The 9 Best Zombie Movies That Feel Really Realistic

The 9 Best Zombie Movies That Feel Really Realistic

What is scarier than a machete-wielding maniac in a hockey mask or an abandoned mansion where vengeful spirits lurk? If you ask me, zombies are the most horrifying concept in horror cinema and zombie movies are among some of the finest in the genre.

Some may ask, "Why? How does the idea of a hungry, rotting corpse suffering from rigor mortis sound scary? It's completely impossible!"

Not to say that these naysayers are wrong, and even television shows (see The Walking Dead), exploring the concept of the rise of the undead have provided thought-provoking looks at how society is consumed by chaos, widespread hysterics, senseless violence, and our own loss of humanity. So, while the supernatural plot device may not be as convincing, the message is shockingly believable.

Through generations of zombie movies from the works of George A. Romero to Jim Jarmusch's upcoming The Dead Don't Die, what cinematic tale of gore and survival challenges our beliefs most effectively? I have picked eight iconic creature features (and one franchise that you could probably guess) and rank them by how realistically they imagine a world that has been overrun by the dead.

9. Overlord (2018)

Gamers all over the world eyed this J.J. Abrams-produced gem with ecstatic anticipation that they were finally seeing the film adaptation of the zombie-inspired levels of Call of Duty they had dreamed of. As it turns out, it is not the Army vs. undead splatterfest they expected, but that is essentially what helps Overlord maintain some shred of plausibility.

As a twist on true accounts of human experimentation by the Third Reich during World War II, Overlord follows a small group of American soldiers who discover the Nazis’ scientific approach to achieve immortality has spawned horrifying results.

The film is more war than gore, with references to reanimated corpses and violent mutants appearing less frequently than traditional armed combat, but a zombie outbreak on the eve of D-Day would have had you shaking your head, saying, “That never happened.” Overlord keeps it covert without beating you over the head with its horror elements, resulting in a WWII fantasy more believable, at least, than Inglourious Basterds.

Speaking of Brad Pitt...

8. World War Z (2013)

Author Max Brooks stated in the documentary Doc of the Dead that zombies do not scare him; he is not convinced by the idea of cannibalistic reanimated corpses at all. What does scare him is the concept of a virus powerful enough to create widespread mania and destroy humanity as we know it.

Max Brooks took that approach to his novel, World War Z, framed as an oral history of an epidemic turning people into ravenous, flesh-craving mutants, which producer and star Brad Pitt made into this action-packed disaster flick.

The film manages to treat the subject matter maturely, not treating its zombie themes as excuses for gore or even going for the apocalyptic aftermath route. Instead, it puts you right into the middle of the event, as Pitt’s United Nations investigator struggles to figure out the cause and, hopefully, the cure for this international catastrophe, while also serving up potent political commentary.

However, I cannot say I find mindless flesh-eaters smart enough to climb a several-hundred foot wall particularly realistic, so it loses points there.

7. Shaun Of The Dead (2004)

Despite being pretty straightforward, Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead still managed to become one of the most iconic movies of the zombie genre. The key to Shaun of the Dead's success, and its realism, may be its highly relatable characters.

Shaun (co-writer Simon Pegg) and Ed (Nick Frost) are a couple of average slackers who are far from prepared to take on a horde of undead overrunning London, leading them to make some very bad decisions as they struggle to avoid the fate of the infected. But how can you blame them?

The characters’ ill-advised efforts only make them more authentic and, while they also serve as setups for some memorably hilarious moments, they lead to heartbreaking consequences that make you wonder why you were laughing in the first place. People are dying here!

6. Train To Busan (2016)

The Korean horror extravaganza Train to Busan may be the most potent example in recent memory of the key elements of a perfect zombie movie: relentless terror, critical thinking, and a heart.

A divorced businessman (Yoo-Gong) is taking his daughter (Su-an Kim) on a train from Seoul to Busan to visit her mother when a woman infected by a mysterious virus comes aboard. Infection breaks out as the passengers find themselves trapped in a mobile fight for survival.

