In a perfect world, having parents means always having a safety net. No matter what happens, you still have a couple of folks who can give you emotional or financial support. Even if you’re a fully functioning adult, when your parents are somehow removed from you, your life changes. The scariest part is that you won’t know how it will change, until it happens.

The films in this entry explore the death of parents in unique ways, but be warned: neither uses tact in dealing with the topic, and instead favour what we all came here to see: exploitative horror.

To quote Sara Lee, “Some people don’t like some things, but nobody doesn’t like… brain-eating zombies!” Alright, not word for word, but zombies have always been a popular horror staple, especially in our household. From Romero’s series to Shaun of the Dead, right up to the recent TV adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead, the “deceased and mobile” have been a regular fixture in Emma’s “education”. That’s why, for our next film, I decided we should fill in one of the crucial blanks in her zombie repertoire: Dan O’Bannon’s cult classic horror-comedy, The Return of the Living Dead.