Sunday, July 10, 2011

The Walking Dead: Season 1 Review


When I first saw a poster for the series The Walking Dead, I was skeptical. A television series with zombies? It sounded weird to say it out loud. Movies like Dawn of the Dead (original and remake), 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead had already made zombies cool. People have been enjoying zombies in book and graphic novel form as well. Television just didn't feel like the right medium for zombies because the makers would never be able to have the same freedoms as the other mediums. Basically put, how can you make a good zombie series without some incredibly nice gore?

In comes AMC. The channel has gotten a lot of press in the last few years with series like Mad Men and Breaking Bad. Apparently they told the makers of this series that they could do whatever they needed to do to make this a hit and the result is pretty amazing. Now, the show is based on a graphic novel of the same name written by Robert Kirkman, that I have never read. After checking some of it out, it seems to me like the show was pretty much loyal to the original story but also taking some interesting liberties that make the transition from graphic novel to television show better.

The characters are pretty damn similar for the most part.

One of the interesting pieces in this series to me was creator and director of the pilot Frank Darabont. He took this graphic novel and turned it into a viable, tense and incredibly well done series . The pilot he directed is almost a movie in a of itself and it will hook anyone who watches it. The main characters Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Shane Walsh (John Bernthal) are established and they are likable everyday people. There are a couple of scenes that Darabont really makes shine and those are the first time Lincoln wakes up and is staring at the barricaded door where the zombie hand reaches out and the scene at the end of the pilot when Lincoln walks through the park and eventually finds and shoots a zombie torso that had tried to attack him earlier in the episode. There is something about the camera work that makes this series shine. What else can we expect from the director of The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile? This guys knows drama and horror.

There are only 6 episodes on this season, but they are all pretty damn good. An episode like "Guts" is surprising to see on tv. The rest of the cast work well with each other. There are various interesting side stories, but the main story will always be finding a way to survive. You can tell when its a good zombie movie when you don't know if the title refers to the zombies or the surviving humans.

Zombies have always been metaphors for humanity at their basest most reptilian forms. This series does a great job not only with some top notch directing but with a good cast, a great script and some really good special effects. Really high recommendation. Watch this unless you are squeamish.

9 out of 10

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