Train to Busan is a brainy, highly entertaining, no-holds-barred gore fest that is not for the faint of heart, but the scariest thing about the film is not the cannibalistic monsters just one train car away. It is the constant dread of being caught in uncontrollable chaos and the lengths one must go to protect loved ones and even strangers alike.

5. [Rec] (2007)

Before the found footage horror trend took its time running itself into the ground, many credit this Spanish-language thriller as the genre’s peak of brilliance.

[Rec] follows a young television reporter and (Manuela Velasco) her cameraman (Pablo Rosso) who become trapped inside an apartment building experiencing an outbreak of a deadly virus turning its victims into hunters and the uninfected into their prey.

Directors Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza use the found footage method as an effective way to authenticate [Rec]’s horror elements and take advantage of its singular internal setting to provide the audience with a first-hand, claustrophobic experience that feels almost too real to handle.

4. Colin (2008)

Zombie movies are always concerned with how the living deal with the dead. This low budget British thriller asks the question, “How do the dead deal with being dead?”

Alastair Kirton stars as the title character of Colin, who discovers a zombie bite on his arm within the first few minutes of the film. Following his death and reanimation, he serves as our apocalyptic tour guide, mindlessly stumbling through the wreckage of suburbia longing to satisfy his new appetite.

Colin features top-notch acting and surprisingly good special effects for one, but its most impactful moment comes when Colin comes across his own family, horrified to discover their loved one, who can’t even recognize them, is now their greatest danger. It is a thought-provoking reminder these monsters steal not just human lives, but also humanity, and sees the traditionally feared undead earn our unexpected sympathies.

3. The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988)

Today, the term “zombie” is often associated with rotting corpses seeking fresh, live meat, thanks to George Romero, but if you look back to the first inception of the concept, it gets a little weirder.

Directed by Wes Craven, The Serpent and the Rainbow focuses on the concept of black magic, which anthropologist Dennis Alan (Bill Pullman) travels to Haiti to investigate following reports of a drug resurrecting people from the dead. His findings bring him closer to the truth than he wanted, as, not just his life, but his soul soon becomes threatened.

The film is a return to the origin of zombies, defined as corpses reanimated by the use of witchcraft as a tradition of Haitian folklore. While still regarded as a supernatural thriller by execution, considering its nightmarish themes and historical significance, it sure makes you want to steer clear of voodoo.

2. George A. Romero’s Dead Series (1968-2009)

For the definitive depiction of a soulless, subhuman flesh-eater that we have come to know, love, and fear, we have the late George A. Romero to thank.

After first introducing us to the modern incarnation of the zombie in 1968’s revolutionary Night of the Living Dead, Romero kept bringing us back to his nightmarish vision of survival and carnage throughout the decades with more iconic films like Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, and Land of the Dead, imposing a new concept of potent social commentary with each.

He even took advantage of the found footage trend with Diary of the Dead in 2007 and a more sympathetic approach to his monstrous creations with Survival of the Dead two years later.

Despite inspiring many films to come forward later, what keeps Romero’s Dead series standing out among the rest is how their highly plausible depiction of the aftermath of chaos and how they serve as a reflection of human nature, commenting on topics like race, modern consumerism, and war.

But, if we’re talking about realism here, even Romero can’t beat this modern classic.

1. 28 Days Later... (2002)

The debate over whether or not it is accurate to call director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland’s chaotic tour de force a “zombie” movie is a little pointless to me.

Sure, the plot revolves around agile maniacs infected by biological rage as opposed to slow-moving dead people, yet that is precisely what makes it the most realistic “zombie” movie of all time.

The story picks up speed after Jim (Cillian Murphy) wakes up from a coma four weeks after a virus that is non-fatal, but turns most of London into senseless, adrenaline-fueled predators, breaks out. Not even simply avoiding a bite can save you as Brendan Gleeson’s fate shows that a single drop of blood entering your eye is enough to awaken the rage.

