Nollywood and African Zombies

While the zombie is historically considered a New World monster, with origins in Haiti, many anthropologists, sociologists, linguists, and cultural historians trace the source of zombies back to Africa, with both the word and the concept of a dead person being resurrected and controlled, either corporeally or through soul-capture and thus spiritually of Western and Central African origin. Thus, zombies are originally African.

Contemporary African zombie culture, however, is far more often than not inspired by Western pop culture (i.e., zombie films and television programs) than indigenous zombie beliefs. The 1986 film Witchdoctor of the Living Dead (1985) represents the first African zombie film. No zombie films followed until over a quarter century later. In the twenty-first century, a significant culture of zombie cinema has emerged from South Africa and West Africa. The Dead (2010) represents an African zombie narrative filmed in West Africa by British filmmakers. South Africa’s Last Ones Out (2015) is the first feature-length zombie film from that nation, with a number of short and student zombie films being produced in the second and third decades of the twenty-first century. By far, however, the largest canon of zombie films comes from Nollywood, the Nigerian videofilm industry.

Beginning in 1992, Nigerian filmmakers began making films directly on video for duplication and distribution, a national cinema now termed “Nollywood” that is one of the largest content producers in the world. A decade in to the twenty-first century, Nigerian filmmakers discovered zombies and many zombie films have been emerged from Nollywood. Low budget, imitative of American zombie cinema, but with local flavor, themes, and languages (most in Yoruba), these films nevertheless have significant fan bases and offer interesting local stories of zombies and the world they make. Noteworthy films and series include C.J. Obasi’s Ojuju (2014), Outbreak 2020 (2014) from writer Oyebanjo Oyemaja and director Sam Perry, the Walking Dead film series (2017) (no relation to the Kirkman comic or AMC television series), Zombie Action (2021), Road to Jabi (2022), Zombie Attack (a series with 8 episodes) (2022), Hierarchy of Evil (2025), and Alive Till Dawn (2025).