Z Nation

:

Season 1
  • Network: SyFy
  • Series Premiere Date: Sep 12, 2014
Season #: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
User Score
6.5

Generally favorable reviews- based on 232 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 141 out of 232
  2. Mixed: 35 out of 232
  3. Negative: 56 out of 232
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User Reviews

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  1. chezequerz
    Oct 4, 2014
    0
    Can't really think of anything good about this particular series despite having Harold Perrineau (Damon Pope from Sons of Anarchy) and DJ Qualls (Garth from Supernatural)...i enjoy a good b-movie especially from Syfy but this feels like it was reaching for a serious series but failed to even reach B-movie standard.
  2. mifoevss
    Sep 13, 2014
    0
    The acting and the script are fan made level of bad... i cant believe there are actual "critics" that gave this series anything else than a Negative review. You really need to be desperate for something with zombies to like this! And if you are, make yourself a favor and wait for the next season of Walking Dead.
  3. mrmonster
    Sep 18, 2014
    3
    Terrible, just terrible. It feels like one of Syfys famous B movies, only with worse dialogue and no good action. Don't bother watching this crap. You will not /like it.
  4. alex85
    Oct 4, 2014
    1
    from Holland.

    i more like the walking death than this show.
    the story of the walking got more body.

    bud for the people ho like it whe al got different taste.
  5. shaoran2
    Sep 13, 2014
    0
    Bad special effects / bad makeup / bad script / bad actors / the walking dead is certainly the number on TV show , stay away from this series, zombie baby and many laugh then comes your suicide and wasted time
  6. GundamMars
    Sep 13, 2014
    3
    First, I didn't find out about this show til' a few hours before it's premiere so I was taken by surprise there was another zombie show coming to TV. But when I saw it was by the SyFy Channel I had a feeling it was going to be bad and sadly I was right. Terrible acting, laughable special effects and a feeling that you know how it's going to end. AMC poured a lot cash into The Walking Dead,First, I didn't find out about this show til' a few hours before it's premiere so I was taken by surprise there was another zombie show coming to TV. But when I saw it was by the SyFy Channel I had a feeling it was going to be bad and sadly I was right. Terrible acting, laughable special effects and a feeling that you know how it's going to end. AMC poured a lot cash into The Walking Dead, SyFy should of done the same for their zombie project. There definitely could have been room for two great zombie themed shows. I have a feeling this show though will fall off everyone's radar once Walking Dead starts up again. If SyFy really wanted to grab an audience they would have started this show at the beginning of summer, when it really has no competition, instead they started it just as the fall TV season starts and it's major competition is coming back to start it's season from a last season cliffhanger. If this were simply another cheesy SyFy Channel original movie I'd say it's good for being that. But being a series where you expect people to come back every week to watch it it fails terribly. I see this show probably getting the axe.… Expand
  7. Corinred
    Sep 18, 2014
    2
    it wasn't bad but then they had to kill the black guy first, the scenario isn't believable at all, the characters are stupid. Until they make believable and smart characters i'll change my opinion
  8. teppic1
    Oct 6, 2014
    2
    Really poor writing, absolutely terrible in fact. It's nothing like The Walking Dead of course, but it's trying to latch on to its popularity. It's watchable if you want basic entertainment and special effects, if you want drama, steer well clear. The 'joke' character isn't funny, simply annoying, and completely out of place. The main characters are two dimensional cliches. It has guns,Really poor writing, absolutely terrible in fact. It's nothing like The Walking Dead of course, but it's trying to latch on to its popularity. It's watchable if you want basic entertainment and special effects, if you want drama, steer well clear. The 'joke' character isn't funny, simply annoying, and completely out of place. The main characters are two dimensional cliches. It has guns, zombies and explosions - if that's what you want, you might like it.… Expand
  9. Traction
    Sep 13, 2014
    3
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Despite what others say, the special effects are not bad but sometimes just silly, like in the baby szene, most of the time the effects are ok.

