Yes, zombies are all the rage. And they have only gotten more popular as a way to scare the **** out ourselves with time. But why?
Vampires have become the emo kids of monsters and just come off as pathetic.
Ghosts just aren't scary. If I saw the apparition of Patrick Swayze in my bedroom I'd tell him Whoopi Goldberg doesn't live there.
Werewolves/Jekyll - Hyde/Incredible Hulk types attract sympathy for their humane side.
No one and I mean NO ONE has ever gotten a Lovecraft-based movie right. EVER.
Giant animals are too familiar and defeat-able.
Terminators, on the other hand, are genuinely scary. However, this scenario has a very similar theme to zombie uprisings....
Zombies seem to reflect society's anxiety with our own extinction as a species. That being said, it also seems that their popularity has increased with that anxiety. The central theme of the "apocalypse" event (as we imagine it will go down) is that society as a whole is fragile and that one big disaster (such as a meteorite) could leave the survivors in a new stone age - but zombies push the envelope past the loss of civilization - zombies hunt us down until every last person is dead.
Zombies also reflect the mistrust some of us have in our fellow humans to do what's right for the greater good. This is where Terminator/Matrix themes are similar in that the products of our technology turn and wipe us out, but with zombies, it's usually a virus and there is no John Conner to save us. Also, since zombies ARE humans, they reflect a sort of xenophobic distrust among us. Or even more on-point: The transformation of people you knew/loved into monsters that no longer recognize you seems to demonstrate the putrefaction of society as a whole in the face of disaster.
Anyway, this is all my opinion. It could be that zombies are popular for the same reason lolcats are. What do you think?
BTW here's a mathematical model of what would likely happen in a zombie scenario:
http://mysite.science.uottawa.ca/rsmith43/Zombies.pdf
