Looking forward to finishing The Walking Dead in a year.

You gotta hand it to zombies;  they're survivors.  With their current level of extreme media saturation, where they appear in everything from WWII themed video games to Jane Austen novels, you'd think the public would start to get burned out on them.  But, based on the ratings for the premiere episode of AMC's comic book adaptation The Walking Dead, it seems that America has yet to reach their fill of these brain-munching abominations.

I haven't owned cable in years.  Nothing philosophically against television; my rationale is that pretty much anything I want to see comes out on video.  And that's my preferred way of watching seasons anyone;  all in one short chunk of time.  Screw serialization.

Another medium in which I generally wait for collections is comic books.  The Walking Dead, which I've picked up from time to time at my local library, is a fairly hit or miss affair, with some clunky characters, awkward dialogue, and ridiculous scenarios.  All that aside, it fills a gap; despite the prevalence of zombie tales, very few of them are in long form.  It allows us to follow a group of survivors for a very long period of time (The comic's been running since 2003), and explore many facets of post-apocalypse that a film doesn't often have time to get around to.  Plus, it's gory, and often the artwork is boss.  And zombies are cool.  And I'm an easy mark.

So, when AMC's website decided to run the first episode online for free, I felt compelled to check it out. Here was an opportunity to have a potentially long running tv series that gets to play in George Romero's sandbox, and perhaps improve on some of the flaws of the comic book.  So I watched it, and like the title says, I'm looking forward to watching the Blu Ray.

Frank Darabont directs, having turned his career full circle around from writing horror movies, to writing/directing Oscar caliber prison dramas, then back around to horror movies.  His adaptation of Stephen King's The Mist was flawed, but is already kind of a mini-classic (I use the ending of that film as clarify my definition of "Stupid-Awesome").  The prospect of him producing, and partially directing, a zombie series left me salivating.  And he does not disappoint.

From the opening moments, it's clear that neither Darabont, nor AMC, have any intention of fucking around.  In a scene similar to one that made Lucio Fulci's The Beyond infamous, our hero drills a young zombie child through the skull with his handgun (While she's holding a teddy bear, mind you!).  The squibs in this seem mostly CG (Though not terrible looking), but the make-up fx are by modern monster maestro Greg Nicotero, and are far more horrifying than one would expect from basic cable.  It feels like AMC's message to HBO is, "Hey!  Not only are our shows better written than yours, but we can be just as hardcore as you guys.".

A kid getting killed is clearly meant to shock, but what really works is that it feels fluid to the story.  It's not a moment that's meant to be funny, or ironic;  it's in there to scare the shit out of you, and to horrify you.  Frank Darabont is one of the few directors left who can actually just tell a story, without it being metatextual or unnecessarily flashy.  This show has the balls to have an extended scene in which the "rules" of zombies are explained, as if no one had heard them before, and still make it one of the creepiest scenes in the show.  Darabont's style makes something immediately clear;  he's taking this seriously, and so should you.  There's no sign of even Romero's sense of satirical humor.  He's taking this back to Night Of The Living Dead in terms of apocalyptic bleakness.

David Tattersall did a good job with the photography.  He's kind of like the Caleb Deschanel of Green Screen movies, but does a fine job with practical locations as well, and there was a good combination of both in this (I'm sure the citizens of Atlanta wouldn't have been pleased with a several mile traffic backup and raging fires, so CG was the way to go).  Bear McCreary, who I anticipate has a successful film career ahead of him, makes good minimal use of the music to heighten the scares to the nth degree.  Just watch the hospital escape scene to know what I'm talking about.

There are hints of some of the cheesy elements from the comic book at play, but I'm curious to see how they work themselves out this time.  Not to give anything away, but it seems as if certain doomed characters from the comic will be given a slightly longer life span, which could make for some interesting drama.  I'm curious to see if this show will be a draw for other horror artists.  Will Stephen King end up writing an episode for his buddy Frank?  Will Joe Dante or John Landis want to direct an episode?  Only time will tell.

Until then;  enjoy the hell out of this, America!  I know we don't always see eye to eye when it comes to taste, but I whole-heartedly support your hand in making this show a massive success.