Turn friends into zombies with George Romero’s App of the Dead

You could say George A. Romero has a thing for zombies. His new film, Survival of the Dead, follows on from previous flicks Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead and Diary of the Dead. No jumping on the vampire or werewolf bandwagons for him.

However, he’s clearly alive to the buzz around iPhone. Romero has just launched an app called, well, App of the Dead. It lets users turn photos of their family and friends into flesh-creeping zombies using more than 20 virtual items, including open wounds, wonky eyes and teeth that would give even Shane MacGowan nightmares.

The app also has a pseudo-game element, where you can then blast your created zombies to pieces. A simple but fun idea, and one that should drum up some viral excitement around the film.

That said, we suspect there’ll be some eyebrows raised at Nokia. Back in January last year, the company launched a spoof ‘Zombie Singles’ dating website to promote N-Gage game Resident Evil: Degeneration. It included similar photo-warping features, although it was purely online, rather than a mobile app. Perhaps they missed a trick…

• George A. Romero’s App of the Dead