    What really kills this series is the awful script. Most of the characters simply don't behave believable and are sometimes larger than life. Therefore one will have a harder time to get attached or care about any of the survivors.

    Furthermore the pilot presents a shallow szenario which fails to progress at all, making this show really boring.    … Expand
  10. CorgiBot
    Mar 6, 2015
    0
    Bad sfx, bad writing, bad acting, only horror aspect is constant jumpscares, what a **** up. In comparison to the walking dead even this is horrible, as stated by another review just syfy hopping on the zombie cash cow train.
  11. ithiam
    Sep 13, 2014
    1
    The acting and the script are ridiculous, if you want to laught you would watch this show, but It's horrible, I am disapointing, I have been waiting it. My only hope is that walking dead will start again soon.
  12. radivs
    Sep 18, 2014
    2
    It is like The Walking Dead crossed with World War Z. Better than nothing, worse than anything I've been following. BTW being so stupid about that baby zombie questions how the soldier survived for three years, besides the scenes being just absurd. And the black guy was one of the firsts to die. I mean come on!
  13. mellowsongs
    Oct 17, 2014
    0
    Where to start. Even if I disregard the fact that Z Nation is a complete rip-off of Walking Dead, it doesn't even come close to the quality of the latter.

    Terrible screenplay (and ridiculous one-liners), lame characters (trying to be cool), bad acting (monologues!!) .

    Then again SyFy hasn't produced anything worth watching..
  14. Dane_Curse
    Oct 12, 2014
    0
    If you have the choice between watching your own colonoscopy filmed with a full size camera sans lube and a single episode of this train wreck, go with the colonoscopy. It'll be far less painless. I promise.
  15. Ixoziel
    Nov 7, 2014
    0
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. This show is absolutely horrid. The writing is so bad that the greatest actors in the world (which these guys arn't) couldn't save this show. My friend insisted that it was decent so I promised to watch one episode. Massive mistake.

    So this dumb girl sees a female zombie walk in. She literally asks "Are you infected?" then stands there and gapes at her. There's a boy with his neck torn out. "DID YOU DO THIS?" asks the dumb girl. It's a braindead zombie and she's standing there with her mouth wide open TRYING TO TALK TO IT. Noone is that dumb in real life, and if they were, they wouldn't be able to stay alive without wearing a safety hat everytime they went outside.

    A "couple" goes through shallow melodrama and question why they're together "because they have nothing in common". It's a zombie apocalypse and they sound like they're in high school. The reason you stay together during times like that is for survival, not because you like the same sport.

    All of these moronic characters act like there is absolutely nothing wrong with the world. Characters this dumb and non-nonchalant wouldn't be alive in a zombie apocalypse, they would be the first ones to die in the riots. You know a show is crappy when it tries to rely on stupid gimmicks (really...? zombie babies...?), and even those suck.    … Expand
  16. TheBuffalo
    Nov 5, 2014
    0
    There was very little I liked about this show.
    I like that there are zombies. That's it.
    The casting was awful and it felt as if the production time was so short that none of the actors had a chance to rehearse their lines before delivering them. I don't think it deserves another go. It missed it's target from the get-go and probably shouldn't have been given to the    There was very little I liked about this show.
    I like that there are zombies. That's it.
    The casting was awful and it felt as if the production time was so short that none of the actors had a chance to rehearse their lines before delivering them.
    I don't think it deserves another go. It missed it's target from the get-go and probably shouldn't have been given to the director/producers/writers that ruined it.    … Expand
  17. Thebuzz
    Dec 1, 2014
    0
    Wrong actors, script writer trying to imitate current events, NBC is so cheap they squeak, they ruined all their networks TV programs with bad scripts, cheap actors, to much SGI...SyFy was good now it's junk, an example of poor management, squeezing out every dollar, no quality at all...
  18. bcrulz
    Oct 16, 2014
    1
    Really bad. bad acting, special effects are bad (tornado zombies... spare me). The zombies remind me of the Zombies from Night of the Living Dead. They are trying to grab some of the attention from the Walking Dead, they failed. Walking Dead works, works well, this falls flat.
  19. metacritic3012
    Oct 24, 2014
    0
    Absolutely terrible. Terrible acting / terrible script / poor quality / poor mans Walking Dead. Hard to watch this show. Syfy channel has hit rock bottom. Enough said.
  20. CriticalBear
    Nov 15, 2014
    0
    This is Syfy trying to cash-in on the Zombie bandwagon, with, as usual, cliché and dumb characters, lazy screenwriting, bad acting and cheap special effects. Lazy Walking Dead rip-off.
  21. booboofinger
    Sep 27, 2014
    1
    It lacks the believability of the walking dead and it lacks the zerg-style mobs of WWZ. It also lacks the social commentary of the George Romero movies. It's also funny that the zombies move faster and seem to be in better physical shape then they ever where when they were alive.

