Aug
24
Man Alive, “The Walking Dead” Looks Rotten
Filed Under TV
Against my better judgment, I’m still reading Robert Kirkman’s zombie snoozefest, “The Walking Dead.” Every six months, another trade hits stands, and I dutifully pick it up, wondering just how boring the apocalypse will get. The most recent volume has hero Rick Grimes and his son, as well as his ragtag group of interchangeable nobodies I can’t remember the names of, stumble upon a seemingly idyllic community that’s populated by folks who don’t carry firearms and are trying to return to normal, everyday life. Everyday life with zombies lurking just outside the gates!
Kirkman’s pacing is turgid, his characters either bland or transparently evil, and the occasional curveballs (i.e. the deaths of major characters) carry little to no dramatic heft. Maybe it’s because the genre’s played itself out.
Never is that more evident than in the 4-minute trailer for Frank Darabont’s highly-touted “Walking Dead” TV series, debuting this fall on AMC. I’m a major apologist for Darabont’s wildly unloved film “The Mist,” but this looks like one of the cheapjack fanfilms that were all the rage in the mid-2000s: polished and Hi-Def, but perfunctory in its style. Something about HD makes everything look less like a movie-movie and more like a student film. I don’t know what it is. A lack of warmth in the image?
Perhaps the clip’s worst crime is when it borrows wholesale from “28 Days Later,” the last rock-solid zombie-horror movie of the aughts. I sincerely can’t believe Darabont went with Kirkman’s almost beat-for-beat ripoff of Danny Boyle’s excellent film. But, he did. So we get a retread of a guy waking up the hospital, stumbling around human wreckage, trying to puzzle together what has happened. Zzz. Had we skipped ahead to Rick on horseback and heading for the blitzkrieged Atlanta, I’d've been a bit more engaged. And this is the sizzle-reel, people. I think it’s all fizzle and no brains.
-Brad Lohan
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