What can we say? We had our doubts. Sure, Frank Darabont is a certified (and possibly certifiable) horror-movie genius already but .. well, Robert Kirkman and Tony More's comic book/graphic novel series, The Walking Dead, had always seemd kind of, well, typical. Guy wakes up in the hospital after the Zombie Apocalypse (like we haven't seen that before), goes looking for his famiy (ditto), finds a few survors and a whole lot of shambling dead, right out of a Romero movie.(Yawwnnn...)
And ... that’s about it.
Can you blame us for thinking, "Seen that, been there"? The graphic version had none of the ghastly hyperspeed of 28 Days Later, or the icky realism of Dead Girl. They weren’t almost spiritual like the ones in Cronin's The Passage, or domesticated like in Fido, or heartbreaking like in Dust, or even just push-the-envelope bizarre, like the weaponized zuvembi in David Wellington’s Monster Island/Monster Nation/Monter Planet trilogy (come on, face it, a zombie with its forearms stripped of flesh, and bones sharpened into spikes? That’s way out there, even for the shambling post-deceased among us.)
Given all that, the printed version of The Walking Dead was just kind of … okay. Middle of the road., But -- happy surprise here -- AMC’s The Walking Dead is far from typical, and far better than its source material: thoughtful, smart, moody, unforgiving without being gratuitous.
Given all that, the printed version of The Walking Dead was just kind of … okay. Middle of the road., But -- happy surprise here -- AMC’s The Walking Dead is far from typical, and far better than its source material: thoughtful, smart, moody, unforgiving without being gratuitous.
Suddenly, we're fans.
The remarkable Lennie James is a standout here, as always. He plays the stern but sensitive dad just trying to protect his son, and basically, he's marvelous with a role that could have gone over the top or slipped into parody very, very easily. He was all tight and over-controlled in Jericho; all low British brutality in his stint on Human Target, but here he is much looser, more human, and totally believable Not to mention a master of dialects: you’d never guess he was British.
The remarkable Lennie James is a standout here, as always. He plays the stern but sensitive dad just trying to protect his son, and basically, he's marvelous with a role that could have gone over the top or slipped into parody very, very easily. He was all tight and over-controlled in Jericho; all low British brutality in his stint on Human Target, but here he is much looser, more human, and totally believable Not to mention a master of dialects: you’d never guess he was British.
Some of the others have good horror-pedigrees as well. The tough-bitch survivor Laurie Holden was in Darabont's version of King's The Mist; Jeffrey DeMunn, slightly more bearded than usual, plays the ill-tempered curmudgeon like the pro he is. Hell, he's made a career of it, and much of that work in Stephen King movies, including The Shawshank Redemption, The Gren Mile, The Mist, and Storm of the Century. Not to mention the remakes of The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits AND The X-Files. He was even in the remakes of The Blob and The Hitcher. You gotta love this guy.)
Beyond the highly effective casting, the 'look' of Walking Dead is strong and unsentimental without being gory for gore's own sake (we particularly appreciate the flies. How often do you see those around dead folks in the movies, 'cept maybe in Amityville rip-offs?). And finishing this first episode with the scenes in the city, when our hero is stampeded by zombies and trapped in an abandoned tank as the undead come at him in wave after wave … yiiii, this was GOOD stuff. Way past the lazy and expected exterior-shoots-at-dawn with the liberal application of blood-bags. We're talking Class with a capital "Z" here.
So much to our surprise, The Walking Dead is well worth watching. And if you missed one of the three consecutive showings (!) on AMC Halloween night, they're showing it again on Friday the 5th, with the next epi on Sunday at 10 pm..
Stay tuned . and stay indoors!
So much to our surprise, The Walking Dead is well worth watching. And if you missed one of the three consecutive showings (!) on AMC Halloween night, they're showing it again on Friday the 5th, with the next epi on Sunday at 10 pm..
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