Not to overgeneralize, but horror movies are a terrible genre.
They are usually cheap, full of no-name actors and released in months like January, the biggest dead-movie month because it comes right after Oscar season.
Whenever Halloween comes, this reviewer has no real interests in watching overwrought horror “classics,” usually only hailed by cult audiences for their cheesiness and pitiful attempts at scares.
But this Halloween was different. This Halloween had the premiere of “The Walking Dead.”
From the network that brought us “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad” (as well as “Rubicon,” but we’ll forgive them), “The Walking Dead” is the newest AMC original television series, based off the excellent Robert Kirkman comic book of the same name.
And fans were excited. Many count “The Walking Dead” as their favorite comic book. It’s a black-and-white masterpiece of a series that has a breakneck pace and a plethora of shock endings that never feel forced. It’s the “24” of comic books. Well, before “24” got stale that is.
In the 75-minute pilot episode, aptly titled “Days Gone By,” police officer Rick Grimes is shooting the breeze with his partner, talking in thick Southern accents, which might disarm comic readers hearing the voices off the page for the first time. A standoff ensues between officers and a man. The man fires and connects with Grimes, who goes down to the ground and descends into a coma.
The world Grimes wakes up to is vastly different from the one he left. As one can discern from the series title, a zombie apocalypse has taken place, and now Grimes is on the hunt to find his family, wife Lori and son Carl. But an expedition to Atlanta is not all it’s cracked up to be.
There are definitely genre similarities between “The Walking Dead” and others of its ilk, but what separates the show (and the comic book) is that the focus is never quite on the zombies themselves. Low-budget, hackneyed horror will often put the focus on the existence of the paranormal and leave it at that.
But “The Walking Dead” is a show that can appeal to the person who places no fandom in the horror genre, because this show is more about the emotions that the protagonists go through in this apocalyptic world.
From the very first episode, Rick encounters a man and his son who must grapple with the reality that their wife and mother is a zombie. But she’s not exaggeratedly staggering to the door and yelling, “Brains!” She’s distractedly ambling to the door and slowly knocking. This tease at familiarity from the hollow shell of her former self is a crippling reminder of her former existence. It’s enough to send the father and son to tears.
The only downfall, at least to the comic’s readers, is that the series’ initial pace can prove surprising. It’s definitely slower paced and more fleshed out than the comic book. (For example, the comic manages to cover much of the first episode’s events in a mere 22 pages.) But this is to be expected, especially if the show is to have any longevity.
As someone who has read most of the comic’s 75-issue-and-counting run, be assured: The best is yet to come. Unlike “The Road,” these people will not just sit on their hands in the middle of nowhere and think about life. Action, drama, twists and turns are to come. And the only question left is: Who will survive?
“The Walking Dead” airs Sundays at 10 p.m. on AMC.
