Michael Jackson's Thriller.

The video (the first of its kind) wasn't necessarily about zombies. But it is the zombie movie that has had the most impact. It was the first music video to tell a story or be a movie. The jacket worn by Michael is iconic. The video has been recreated hundreds of times, from small town dance groups to the youtube prison video to the newlywed couple who did it as their first dance. Michael Jackson himself even remade the video for his This Is It tour.

Maybe it's not a film as such, but in terms of it's legacy and importance in both music and popularculture, Thriller has to be the most important zombie film to be released.

It's an obvious one, but the Romero use of zombies is probably the best and most allegorical to the times in which they were made. In each of his three films, the zombies represent some looming, terrifying threat to the lives of the human characters, but also provide a representation of how mass populations act as a collective consciousness. My favourite of the three is Dawn of the Dead, as his use of the zombie apocalypse to question ideas of capitalism, consumerism and how they endlessly enforce norms and trends in terms of culture, entertainment, fashion, politics etc. I for one have definitely been in a shopping mall or public place and watched as the crowds of people pass in and out of shops and restaurants, mindlessly picking out the food they're told to eat, the clothes they're told to wear etc. and thought of Romero's undead creatures roaming the modern landscape.

Shaun of the dead

Juan, looks like a complete 'Shaun' rip off. Shaun mixes the horror and comedy brilliantly. It's funny, scary and sad when it needs to be. It's so difficult to do anything original with the zombie movie, both Shaun and 28 days later (forget the 'they're not really zombies' argument) took a well-worn genre and redefined it. I also think 28 week later is brilliant (although it's a long way from docklands to parliament hill and then from parliament hill to wembley, not a 5 minute run).

New zombie films are being released constantly, probably because they are fairly cheap to make – get a group of your mates to stagger around with contact lenses in. And it's straight to DVD.

Horror film producers / directors should look at novels for something fresh. 'The forest of hands and teeth' is a 'twilight' of the zombie genre. 'The passage' is excellent, although probably considered a vampire novel. 'Handling the undead' is Scandinavian, creepy and disturbing – the zombies don't eat people, they just sit there, then become violent when corralled. From the same author as 'Let the right one it'.

Alex Garland and Danny Boyle's "zombies" in 28 Days Later, although not technically zombies they are working within the same wheelhouse as Romero (the last third is very much similar to Day of the Dead). But I think they have the most subtle use of zombies as being a representative of a socio-political problem. Here they take on the spectre of civil unrest in a post 9/11 world.

The film opens with images of supposedly real violence taking place in what looks like the Middle East which is then revealed is being shown on TV sets in the lab where the 'Rage' virus is being concocted. Angry animal rights activists unleash the virus and suddenly the world becomes infected to the point where nearly everyone is a Rage infected zombie.

Boyle juxtaposes images eerily reminiscent of the 9/11 aftermath, it opens in metropolitan London with bits of paper floating around abandoned streets and there is a wall which has missing persons posters plastered to it, which although shot before the 9/11 attacks, it became strangely prescient.

Its hard to look past Romero, I'm actually a fan of the Land of the Dead idea, if not the way it was excecuted.
The idea of the Zombies as the disenfranchised poor and the living as the affluent rich seems to be a idea worth playing with, however I think LotD failed to achieve what such a great idea could achieve.