Zombies. The word, image and concept frightens me to my handsome core. In October of 2003, bearded writer Robert Kirkman unleashed The Walking Dead onto comic book nerds everywhere. Kirkman took a concept that I didn’t think was possible and made it a reality…a never ending zombie movie. Of course it was a black and white comic book and not actually a movie but it was something I always wondered about after the credits would roll in any zombie flick. What happens next? Do all the zombies fall over and stay dead? Do they Thriller dance over the earth and that’s the end of the human race? The answer is just like the title’s antagonists, it just never stops. Several attempts were made to turn the comics into a movie which makes zero sense because unless someone planned on making 20 movies then they were going against the concept right from the start. Enter the gun carrying lunatic director of The Shawshank Redemption Frank Darabont and the network with the best shows on television AMC. Together they created something besides internet porn that make me lock my door.
Southern Sheriff’s Deputy Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoin) awakens from a coma to discover that the world he knew has been devoured by reanimated corpses with a taste for flesh. As Rick searches for his missing wife Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) and son Carl he encounters others who are struggling to survive in their dangerous new world. Like other AMC series it is a short form consisting of 6 episodes for the 1st season but jumping to 13 for the 2nd. Each episode is an hour in length but the start of each season is built more like a movie clocking in at 90 minutes and yet you still want it to be longer (that’s what she said).
I started writing this after re-watching the 1st season and now I’m finishing it after having watched the start of the 2nd and I would definitively have to say I’m a die-hard for this show. Yes, I am a fan of the books so liking the show should be easy but not all comic adaptions work out, have you ever seen Green Lantern? GONG! The Walking Dead works on every level. The look of the show goes in the opposite direction of other horror media by being primarily shot during the day to give you more of a clear view of the disaster and desolation that has occurred. The zombies look like something that shuffled out of my night terrors and aren’t just extra’s covered in grey paint like the zombies you find in some knob job’s home-made zombie movie.
The cast is as close to the books as you can get with the exception of the douche-y Shane (Jon Bernthal) and the new original characters. Survivors Glenn (Steven Yeun), Andrea (Laurie Holden) and Dale (Jeffrey DeMunn) all bring something different to the table and make you care when people get nixed. So AMC are ruthless cutthroats and they fired Darabont and slashed the show’s budget so I guess time will tell how the 2nd season shakes down. Makes perfect sense to me that if you have something that’s amazingly successful that you try to run it into the ground as quickly as possible…of course the most successful thing I ever did was reach the 1,000,000 population point of Sim City…then I ran my city into the ground by deleting all the roads so what do I know. Thank you very much if you are still reading this mess.
If you were thinking of checking out the show then it’s not too hard to find, AMC constantly has Walking Dead marathons and their site streams all of the episodes. The Walking Dead is a must for horror fans with a strong dramatic narrative, a few one-note characters and some genuine scares. Jump on the bandwagon while you still can because it might not be perfect but it is the best Drombie…Zombra?….the best scary show out there.
THE BEST: It is a really good way to think about what you yourself would do when the zombie apocalypse finally goes down. Not me though because my plan involves laser cats.
THE WORST: Some of the characters that they added that weren’t in the books are kind of one-dimensional stereotypes…..”T-Dogg” !?!? really?!?!
THE LINE: “This is what takes us down. This is our extinction event” -Dr. Jenner
THE FINAL: 4 out of 5 Emperor Palpatine likes the show but wasn’t really scared of zombies until some dick-bucket wrote a book about zombie stormtroopers called “Death Troopers”
– Rob –
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