The Walking Dead Review

The walking dead is an increasingly popular American post-apocalyptic horror drama developed by Frank Darabont into a television series. Adapted from a comic-book series of the same name by Robert Kirkman, this horror drama follows the survivors of an apocalyptic holocaust who are searching for a safe haven while being tracked and menaced by zombies.

The plot focuses primarily on the dilemmas that a group faces as they struggle to maintain their humanity during the day-to-day challenges of surviving in a hostile world. This includes battling the zombie hordes, coping with casualties, and dealing with predatory human survivors.

The first season mostly takes place in the Atlanta metropolitan area, where sheriff's deputy Rick Grimes played by Andrew Lincoln emerges from a coma to find his town abandoned with few people but far too many flesh-eating "walkers" who have died and come back to life now feasting upon the living.  Holding out hope that his wife Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) and young son Carl (Chandler Riggs) are still alive, Grimes embarks on a frantic journey to find them, and encounters many other survivors and obstacles along the way.

The second through fourth seasons are set in the surrounding countryside of northern Georgia, as the survivors search for security away from the shuffling hordes of predatory "walkers" or "biters" (as the zombies are referred to in the show), who eat any living thing they catch, and whose bite is infectious to humans. Without screaming or sobbing the characters have moments when they transmit a sympathetic sense of emotional devastation.    

The way the zombies have been made to look captures the simple desolation of an empty city at the end of the world; the zombie makeup is gruesome, skin hangs off their bloodied faces, mouths ripped apart (yet still chomping pointlessly) and chunks of their faces missing whilst they are strewn within the wreckage of cars and bloody chaos, but all this detail just makes the whole show more captivating leaving the viewer wondering where the next horde of wandering zombies will appear.

The world as we know it is gone, and in its place, for now at least, are only two things to think about: the ferocious onslaught of ravenous eaters of human flesh; and the struggle, sometimes with other humans, to live another day.

In my opinion this television series has pushed the horror genre into an area that allows it to be explored further. Darabont portrays aspects that would not usually be used throughout classic zombie movies or other television series; they use things such as empathy that really helps you to understand the characters feelings of each other that creates a final opinion of each and every character for you. It’s even able to create an emotional attachment between the viewers and the characters where the emotion quickly breaks out as you watch the characters fall into the limp hands and mouths of the zombies.