, even long after being changed by the Rage Virus - and Colony has continued down this same path as well.

This works to enhance its own horror, and ensure audiences are left on the edge of their seats trying to understand what rules these zombies do and don't follow, and how they can be dealt with, since many conventional methods of dealing with the undead in this kind of zombie movie become far more complex with Colony's alterations to its own version of these beings in mind.

Colony