    My favorite though has got to be the zombie baby who could not only walk, run and leap 3 feet in the air    It lacks the believability of the walking dead and it lacks the zerg-style mobs of WWZ. It also lacks the social commentary of the George Romero movies. It's also funny that the zombies move faster and seem to be in better physical shape then they ever where when they were alive.

    My favorite though has got to be the zombie baby who could not only walk, run and leap 3 feet in the air after he became "zombified" but also took big chomping bites off a character, despite the fact he was too young to have teeth... so yeah, not a lot of thinking involved in the writing of this series.

    What it does have plenty cliches and characters specifically designed to hook people too young to really know what a good zombie show is about:

    Nerdy tech guy sitting in front of expensive hardware, check!
    Sexy ethnic girl in skimpy clothes that can kick butt, check!
    Moody anti-hero who would be Emo if he were 10-29 years younger, check!
    Plenty of bullets to go around, even though society as a whole has fallen 3 years ago, check!
    Flashy weapons made of baseball bats, check!

    It's hard to justify setting an hour of my week to watch this when there are so many quality and well written shows on TV these days.    … Expand
  22. Knighthawk81
    Apr 17, 2015
    3
    This is a poor man's "Walking Dead." Sure there's zombies, but this is done in a kinetic style that strips it of narrative relevance and good characters. How did this get a second season?
  23. CallOfGaming
    Nov 11, 2014
    0
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. I didn't get very far in this TV Show. Obviously, I wasn't expecting something as awesome as The Walking Dead, but I wasn't expecting it to be so bad.
    First of all, it doesn't make a lick of damn sense. As all my reviews I'll justify with examples. There this time a dude gets grabbed by a zombie. Then, suddenly, this random dude pops up with a sniper rifle and shoots the zombie, saving the guy. And what were his two friends doing? They just walked around the guy instead of grabbing the zombie and pushing it away until the sniper guy came and killed it! And there also this part in which a plane flies off but then crashes on the ground because why the hell not?
    There's no point of interest in watching this zombie garbage. Watch The Walking Dead if you're searching zombie fiction.    … Expand
  24. thehawk
    Dec 7, 2015
    3
    The most boring show I can remember. Even if there is no plot, some decent action scenes would have been good. Probably more thought has gone into writing this review than the show.
  25. cylian3
    Dec 1, 2014
    0
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. All the drama spewing and horrendously written dialog aside, Z Nation did reach aspects of being entertaining in the form of me laughing at the creators..

