The Walking Dead

A zombie-apocalypse fantasy set in Atlanta, this is the scariest series U've ever seen. [8 Nov 2010, p.39]

We actually root for many of the people we find living among The Walking Dead, which packs a raw, emotional punch while delivering the creepy and queasy thrills all genre fans truly crave.

What makes The Walking Dead so much more than a horror show is that it plays with theatrical grandeur, on a canvas that feels real, looks cinematic and has an orchestral score to match. For all its set pieces, however, Walking is most breathtaking in its small moments, in which the pain and glory of being human are conveyed with only the flick of a filmmaking wrist.

A film-quality drama series about zombies? Somebody pinch me!

In the first half of director-screenwriter Frank Darabont's impeccable pilot episode for AMC's new adaptation, you feel the weight of time passing in ways that Kirkman always struggles with. To say that Darabont has kicked his series off with a bang would be a serious understatement.

Whereas most entries in the musty genre are simply inclined to go for cheap shrieks and lofty body counts, this saga defies expectations with a more humanistic approach.

Dead is beautifully shot, but what it's shooting are former humans with rotting skin and bleating agonized groans. And like the comics, there's great, grim humor.

Darabont uses the TV-series format to break convention not only by defying the predictabilities of the horror genre (boo!) but also by infusing the recipe with more storytelling elan.

The Walking Dead, like any good horror tale, still believes in the importance of monsters, perfectly balancing the struggle of basic human decency with those palsied four-in-the-morning moments when we are convinced that everyone around us is trying to eat us alive

It doesn't take a fanboy to appreciate the well-crafted AMC series, populated with capable, if lesser-known, actors, including Sarah Wayne Callies, who spent a couple of years running from less-apparent deadly threats on Fox's Prison Break.

Zombies are coming on strong, particularly in the well-made, engrossing (and gross) premiere episode of AMC's The Walking Dead.

The show, adapted from Robert Kirkman's comic book series, quickly moves past its familiar premise. It's about what happens after the apocalypse, in the struggle to remain human after society's collapse.

The television adaptation is surprisingly scary and remarkably good, a show that visually echoes the stylized comic-book aesthetic of the original and combines elegant suspense with gratifyingly crude and gruesome slasher-film gore.

If The Walking Dead can build on its promise and run with these ideas, along with unflinching gross-out thrills, it can tell a doomsday story with all the things zombies crave: brains, guts and heart.

On the whole, I'd say The Walking Dead worth a look, no matter what your genre preferences, but horror aficionados are more likely to enjoy this intense, blood-spattered tale, which, like all AMC dramas, is about as aesthetically well-crafted as a TV show can be.

Although we've seen no shortage of zombies and post-apocalyptic stories, producer-writer-director Frank Darabont has deftly tackled the seemingly perilous task of adapting a comicbook about zombies into a viable episodic series.

It's a great, gory and surprisingly emotional ride.

The Walking Dead may depend more on suspense, desolate atmosphere, and creative storytelling than fine acting. The show takes a nightmare generally told in movies and opens it up for the medium of TV. I'm optimistic that Darabont & Co. will continue to find ways to make the characters interestingly human as they dodge death's slow, ruthless pursuit.

The zombies are truly scary and disgusting. The survivors are terrific characters, and the gore is enough for any lunatic to love. But no amount of love is going to make a flesh-rotting zombie as sexy as a blood-thirsty vampire.

Executive producer Frank Darabont ("The Shawshank Redemption") is wonderfully skilled at framing shots to achieve maximum horror effect. But the middle stretch tends to bog down. My advice--watch the first 25 minutes (they're really good), then go trick-or-treating.

Taken as a fright fest, pure and simple, Dead succeeds admirably well, capturing the terror and confusion of waking up in a world where you've gone from person to endangered-species zombie food overnight.

I was encouraged that the character-driven third episode was stronger than the zombie action-heavy second, and perhaps the producers will be proven right--that the longer this saga goes on past these initial six episodes, the more it will set itself apart from the zombie canon.

Fans of the comic book and first-rate psycho-horror may form a large enough audience to make this a hit. Those not in those groups may want to start by taking a deep breath.