Z Nation

Overall, Z Nation is pretty grounded and also manages to surprise viewers with the characters it chooses to sacrifice in its pilot episode.

Although the acting can be a bit mechanical, Syfy’s Z Nation may have enough pop, intrigue and indispensable gore to serve as more than a mere placeholder for AMC’s The Walking Dead.

As a B-level entry it’s at least entertaining, and if some of the sillier aspects of the pilot can be improved on could be one of those mindless entertainment options we all need now and again.

It most closely resembles the assembly-line Hollywood westerns that provide the model for the zombie genre.... The mundanely self-aware screenplay includes references to the zompocalypse and lines like “God, I hate moral dilemmas.”

Gore-hounds will find a couple of visual shots fascinating, but there’s little here for anyone to justify the hour investment.

While the series incorporates a specific quest element in the form of its possible “last, best hope to save humanity,” there’s just not enough to distinguish it from the other programs dealing more inventively with similar material, including “Dead” and this summer’s FX entry “The Strain.”

If you'll take zombies any way you can get 'em, Z Nation will hold you over. More discriminating fans may want to wait until next month, when The Walking Dead rumbles back to life.

We resent the storytelling for not maximizing the sublime ridiculousness of a rabid zombie baby hunting the adult heroes. [12 Sep 2014, p.58]

While Z Nation (or as I prefer to think of it, The Running Dead) doesn't exactly play the gory low-budget mayhem for campy laughter, it's hard not to roll, or possibly cover, one's eyes at something this familiar and deeply shallow, with casting mostly so generic--with the exception of Lost's Harold Perrineau as a Delta Force soldier barking orders--that they're all so much chum in this kill-or-be-eaten apocalypse.