1. Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Romero took the reins of the genre he created with "Night of the Living Dead" and followed it up with "Dawn of the Dead" — the greatest zombie flick of all time. The film's immediate focus is the action inside a suburban mall, where a band of survivors try to keep swarms of undead at bay. However, it's the setup to the zombie apocalypse at the beginning of the film - where the world tried to make sense of it all - that really makes it resonate. The world is forced to cope with the inevitability of a slow, plodding, violent end. And yet there is still hope. Kind of.