Who knew when we were watching George Romero’s midnight movie sensation “Night of the Living Dead” that the flesh-eating zombies he created would prove to be one of the biggest influences in the horror genre for more than 40 years?
Romero himself reworked the idea in a series of sequels that had little of the sick kick he brought to his gruesome 1968 picture about the recently dead rising up to kill and consume the living.
In the past decade, there have been homages both comic (“Shaun of the Dead”) and serious (“28 Days Later”) as well as an endless stream of movies with the sort of over-the-top splatter effects that got everybody talking about Romero way back when.
Tonight at 10 p.m., AMC is debuting a heavily promoted five-part miniseries, “The Walking Dead,” produced and partially directed by the Oscar-nominated filmmaker Frank Darabont.
The 90-minute pilot is perfect Halloween night programming, but will the rest of the series excite AMC audiences the way that the channel’s breakout hit “Mad Men” did?
(AMC’s “Breaking Bad” has earned fine reviews and a loyal audience but hasn’t gotten nearly as much ink as the 1960s period piece about the advertising world).
I watched an advance screener of the first two episodes of “The Walking Dead” the other night and found them to be well-made and gripping, but 
have little or no interest in seeing how this pop culture retread plays out in episodes three through five. (I wonder if AMC will stick to the miniseries notion if the show gets a strong audience response?)
Darabont has given “The Walking Dead” movie-level production values and I couldn’t find any fault with the cast of largely unknown actors, but after a few minutes of man vs. zombie conflict — in contemporary Georgia — I felt that I had been down this road way too many times.
“The Walking Dead” has the Romero-inspired entrail-munching scenes we have grown to expect from this genre and a set-up that “borrows” from the Danny Boyle picture “28 Days Later” in a manner that could inspire an ungenerous filmmaker to call his lawyer (the hero is hospitalized, goes into a coma and wakes up into a nightmare world that has been decimated by a zombie plague).
The AMC series pushes the basic cable violence envelope — which may startle TV viewers who have not seen a zombie flick before — but this horror genre has been worn out through endless repetition.
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I’m definitely in the minority on this one. The whole thing – at least parts 1 & 2 – seems derivative. Also, I wasn’t crazy about the soap opera aspect I didn’t mention in my blog post – the wife of the cop protagonist cheating on him with his partner at that weirdly placid rural survivors retreat.(Didn’t she know he was at the hospital in a coma? How the hell would the survivors fight off zombies in those flimsy campers?)
Anyhow, I hope fans of the series enjoy the remaining episodes.
Joe,
Must say I’m surprised you didn’t like this! I feel that a lot of the criticisms of this show are based on comparisons either to the comic book or other zombie fiction. However, as someone who knows little of either, I enjoyed the show immensely, particularly the moving interlude with the father and son traumatized by the zombification of their wife/mother.
Yes, there’s been a lot of zombie/vampire stuff out there lately, but I was interested enough in the stories and characters here to stick with it.
I think what viewers need to know about this show/mini-series is that it’s not about zombies, but the people living in a world with zombies. This is the story about what happens after the credits roll in every other zombie flick one’s seen.
The Walking Dead, the comic book the series AMC has based the program (quite faithfully, truth be told), has lasted some 70+ monthly issues and continues to gain readership focusing on character and relationships.
I find it interesting that you say “but after a few minutes of man vs. zombie conflict — in contemporary Georgia — I felt that I had been down this road way too many times,” while there’s actually very little physical conflict until the last few minutes of the program. So, I must ask, was it not until the end that it felt like treading known waters to you?
In the end, the program met my expectations, but didn’t exceed them–but that’s because the original material is among today’s best modern storytelling in any medium.
Thanks for the terrific comment. Honestly, I am as tired of vampire pictures as I am of zombie films. (I could use a good new western, however.) I appreciate the tip on ‘Earth Abides’ – don’t know that novel but it sounds fascinating.
Wow, you don’t like zombies, do you?
Sure, the zombie genre (a la Romero), while it really hasn’t been around for long, it has surely had its repeated effect. But ‘endless repetition’ seems to me to be overstated. In that light, haven’t we had enough of vampires yet? Love stories? Westerns? The basic situation within each genre is almost always totally predictable (not so ‘The Crying Game’); instead, the point of the whole exercise is always an examination of the human condition. It’s not the zombies that are the point, it’s a matter of how the living characters react and adapt. ’28 Days Later’ is a perfect example.
The first episode of ‘The Walking Dead’ does seem standard, but we’ve only just met the main characters and I’ll give them a few more episodes to see if they measure up.
I do agree that ‘The Walking Dead’ lifts its opening fom ’28 Days Later’. Still, it’s just Rip Von Winkle again. George Stewart’s 1940s novel, ‘Earth Abides’, a true classic, uses a similar device– the main character is bitten by a snake, lies in a coma for three or so days, and wakes up to find 99% of the population has died. We’re never told what they died from because it simply doesn’t matter. What does matter are the characters who lived and how they adapted.
And at least zombies are straightforward– they don’t talk or go all philosophical on you like the latter day vampires. To a zombie, you’re just a meal.