28 Days Later... makes the concept of society crumbling in the wake of disease scarier than the stories that inspired it because it forces you to believe it could happen.

What do you think of our realistic zombies movies ranking? Still not convinced, or are you prepping to zombie-proof your house now? However you feel about zombie movies, hopefully you can survive long enough to check back for movie updates and more here on CinemaBlend.

Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse Director Reveals Stan Lee's Cut Lines

Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse Director Reveals Stan Lee's Cut Lines

It’s hard to imagine a more perfect cameo at a more perfect time than Stan Lee’s appearance in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. While selling Miles Morales a Spider-Man suit, Stan Lee’s shop owner tells the future web-crawler that he and Spider-Man were friends and that he was going to miss him before letting Miles know that the suit always fits, eventually. There were other lines considered for Stan Lee’s cameo though, and now Spider-Verse co-director Rodney Rothman has revealed what they are on social media. Per the co-director:

Man, this could have been a real Sophie’s choice because each of these alternate lines is great and would have worked for the function of the important scene. In different ways, each of the cut lines says something about the importance of having and believing in heroes, exactly the sort of thing that Miles Morales needs to hear in that moment after the death of Spider-Man.

The first and third lines speak to the invincible quality we ascribe to superheroes and those in our own lives growing up, that ability of heroes to seem larger-than-life and eternal. Stan Lee’s puzzlement in the second line, about why the Spidey suits keep selling, reminds us and Miles that people will always crave heroes to look up to.

Beyond just working as great lines for the cameo that service the scene, these lines also operate on a meta level. It’s almost eerie how each of these lines take on a certain poignancy and melancholy quality in the wake of Stan Lee’s death.

The first line, about not believing that Spider-Man could die, is how many of us felt about Stan Lee himself. The legendary comics creator just seemed to keep going well into old age with the vigor and enthusiasm of the most excited young fans that have enjoyed his work over the years.

The second line speaks to the incredible alchemy that Stan Lee and his contemporaries achieved with the superheroes that dominate cinema screens today. There is no exact, cut-and-dry answer revealing what about superheroes connects with people, but they do and thus continue to sell.

The last line is an especially tough one because we know in fact that Spider-Man did outlive Stan Lee, and that the legacy of the man will indeed live on because Spider-Man and all the other characters he had a hand in creating will live on.

This is some cool insight into the other potential lines Stan Lee could have thrown out in his Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse cameo. As Rodney Rothman said in his tweet, Stan Lee himself favored the line that wound up in the final film, as that’s the one that had the most meaning to him.

As we’ve heard before, that line was recorded not long after Stan Lee’s wife Joan passed away, so perhaps when he was saying, “I’m going to miss him” he was really thinking about his wife. That line and the part about them being friends is how many of us feel about Stan Lee. That, in some ways, he was like our friend and we are going to miss him.

Really Spider-Verse couldn’t have gone wrong with any of the lines, but it is nice to know the filmmakers went with the one that Stan Lee preferred. There was arguably no better balm to soothe our wounded hearts at Stan Lee’s passing than to see the comics legend in animated form in a Spider-Man movie.

That wasn’t the last time we saw Stan Lee onscreen though, he recorded multiple cameos before his death. We just saw one in Captain Marvel and there are still more to come.

The Best Animated Feature Oscar winner Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is now on home video. Check out our 2019 release schedule to see all the biggest movies still to come this year.

Dark Phoenix’s Reshoots Changed The Climax In A Big Way

Dark Phoenix’s Reshoots Changed The Climax In A Big Way

Like many blockbusters before it, Dark Phoenix set aside time for reshoots, with cameras rolling last fall, almost a year after principal photography had wrapped. Sometimes the extra footage gathered from reshoots is only meant to make minor changes to the movie, but in Dark Phoenix’s case, it was part of a bigger overhaul that included shifting the location of the climax.

