'The Walking Dead'

Frank Darabont's The Walking Dead sets a traditional premise, known from films like 28 Days Later, in having its main protagonist wake up from a coma only to find his surroundings irretrievably altered. While he slumbered peacefully in is hospital room, recovering, in this case, from an injury sustained while dealing with a bunch of meth dealers, sheriff Rick Grimes is awaken to find the world almost deserted, littered with corpses that are anything but dead. Confused, Grimes stumbles through the streets of his home-town in Georgia, only to find his house abandoned and his wife and son missing.

Convinced that they're still alive, Grimes makes his way to Atlanta to find them, after spending the night with two survivors, Morgan and his son, who linger in a kind of emotional purgatory, not being able to leave the house as their wife and mother still haunts the premises as a zombie.

In a parallel storyline, the spectator is introduced to what has the feel of a hippie commune, but ultimately is a makeshift society composed of survivors of the zombie pandemic. The group is led by Shane, whom the spectator recognises as Grime's partner from one of the first scenes. Through what feels like a little bit of a too convenient coincidence, Grimes manages to make contact with and eventually joins the group. In an again convenient turn of events, he finds his wife and son living with the group.

So, with the characters being introduced and settled in a societal structure which allows the writers a somewhat wider scope of protagonist action and reaction, let the carnage begin... Or so I thought, but here the series takes its first surprising turn, as the pace is slower and more contemplative than one is used to from other zombie treatments. Don't get me wrong, the iconography is traditional in its gory imagery and slouching, groaning zombies, however, the treatment of the latter is, ironically, somewhat more humane, as the spectator is reminded of their once being human individuals. The zombies are never referred to as such, the series names them walkers. One of the most surprising moments occurs in the first episode in which Grimes bends down to the crawling torso of what once used to be a woman and says: 'I'm sorry this happened to you.'

Grimes is very much portrayed as the lone wolf, the copper with a heart of gold, not afraid to go out and do right. He is almost a stereotype in himself, the strong silent type, you know the one. It's Lincoln's performance, however, which manages to infuse this rather one-dimensional character with something more, if not complexity, at least some sort of integral depth. Lincolns' performance perfectly captures the expression of a man who goes from waking up to a world in which the concept of norm has lost all meaning, to a character who will do everything to keep his group alive all the while having no illusion of the bleak future awaiting them.

The title 'The Walking Dead' not only refers to the zombies, albeit, also to the characters as they could get infected any minute, while the life they lead is so desolate, that one gets the impression, it's almost not worth living. This is a bleak, godforsaken environment and the series' refusal to infuse the general mood with anything even resembling hope, makes for a program which is very much fine-tuned to the human drama lying at its core. While traditional zombie films mostly cover the outbreak of the epidemic, The Walking Dead expands on this theme in exploring the possibilities of life after survival, more often than not finding life to be a lonely, sordid affair in a barren world stripped of any comfort or incentive beyond food and shelter.

This sense of hopelessness and almost lack of future translates in the series' bleak cinematography with its barren, desert-like, sun-drenched colours, endless stretches of abandoned land and roads, carcasses of deserted cars and homes and long takes of characters which seem lost and unnatural in their surroundings which have been taken over by the walkers. It is the humans which seem out of place as the world is transformed into one lifeless vacuum of silence. The series manages to translate this noiselessness, the muteness of the world into images, as any noise made by humans falls away, which lends the tone of the series a tense eeriness. One is almost tempted to scream out only to fill the silence, but, as one soon learns, noise attracts zombies, thus silence is not only natural in this new world, it is necessary, which is why the series allows for moments of stillness, again unusual in this genre. As such the concept of silence proves interesting as it stands in stark contrast to modern life with its constant sensual stimuli and overpowering tendency to loose itself in a noisy day-to-day, thus loosing all direct rapport to the essential given of existing in the world.

The walkers, naturally, become metaphoric for the modern angst of pandemics, terrorist attacks, the crumbling of economic structures and the loss of individuality in a mass of sheer conformity. The group itself becomes illustrative of a societal microcosm in which new rules and governing principles are quickly established, however, contested by some members of the group, thus hinting at the humanly constructed nature of all authoritative body most of us are quite happy to oblige. Shane and Grimes take leadership of the group, in competition to each other, however, quite happy to make decisions for the whole of the group. Here lies one of the main issues of the series, as the women depicted in it are mostly used as emotional catalysts or mere instruments to further the plot. Lori, Grimes' wife, mostly justifies her screen presence in becoming a prize, lost by Shane, gained by Grimes. The other female characters are purely reactionary beings, never allowed to make an independent decision, they have to be protected and seem to spend most of their time washing clothes in a pond. In one scene, in which the women seem to engage in what has become their favourite pass-time, namely laundry (note how strange the washing of clothes becomes if the characters seem to be wearing the same clothes over and over again) they even comment on gender stereotypes and laughingly conclude that nothing much has changed in this new world order.

When Grimes takes most of the men on a rescue mission to Atlanta, the camp is attacked and numerous members of the group die as a result. Later, Shane condemns Grimes for having left the group with no men to defend them. Given that the series is set in Georgia, with two protagonists that are sheriffs, a certain amount of machismo attitude can and indeed should be expected, this however, leaves the female characters pale and under-developed in contrast to their male counterparts, which is a shame as the series could have profited from a few stronger characters.

In the end, what the series benefits most from, is its beautiful, barren, desolate cinematography in which the strangeness of seeing an urban environment devoid of the human element makes for eerie, while stunning viewing. The sense of hopelessness and post-apocalyptic nihilism that pervades the series and the allowance of a depiction of the walkers as former human beings rather than mere lumps of animated flesh, sets the series aside from the rather strict canonical rules of the zombie genre. The Walking Dead is not without fail, as the female characters leave a lot to wish for and the testosterone-fuelled power-struggle of the males becomes almost ridiculous, however, its focus on societal character interactions, musings on life after survival and assertion of moments of speculative beauty make The Walking Dead an addition to the world of 'cinematic' TV which is out to be taken seriously. Rest assured though, dear fans of Evil Dead, there are a lot of heads to be bashed in with whatever instrument is at hand and the zombies still have the munchies....Some things never change, they do get better, however, with a bigger budget!