    Until they decided to indulge themselves into mind control. That's where I draw the line.    … Expand
  26. Zommy
    Oct 25, 2015
    3
    I enjoyed the first season of Z Nation. I liked the camp, I liked the gore and I liked the idea. Then came season 2. I tried 6 times to watch this damn show and I can't do it. I can handle goofy, I can deal with some silly. But season 2 is down right ridiculous. In almost every review I read "doesn't take itself seriously. Maybe it should try a little seriousness. While season 1 wasI enjoyed the first season of Z Nation. I liked the camp, I liked the gore and I liked the idea. Then came season 2. I tried 6 times to watch this damn show and I can't do it. I can handle goofy, I can deal with some silly. But season 2 is down right ridiculous. In almost every review I read "doesn't take itself seriously. Maybe it should try a little seriousness. While season 1 was entertaining and well done season 2 is a played out like an overdone comedy. I adore zombie movies and shows. But when they get stupid I can't deal.And ZN is got stupid. I liked the characters, I still do. I don't like the storyline. They lost me the minute I saw blue Murphy controlling the Z's. Another repeated line I hear is :"it's not TWD" No it's not.. Too bad. TWD has been a quality zombie story from day one. Remember the movie Airplane? Znation is a bad Airplane...with zombies.… Expand
  27. Broyax
    Jan 11, 2017
    1
    Curieusement beaucoup moins chiante de prime abord que Walking Dead et sensiblement moins bavarde, Z Nation n'en reste pas moins une série pour ados écrite avec les pieds et très superficielle. J'écris "curieusement", car en définitive l'action y est répétitive (bien que correctement filmée) les personnages sont des caricatures (le geek débile dans son abri, putain...), les acteurs sontCurieusement beaucoup moins chiante de prime abord que Walking Dead et sensiblement moins bavarde, Z Nation n'en reste pas moins une série pour ados écrite avec les pieds et très superficielle. J'écris "curieusement", car en définitive l'action y est répétitive (bien que correctement filmée) les personnages sont des caricatures (le geek débile dans son abri, putain...), les acteurs sont mauvais, et tout cela nous mène sur le même chemin que Walking Dead, celui d'une lassitude rapide et d'un ennui évident.

    Son hémoglobine permanente et récurrente ne fait déjà plus rire au bout de quelques épisodes, les situations téléphonées se répètent... Les dialogues sont à se pendre et confirment ce que l'on pensait déjà : de la série bas de gamme et basse du front, vite faite et sans ambition. A se demander si le genre "zombi" est vraiment adapté au format du petit écran, il faut bien croire que non.    … Expand
  28. Bo33y
    Sep 19, 2015
    0
    Why would they copy and paste, creating this show? They have literally copied most of all of the same concepts from the Walking Dead and pasted them directly into this show. I am sure there are certain differences. Any differences found in the acting, cinematography and dialogue, which are by far an awful comparison in this show. However now we have three zombies shows all airing aroundWhy would they copy and paste, creating this show? They have literally copied most of all of the same concepts from the Walking Dead and pasted them directly into this show. I am sure there are certain differences. Any differences found in the acting, cinematography and dialogue, which are by far an awful comparison in this show. However now we have three zombies shows all airing around the same time. Aren't we bored yet?

    Can sombody please tell me what is wrong with a Z'ee? I bet because of the infantilism used to copy and paste another shows concepts, it obviously wasn't pronounced Zzz, which would literally send us to sleep. Wait, I get it, D'oh! A Z'ee means they are a zombie. Wouldn't we have thought that because this is suppose to be like a totally different kind of show, a Z'ee would mean a particular strain of zombie? Thereby defining this series. Like in this show it actually has different Z'ee categories. No! Instead what we have are the actors, one minute calling them Z'ee, than the next minute calling them zombies, but because Z'ee sounds a whole lot of stupid, worse depending on who is saying it, sometimes they just call them dead heads. I mean I bet if I kept watching this show they would probably start calling those Z'ee something else, because of their supposed catagories.

    Anyhow let that show proceed on to Washington to find that cure than, OOPS, it was actually L.A the home of all zombification.

    Maybe next time they might just stop and think, we don't want to watch a 3rd zombie series about exactly the same stupid thing.    … Expand

Awards & Rankings

13
#13 Most Discussed TV Season of 2014
12
#12 Most Shared TV Season of 2014

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
48

Mixed or average reviews - based on 11 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 11
  2. Mixed: 5 out of 11
  3. Negative: 3 out of 11
  1. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Tim Goodman
    Sep 15, 2014
    60
    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.
    Read full review
  2. TV Guide Magazine
    Reviewed by: Matt Roush
    Sep 12, 2014
    30
    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.
    Read full review
  3. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Mike Hale
    Sep 11, 2014
    50
    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.”
    Read full review
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