Why Is "The Walking Dead" So Great!

Why Is “The Walking Dead” So Great?

Shannon and I are fans of a good ole’ zombie movie. We, of course, love the 28 Days Later and the Resident Evil series as well. We watched the pilot episode of AMC’s “The Walking Dead” yesterday and discussed afterwards all of the beautiful things that will make this series great.

The overarching idea that makes this show’s potential so high spawns from limitations in the feature film format that can be fixed or done completely differently in a television format.

1. Character development. Now, I ALWAYS forget people’s names as soon as I meet them and in horror movies in particular, names are mostly a trivial affair anyway it seems. I honestly can’t remember any of the names of the characters in 28 Days Later, Night of The Living Dead, or pretty much any other pop horror movie. Granted, there are exceptions, like Alice from Resident Evil and maybe a few landmark type of characters. For the most part, though, the characters in zombie movies basically fill a needed storyline roll. There’s the crazy guy, maybe an outlaw or someone who “doesn’t play by anyone’s rules”… there’s the comic relief, the token racist character (be they actually racist or an ethnic stereotype), the hot girl, etc. The characters are mostly remembered for their roll in the movie and not for their actual CHARACTER.

In “The Walking Dead” (henceforth TWD), we’re granted the freedom of TIME to allow us to actually explore the inner workings of each character and to develop serious internal storylines that can deal with difficult and complex issues. Sure, there’s always the mean guy who turns nice or the unlikely hero finding their inner strength after watching a friend or family member die. But these are simple (albeit necessary) surface level emotional changes. We simply don’t have time in a standard feature film to deal with heavy changes AND the undead.

Here is where the television format will surely shine for TWD. In the pilot alone, we’re given 4 sets of specific story lines that are already proving to have more gravitas than most zombie films of the past. It seems like the creative team is really allowing the story to breathe and move slowly in order to explore different sides of the emotional journeys our characters are involved in. Let's be honest... it would be quite an experience to go through a zombie apocalypse.

2. Storylines. For most zombie movies, the goal is just to live until the end of the movie. Some will, some won’t, someone will get bitten and either won’t tell anyone or the other characters will insist on trying to save them. (Seriously? Have you never watched a zombie movie before?) There will most likely be some time allotted to talk about
   where the virus came from, whether it’s man-made or alien, evil or well-meaning intentions turned bad. But it’s rare that there is really enough time spent diving into the origins of the infestation.

Even in this first episode, we’re not told anything about the origin of the virus. We’re not given a time-line of how fast things happened or how long our lead character was in a coma. It’s so important in these types of stories that we as the viewers know just as little as the main characters. It’s classic storytelling, and it’s classic for a reason. It just works.

So in this post-apocalyptic world, there are a myriad of possible story directions to be had, from the origin story to a possible cure (hinted at in the Pilot as being at the CDC in Atlanta), and even side stories of crazy or murderous living people that have assumed some kind of control over a town or the zombies themselves.

Not to mention the fact that TWD is based on a comic book series with 78 issues already. The director, Frank Darabont, has already said he intends to use the comics as a guide, but to also follow other bunny trails that were either hinted at or completely outside of the comics. All that to say, I don’t think they’ll be at a lack of story ideas in this show for as long as AMC will put it on!

3. Scare tactics. A smaller piece of the puzzle, but Shannon pointed it out and I think it will be important to the longevity of the show. In your standard zombie movie, there seems to be a certain number of zombies jumping out of nowhere to scare everyone and scare or gross out the audience. Being a television show, the director and writers won’t have to focus on fitting in as many jump-out-at-you scenes to get cheap scares, but can work a more deep rooted fear and creepiness into the show. Again, the key to making this happen is having time.

The greatest gift this show has seems to be simply TIME. I sincerely hope that the creative team on this show realizes what a huge gift that is and use it to their advantage. I didn’t even mention the zombies themselves, which look GREAT and move really well, almost a hybrid. A little quicker than a Romero zombie, but not as fast as a “Rage” zombie. I just hope that level of production quality won’t be lost after the pilot.

Overall, this show has the potential to be the great, long awaited zombie epic that undead lovers like us have always dreamt of. AMC is the perfect place for it too. Not only because zombies are an American classic in and of themselves, but because Darabont will have a lot of freedom with a certain extent of gore (as evident in the pilot episode).

I’m more excited about this show than any others that are going on right now. Alas, only 5 more episodes in Season 1… it’ll have to do for now!