The Walking Dead

Before I talk about the new AMC series the Walking Dead, I have to say after watching that awesome 90's action flick Payback, I bought it on dvd and I guess I bought the Director's Cut thinking it was pretty much the same thing - big mistake. The Director's Cut completely ruins the mood and the flow of the original cut and well, it basically sucks. I repeat, do not see the Director's Cut, there was a reason this cut didn't make it to the box office.

And here we go: Ok, so I'm two episodes into this because I am a really big zombie fan (fan? Is that the right word?) I just always loved and grew up watching George Romero's classic zombie flicks, The Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, etc. so, needless to say, I found myself very excited for this upcoming show.
Trailer:

Overall, it's a pretty decent show. It stars relatively unknown  Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes, a Georgian police officer who is healing from a gunshot wound. He wakes up to find himself in a deserted and cluttered hospitable. How long has it been since he was first brought in? Weeks? Months? The viewer isn't informed and neither is Grimes. He wakes up to a world on confusion - confusion and death. As he makes his way out of the hospital he witnesses many of the dead around the hospital, in parks, in the streets - and then he witnesses the living dead. He is forced to befriend a father and son in the early going but then he must be off - off to Atlanta to find his wife and son. That is his quest.

The second episode was a downer. The plot became convoluted in spots and the dialogue was overall flat and well, dumb -it was wooden. Even for a horror. The characters are starting to come across as generally stereotypical and they're involving race into the show, which could actually work as Romero did well when he interjected his movies with timely social commentary but the use of race in this show feels forced, outdated, and unnecessary. After a promising first episode, this left me very disappointed, to say the least.

This tends to be a rather violent show as they disregard the less is more approach and instead keeps the camera focused on the violence - which doesn't always work, even in a zombie show.

Honestly, I'm just not getting my full satisfaction from your typical zombie movie and I think I know why, hear me out here (who am I talking to?). In all the great zombie movies - except for Zombieland, but that was more of a comedy and would never work if it worked solely as a horror - there was an overriding, a suffocating sense of doom pervading throughout each and every one of those movies. The worst possible had happened - the world had turned into decaying monsters, everyone, family and friends. In these movies, the mood was such that you knew, no matter what happened, no matter how much you hoped and prayed for them, there was no escaping this horror. The survivors enjoying being barricaded in a mall - the viewer knew as it was crying out in every last scene - that sooner or later - the undead hordes would break in in a horrible horrible way and it would be judgment day for the surviving crew. There was no survival, just postponent.

That to me was what made these films so enjoyable, this is what set them apart from dracula, from freddy kreuger, from jason, there was hope in these movies, hope was gradually distinguished in these zombie movies. And this, most of all is why The Walking Dead just isn't doing it for me. The mood of the show, the atmosphere of it is pretty bland, pretty meh. The only thing dark and dreading about this show is the zombies themselves, and that can bore after awhile. Atleast, that's my feelings about it.

Johnny Cash - The Man Comes Around