When Dark Phoenix was rolling cameras, the plan was for the final battle to take place out in space, but once reshoots came around, the entire third act was changed and it now has the X-Men characters being kidnapped and imprisoned aboard a military train instead. We’ve seen snippets of this sequence in past trailers, and it ultimately leads to the corrupted Jean Grey lifting the train into the air while everyone is still on board.

Although Dark Phoenix is a relatively more grounded adaptation of The Dark Phoenix Saga, this version definitely has more of a cosmic feel, namely because Jean’s transformation into Phoenix occurs during a rescue mission in space and Jessica Chastain’s still-unidentified character is an alien shapeshifter. So it’s peculiar that rather than keep that cosmic flavor going in the climax, it was decided ahead of reshoots to keep the action Earthbound instead.

It wasn’t specifically explained why Dark Phoenix’s climax was changed during reshoots, although it wasn’t the only major adjustment implemented later in the game. During postproduction, the look of the Phoenix was also revamped to look more “cosmic” and less “flamy,” which is a departure from the entity’s appearance in the source material.

Director Simon Kinberg also spoke with EW about how difficult it was to make his directorial debut on Dark Phoenix, saying:

I think the biggest challenge is modulating the film so that we have the big scale and visual-effects action that these movies require, but balancing that in a way that feels calibrated with the drama. You have these big space sequences and trains flying through the air and people firing lightning bolts, but you also have a lot of emotional, four-page dramatic dialogue scenes.

Simon Kinberg confirmed at the beginning of the month that Dark Phoenix will be the last installment of the main X-Men film series that began in 2000, thus paving the way for the mutant property to be rebooted within the Marvel Cinematic Universe down the line. So ideally Dark Phoenix ends things with a bang, and while that train sequence will surely be filled with action and excitement, it feels awfully similar to what we’ve seen in past X-Men movies.

A clash in space, on the other hand, would have been unique, special and tangentially faithful to the comics, so I’m curious as to why that was tossed out during reshoots. Evidently budget wasn’t an issue if the crew had the money to film an entirely new sequence, so maybe after Dark Phoenix has been released, we’ll learn the specific reasoning for why the climax was so drastically changed.

Dark Phoenix opens in theaters on June 7, so stay tuned to CinemaBlend for more coverage. You can also check out our 2019 release schedule to find out what other movies come out later this year.

Millennium Falcon: Smuggler's Run Isn't Like Normal Theme Park Rides And That's An Issue

Millennium Falcon: Smuggler's Run Isn't Like Normal Theme Park Rides And That's An Issue

The certerpiece of Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge is a full size recreation of the Millennium Falcon that sits at the heart of Black Spire Outpost. Next door to that you'll find the land's single (for the moment) E-ticket attraction, Millennium Falcon: Smuggler's Run. It promised to let guests pilot the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy themselves, and in that it delivers, but in a way that I'm not sure is going to appeal to every guest in the same way. It's more video game than theme park attraction.

The attraction's story set-up sees Hondo Ohnaka, of Star Wars: The Clone Wars fame, having made a deal with Chewbacca to borrow the Millennium Falcon. Ohnaka uses the ship for smuggling, but along with his own goods, he includes some for the Resistance, helping out Chewbacca as a form of payment. The guests are freelance smugglers looking for work at Black Spire Outpost.

We see all of this explained to us in the form of an Ohnaka animatronic character who speaks with Chewbacca on a screen. After that, guests are ushered down a corridor where they're met by a cast member who assigns flight roles in groups of six: two pilots, two gunners and two engineers. From there, you head down to the Falcon's galley where you can sit at the famous holo-chess table or otherwise wander around the most perfect recreation of the inside of the Falcon you could imagine. The room itself is a highlight of the entire attraction if you're a Star Wars fan.

