“The Walking Dead”, a much-discussed show adapted from the comic book written by Robert Kirkman, shambled onto AMC this past Halloween in nearly one hundred and twenty countries. It was a full-scale, cinematic invasion: much like the fictional zombie apocalypse around which the show is built: and delivered with gleeful slaughterhouse panache. This is a beautiful, lonely show, which owes its success in part to swanky 16-mm camera shots and in part to the big money AMC gets from the success of “Mad Men.” In its own right, “The Walking Dead” shoots for the production values and gore of “True Blood” or “Dexter,” and, in many ways, succeeds admirably.
There are plenty of shows on television right now borrowing from the language of horror movies. “Dexter” takes the familiar elements of crime drama like “CSI”, dismembers them and rearranges them in the pattern of a slasher film.“Fringe”, in the tradition of “The Twilight Zone”, takes throwaway science fiction concepts and tries them out for a single episode. “The Walking Dead”, however, has enough brains not to pare down the massive tradition of zombie narratives in order to fit them onto the small screen: It goes forward with the budget and commitment of a Hollywood blockbuster.
In the first few minutes, we follow sheriff Rick Grimes from a bloody shootout to an empty hospital. There’s plenty in the opening scene that borrows from the opening of zombie classic “28 Days Later”: the recently comatose protagonist, the urban sets depopulated by disaster and the serene silence made more terrifying by the following reveal of the titular dead. A stairwell sequence, lit only by two sputtering matches, is taut and incredibly deliberate. This isn’t your little brother’s hyper-caffeinated, flavorless-but-consumable television drama. It’s horror, real horror, which succeeds wildly by interjecting pace and patience into television. It’s simply gripping to watch.
Where “The Walking Dead” may falter, however, is the hit-or-miss characterization. The pilot introduces a father-son duo squatting in a house that once belonged to Grimes’ neighbors. Trapped in the house, the characters exhibit claustrophobia and grim determination without the melodrama or overacted 1,000-yard stares. While these characters work well, the second episode (written, directed and shot by completely different people) brings in a whole enclave of poorly-acted survivors. Distinguishable primarily by race, they are a massive deadweight for the plot. There’s vapid chatter, illogical, forced racial tension and a solid 20 or 30 minutes of wasted airtime. During this space, “The Walking Dead” feels like a SyFy castoff that takes itself more seriously than any television drama ever should. The elements that work: the emptiness and raw terror of the first episode: are totally absent.
What does “The Walking Dead” need? It needs to jettison the external characters; to focus on the savage emptiness rather than filling it with words; to be bold and brave enough to take TV at a calm, measured pace and to achieve real horror on widely available television. “The Walking Dead” needs to take itself seriously without appearing melodramatic and overly grim. It needs to emphasize that the fading zombie fad of the past few years still has life, drive and hope, and to provide scary, visceral television on Sunday nights.
