Good lawd they are popular these days.
So, how do you reinvigorate a tired genre?
Like all die-hard fans of print material destined to undergo The Change, my hopes were extremely high.
What has the show devolved into?
A beautifully shot and acted hour long Hyundai Tucson commercial.
Oh yes, I went there.
Good lawd they are popular these days.
The word used to conjure images of a putrid corpse that wouldnt die, shambling hungrily after the living.
The creature was once human, but its individuality has long since been stripped away.
The undead have been reduced to two simple functions: to pursue and to consume.
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TWD is a mite different.
It doesnt test well with audiences; parents dont like to see that sort of thing.
Viewer discomfort seems to be exactly what Darabont was after.
Darabont set out to make his zombies both scary and deeply disturbing.
This begs the question: how do you reinvigorate a tired genre?
Who could forget when Karen Cooper ate her father in Night of the Living Dead?
Thematically, Night is closer in message to TWD than Romeros sequels.
The director has decided to kick you in the face with your own mortality.
Test audiences be damned, wake up people!
Do you honestly think death cares about age?
Speaking of zombie children, we never explained just what the heck is going on here.
Why is this happening?
It stands to reason that the audience would like to know why the world has ended.
Thats just too bad.
Darabont is even more sparing with exposition in TWD than Romero was in Night.
Looking back, it might be easier to ask what hasnt caused a zombie pandemic.
The only clues to what caused the apocalypse that Darabont gives us are visual.
Zero hour has already passed and whoever survived is now dealing with the consequences.
What a great source of anxiety for characters and viewers alike!
Withholding as a thematic rig is just as potent as the walking dead themselves.
Do you have any idea how difficult a technique this is to master?
Remember Andy Kauffmans rendition of the Mighty Mouse theme song?
He used silence to accentuate a single repetitious line to beautiful effect.
Despite all of these storytelling risks, the show is a proven success; ratings gold.
His motley crew of morally ambiguous weirdos actually competes with the walkers for most interesting on-screen presence.
What Darabont does with the zombies is positively jaw-dropping.
This is a straight up monster.
She looks like a monster, groans like a monster, tries to nibble Rick like a monster.
She was too sick to move, so the family hunkered down.
After she died, her husband couldnt bring himself to put her down.
She bobs her head from side to side in a birdlike movement.
Very animalistic and easily one of the creepiest things Ive ever seen.
Morgans wife, as a zombie, is relatable as a person and a victim.
She still resembles the woman her husband knew and loved; albeit she is a bit more disheveled.
He finds her in a lush green park that is completely deserted.
The half-lady is slowly dragging herself through the grass, strands of her guts trailing in her wake.
Shes still a monster, but now Rick can see past that to the person she was before.
He kneels beside her and says, Im sorry this happened to you.
Then he shoots her in the head, effectively killing her once and for all.
They were fleeing to the park, where they had heard the military was still actively rescuing survivors.
The woman died, distracting a zombie hoard while her children ran to safety.
It makes you wonder that Rick found her slowly crawling through the park.
Did some spark in the zombie brain compel her to go where her children had been headed?
Is it the same spark that kept Morgans wife returning to the same house?
I found the zombies more sympathetic than the characters, whose behavior was often incredibly stupid.
Much how I imagine my behavior would be in the same situation.
Why Ricks wife Lori decided to bang his best friend Shane is no mystery.
Again, we can thank Darabont for this.
He cast actors who understood that the roles called for real people, not glorified action heroes.
They are untrustworthy, devious, earnest and loving in all the right places.
Also, I would have liked to beat Lori to death with a stick.
But you cant save everybody from the zombie apocalypse, Rick.
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