When your crew is called, you make your way into the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon and the experience begins. In the most interesting decision, flight controls have been split in half between the two pilots. The left hand pilot controls the ship's horizontal movement, while the co-pilot controls the vertical. Gunners control a set of guns on the left and right side of the ship, which can be set to automatic to make targeting easier or manual to make things more of a challenge. Engineers handle deployment of a tow cable and also repair any damage done by collisions or blaster fire.

Without going into the specifics of the story (no need to spoil anything there), the pilots fly the ship, avoiding obstacles and getting gunners and engineers in position to do their jobs. There's plenty for everybody to do, especially if the pilots tend to crash into things, making more work for the engineers.

This is somewhat likely considering that flight is broken in half. Even if one pilot is a pro, if the other is not, you're going to be colliding with things a lot. On the one hand, it's understandable why they would split up control of the ship. It allows two people to feel like they are pilots rather than just one. Of course, it's not exactly efficient from an actual flight perspective. It's one of the few decisions made in all of Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge that feels like a "theme park decision" rather than an "immersion" decision.

This level of interaction for a Disney Parks attraction is unparalleled; there's never been an experience that guests have had such control over and it really does make you feel like you're inside the Millennium Falcon. At the same time, that's not entirely a good thing. The interaction requires a lot more of the guest than previous attractions.

I got to sit in the co-pilot seat and actually help fly the Falcon when I visited the new land last week. As a longtime video game player, the experience feels largely like a "rail shooter." The Falcon's general course is set, you can't even control speed and you just have a basic ability to direct the Falcon up or down and left or right from within that set course.

In one moment, I saw an obstacle coming up, and it appeared that I would have the ability to fly over or under it. However, as the ship approached the obstacle, it came in low, meaning that I didn't actually have the ability to go over the object as I had planned, and it was too late to get low enough in time, resulting in a collision.

This was one of the major moments where I felt that I wasn't so much experiencing a theme park attraction as I was playing a video game. The ride even gives a score at the end based on how successful you were with your mission and how much damage you took. Gunners shooting at TIE Fighters certainly have a similar experience.

As a lifelong video game player, I'm not necessarily against this idea, but thinking about it in broader terms, I found the whole thing limiting. For every person who wants to ride Smuggler's Run several times to try and get the best score, there's going to be somebody who just wants to sit back and enjoy the ride. That doesn't appear to be an option; you can't have the ride do your job on its own.

Even while I was engaged in my responsibilities, I felt like I was missing something. I was so focused on looking for where I was supposed to fly next that there were things on the screen I didn't really get to look at. Being able to pay less attention and feel the attraction rather than direct it might have been nice.

What's more, you're relying on other people a lot. Few of us probably go to Disneyland in a group of six people, which means you're likely to find yourself paired with strangers. If those strangers are not as good at their job as you are with yours, it's going to impact the experience that everybody has. If you've played through a multiplayer game where your team has a weak link, you know this frustration.

Other Disneyland and Walt Disney World attractions allow for different levels of interaction. Something like Toy Story Midway Mania lets you play carnival games for points, and while you're competing against others for the high score, your experience is still largely the same if you score high or low.

Epcot's Mission: Space gives guests different roles to play and buttons to press the same way Smuggler's Run does, but if you don't press them yourself, they go off automatically and the experience progresses exactly the same. That's not the case here.

While it's impossible to "fail" your Smuggler's Run mission entirely, you can perform better or worse depending on your skills at various video game style mechanics. Lots of people will have these skills, as many more people plays video games today than did in years past, but there will still be a lot more people who would much rather sit back and experience a ride rather than a video game.

I look forward to flying the Millennium Falcon many more times. I was a much better pilot by the end of my first run than at the beginning and I want to try every job from every position. Having said that, I will be approaching my future flights in a very different way than I do my other favorite theme park attractions.

