I agree with
@HareBrain that the whole zombie card became a lazy one to play several years ago. I think 28 Days / Weeks was probably the apex, both in quality and plausibility (a virus that drives people wild but cannot sustain the infected indefinitely without sustenance - i.e. they all die eventually). World War Z wasn't bad though. The Walking Dead started off as quite engaging but, much like the Alien franchise, the moment they relegate the monster to background noise behind an otherwise regular drama / thriller, it quickly looses its appeal.
What's interesting, I suppose, is how the allegory for the zombie can change from show to show. As previous comments, it can be a metaphor for the cold war as well as consumerism. Personally, I've always seen it as a bit of an allegory for aging or, specifically, our detachment from the youth of the day. Here are these soulless, risk-averse entities wandering about the place, causing mindless destruction, looking unrecognisable to 'normal' people. You can't negotiate with them, and they're just as likely to do themselves harm as harm you. More often than note, you can 'think' your way to safety as they lack the tactical intelligence to plan ahead or negotiate certain obstacles. This doesn't explain the relentless effort zombies put in, however - there's ZERO correlation there!!
I always felt that it was quite telling how teenagers and young people were more drawn to the genre than any other age group and that, on the most part, the older you got, the more you grew out of it, which I don't imagine can be said for Sci-Fi or Fantasy (at least, not as much).
So, yeah; zombies = teenagers. That's my take on it, at least probably the last 10 years worth of titles.
