'Didn't Die' Review: Modern Zombie Movie Works Brilliantly as a Family Drama But Lacks the Horror | Sundance 2025

Since George Romero’s seminal 1968 horror movie Night of the Living Dead, we’ve seen just about every zombie story you can think of. From mutant, flesh-eating animals in Zombeavers to apocalyptic comedies such as Zombieland right up to the wildly popular Western-esque The Last of Us, zombies are literally and figuratively constantly coming back from the dead. This has come with some downsides, as it’s becoming increasingly more difficult for filmmakers to create ideas in this subgenre that genuinely feel fresh and unique. Premiering at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Meera Menon’s Didn’t Die forges its own bloody path by taking the story back to the barest of bones. While Romero’s haunting black-and-white DNA is all over it, Menon manages to design her own zombie apocalypse by making the monsters secondary and focusing closely on a family of misfits trying to navigate the complexities of relationships, both familial and romantic, all while the world has become a hollowed and desolate version of what it once was.