Looks Like Aladdin’s Gilbert Gottfried Isn’t Happy About Being Replaced By Alan Tudyk

Looks Like Aladdin’s Gilbert Gottfried Isn’t Happy About Being Replaced By Alan Tudyk

Along with a brand new trailer for the new live-action Aladdin, yesterday revealed that the character of Iago, the villainous parrot of antagonist Jafar, will be voiced by Disney's go-to voice talent Alan Tudyk. In the original animated classic the character was portrayed by Gilbert Gottfried, and it appears that Mr. Gottfried isn't too thrilled with being overlooked for the live-action remake, as he's been retweeting several comments from fans who are various degrees of irate over the decision to not bring him back.

The spectrum of fans who are angry that Gilbert Gottfried isn't returning to the role of Iago covers quite a range. Some are confused, others are F-bomb dropping irate. Gottfried has had no problem over the last day retweeting angry fans, including the ones who are swearing up a storm over the decision. If nothing else, Gottfried seems to appreciate the support he's getting from fans. Clearly, his performance in the original Aladdin was quite important to a lot of people.

Many seem to feel that Gottfried's performance is on par with that of James Earl Jones in The Lion King. Some of the tweets point out that Jones is returning to the role of Mufasa for the new remake, and so, as precedent, Disney is certainly willing to bring the original voices back for the new versions.

Certainly, bringing Gilbert Gottfried back would have been a big nostalgia move, but that might also be exactly the reason it didn't happen. With Will Smith coming in to voice the iconic Genie, that character, and thus the entire movie, is going to have a very different tone and feel. Recasting another voice actor would have the effect of causing those watching the new film to remember the old one all the more while they watch it, and that might not be the best way to go. Letting the new Aladdin stand on its own and be its own thing is likely the best way to achieve success.

It's also far from clear just how much Alan Tudyk does as far as his voice of Iago. We saw Iago in the new trailer, but we have yet to hear him speak. Iago is the only animal character to be fully voiced in the animated version, and we know that the live-action movie will give Jafar a new henchman character, so the movie might just make Iago a non-speaking parrot (beyond the speaking actual parrots can do) to match Jasmine's tiger Rajah and Aladdin's monkey Abu a little better in a movie that's supposed to be more "real."

Alan Tudyk did voice the chicken Hei-Hei in Moana, who never said a word and just spent the entire film clucking, so bringing Tudyk in to record parrot squawks would not be the craziest thing he's ever done.

What do you think? Should Disney have brought Gilbert Gottfried back to voice Iago? Let us know in the poll below.

Robert Downey Jr. Calls Marvel Tenure ‘Ride Of A Lifetime’ As Avengers: Endgame Hits Theaters

Robert Downey Jr. Calls Marvel Tenure ‘Ride Of A Lifetime’ As Avengers: Endgame Hits Theaters

It's no secret that landing the role of Tony Stark was life-changing for Robert Downey Jr. In the early aughts his career was a shadow of what it was during the 1980s and 1990s, and while he was still making quality films like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, he didn't exactly have the same level of popularity. That all changed in 2008 with the arrival of Jon Favreau's Iron Man, and 11 years later we're preparing to see the capstone of the epic adventure in the form of Avengers: Endgame.

Obviously that makes this a pretty big weekend for the actor, and while he has been very active on social media recently discussing his role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Tweet he posted today feels particularly poignant as a summation of his time as part of the franchise:

It goes without saying that Robert Downey Jr.'s impact on the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been absolutely massive. His ridiculous charisma is a huge part of what made the first Iron Man work so well, and rewatching the movie even now it's easy to see why people immediately fell back in love with him and became obsessed with his iteration of the character. Critics and audiences fully embraced his take on Tony Stark immediately, and it catapulted the 2008 film to a box office total of $585 million internationally.

But that was only the start. Since then he has been featured in 10 of Marvel Studios' 22 films, and his contributions are really immeasurable. It started with him giving a tiny boost to The Incredible Hulk with his quick cameo at the end of the film cementing the continuity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and since then it's been nothing but the stuff of legends.

To put a number on it, prior to the release of Avengers: Endgame the total worldwide box office earnings for the Marvel Studios films in which Robert Downey Jr. has been featured is $3,960,919,900. That is unprecedented, and it's possible that Hollywood will never see another run of its kind ever again.

Clearly the actor has a tremendous amount of love and appreciation for everything that has happened in his life since the release of Iron Man, and it will be exciting to see how it winds up molding his career going forward. We actually haven't seen him in a non-Marvel film since 2014's The Judge - though that's a streak that will come to an end next year. He's already completed work on Stephen Gaghan's The Voyage Of Doctor Dolittle, which sees him playing the titular character and will be out next January, and hes also playing a role in Jamie Foxx's debut as a writer/director - All-Star Weekend. We'll have to wait and see what the future holds for Tony Stark after Avengers: Endgame, but at the very least audiences everywhere can take comfort in the fact that we'll still have many more years of Robert Downey Jr. awesomeness on the big screen to come.

Do you have a favorite Tony Stark/Iron Man moment from the last 11 years? What will you always remember about his take on the character? Hit the comments section below with your thoughts, feelings, and opinions.

The Importance Of A Good Prosthetic, According To Taraji P. Henson

The Importance Of A Good Prosthetic, According To Taraji P. Henson

Playing a figure in real life is a minefield of minute details. Everything from speech patterns to hand gestures, as well as wardrobe choices and physical appearance, can be studied and scrutinized in the name of turning yourself into another person. But even with all of that effort, it still isn’t an exact science. That is when the time honored tool of a good prosthetic suit comes in handy, and while playing The Best of Enemies’ civil rights hero Ann Atwater, actor Taraji P. Henson understood this specific point the best.

During CinemaBlend’s recent conversation with Taraji P. Henson, as part of The Best of Enemies’ promotional tour, the subject of just what it took for her to sink into character came up. And in discussing that point, it all came down to the physical transformation that Henson had to make in order to truly embody Atwater’s trademark movements and gestures.

In the effort to make this change as accurate as possible, the suit that Henson wore in the film needed to undergo some specific alterations. And those changes, as explained in our conversation, came down to the following physical attributes:

The boobs were small, and they were perky and pretty. And I was like, ‘That doesn’t match the woman.’ … When I put the suit on, it felt light. I felt like I was walking like myself, and I was like, ‘I need to walk differently, I can’t walk like Taraji. I need to be earthy, heavy, in the ground, you know?’ I said, ‘Call Tyler Perry, and ask him who made Madea’s boobs, because I need boobs like that.’ … My point is, they didn’t think I would be willing to go there, and I was like, ‘I have to. This is a real person. I would be doing her a disservice if I didn’t."

It’s that sort of dedication that’s been extremely significant in Taraji P. Henson’s evolution as an actor. In preparing for Proud Mary, Henson previously spoke to us about how she prepared to deal with a film that had more action than she was previously used to. That same dedication is what comes through in her description of how she got ready for The Best of Enemies, as everything from how Ann ate to how she walked was put on the table as qualities to be studied and mastered in her portrayal.

The end result was something that everyone on set, and especially Taraji P. Henson herself, noticed during the filming of The Best of Enemies. Even her own personal security detail, whom she hired after their work on Proud Mary, noted to her that she was a totally different person once she’d gotten into her full prosthetic suit. And thanks to her push for a more accurate design, Henson was able to proudly claim this special victory:

For me, every time I put the suit on. Every time I got suited up, and I put on that fat suit, I was Ann.

It doesn’t matter if it’s getting a prosthetic suit just right, adapting to intense stunt work or whatever other challenges she has faced in the various projects she’s been a part of, Taraji P. Henson has a process when it comes to digging into a role; and it’s a huge part of what makes her specific brand of acting so unique. Tthat process works like a charm, as it allowed her to truly dig into the personal story of Ann Atwater and C.P. Ellis’s friendship, which is at the very heart of The Best of Enemies.

The Best of Enemies will be in theaters this Friday.