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The Undead Are Undaunted and Unruly
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
The one good thing about the walking dead is that they don???t drive.
All it really takes to outrun a zombie is a car. Also, a bullet to the head will stop one cold. And that may explain why so many men prefer zombies to vampires: zombie stories pivot on men???s two favorite things: fast cars and guns. Better yet, zombies almost never talk. Vampires, especially of late, are mostly a female obsession. Works like ???Twilight??? and ???True Blood??? suggest that the best way to defeat a vampire is to make him fall so in love that he resists the urge to bite. And that???s a powerful, if naïve, female fantasy: a mate so besotted he gives up his most primal cravings for the woman he loves.
Vampires are imbued with romance. Zombies are not. (Zombies are from Mars, vampires are from Venus.)
Zombie movies didn???t die off, but they were overshadowed by vampire mania that has dominated popular culture in a nonstop streak from Anne Rice???s book ???Interview With the Vampire??? to ???The Vampire Diaries??? on CW. Finally, perhaps as a backlash against all the girlish, gothic swooning over ???Twilight,??? zombies are making a comeback.
A new series that begins on AMC on Sunday is one of the most vivid examples of the revival. ???The Walking Dead??? is based on Robert Kirkman???s popular graphic novels. And the television adaptation is surprisingly scary and remarkably good, a show that visually echoes the stylized comic-book aesthetic of the original and combines elegant suspense with gratifyingly crude and gruesome slasher-film gore.
The zombies in ???The Walking Dead??? are true to the genre, and so is its hero, Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), a Southern sheriff???s deputy and a man of few words and many firearms. Yet amid all the carnage and oozing close-ups of cannibalism, ???The Walking Dead??? does make room for several complicated relationships and at least one love triangle.
Romance is not forbidden in zombie circles of course. Long before the fad of Jane Austen mash-ups like ???Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,??? the 1943 classic ???I Walked With a Zombie??? drew its story line from Charlotte Brontë???s ???Jane Eyre.???
But vampire stories mostly focus on the relationship between the undead and the living, usually with lots of overwrought dialogue, erotic subtext and decadently lush scenery. Zombies don???t as a rule socialize with their prey. It???s the group dynamic among survivors that provides the drama. Conflicts matter more than courtship, and the characters spend most of their time barricaded behind bolted doors and boarded windows. There is little occasion for conversation, let alone changing into evening attire.
???The Walking Dead??? follows in the tradition of the 1968 cult film by George A. Romero, ???Night of the Living Dead,??? which is to say that ???The Walking Dead??? is a straight tale of horror, not a tongue-in-cheek takeoff like the 2009 movie ???Zombieland??? or ???Dead Set,??? a British series that began on IFC this week, about contestants on a ???Big Brother???-like show who are the last to learn that zombies are destroying the world.
One oddity of the genre, and perhaps its appeal, is how orthodox it is. For all the many sequels, remakes and parodies, zombies stick pretty closely to the original flesh-eating model: They don???t have personalities, they lurch, and they are always hungry for human flesh. Sometimes the predators are from outer space, but more commonly zombies are spawned by a man-made armageddon. (Variations are usually minor, as with the light-sensitive zombies in the Will Smith movie ???I Am Legend.???)
The exact cause of this zombie apocalypse is left unclear. While on duty one day Rick is shot and winds up in the hospital. Like the hero of the 2002 movie ???28 Days Later,??? Rick wakes up from a coma to find the hospital deserted and zombies scavenging across his empty and denuded town. The sheriff???s station is abandoned, and he can???t find his partner, Shane (Jon Bernthal). Rick staggers home to discover that his wife, Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies), and son, Carl (Chandler Riggs), have vanished. Rick sets out for Atlanta, hoping his family is waiting for him there.
He eventually joins forces with a group of survivors trapped in an abandoned city overrun by zombies; aerial shots pull back high above the streets to reveal what looks like swarming armies of cockroaches. And he quickly learns that while the undead are a formidable ??? and disgusting ??? external threat, he also has enemies among the living.
???The Walking Dead??? is not for everyone, obviously, but it is well made: a hard-core zombie story that even vampire lovers can watch.
The Walking Dead
AMC, Sunday nights at 10, Eastern and Pacific times; 9, Centralt ime.Pilot written and directed by Frank Darabont, based on the comic book series by Robert Kirkman; Mr. Darabont, Gale Anne Hurd, Mr. Kirkman, David Alpertand Charles Eglee, executive producers;Jack LoGiudice, co-executive producer;Denise Huth, producer. Produced by AMC Studios. WITH: Andrew Lincoln (Rick Grimes),Jon Bernthal (Shane Walsh), Sarah Wayne Callies (Lori Grimes), Laurie Holden (Andrea), Jeffrey DeMunn(Dale), Steven Yeun (Glenn), Emma Bell(Amy) and Chandler Riggs (CarlGrimes).
http://tv.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/arts/television/29walking.html?_r=1&nl=&emc=a28
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
The one good thing about the walking dead is that they don???t drive.
All it really takes to outrun a zombie is a car. Also, a bullet to the head will stop one cold. And that may explain why so many men prefer zombies to vampires: zombie stories pivot on men???s two favorite things: fast cars and guns. Better yet, zombies almost never talk. Vampires, especially of late, are mostly a female obsession. Works like ???Twilight??? and ???True Blood??? suggest that the best way to defeat a vampire is to make him fall so in love that he resists the urge to bite. And that???s a powerful, if naïve, female fantasy: a mate so besotted he gives up his most primal cravings for the woman he loves.
Vampires are imbued with romance. Zombies are not. (Zombies are from Mars, vampires are from Venus.)
Zombie movies didn???t die off, but they were overshadowed by vampire mania that has dominated popular culture in a nonstop streak from Anne Rice???s book ???Interview With the Vampire??? to ???The Vampire Diaries??? on CW. Finally, perhaps as a backlash against all the girlish, gothic swooning over ???Twilight,??? zombies are making a comeback.
A new series that begins on AMC on Sunday is one of the most vivid examples of the revival. ???The Walking Dead??? is based on Robert Kirkman???s popular graphic novels. And the television adaptation is surprisingly scary and remarkably good, a show that visually echoes the stylized comic-book aesthetic of the original and combines elegant suspense with gratifyingly crude and gruesome slasher-film gore.
The zombies in ???The Walking Dead??? are true to the genre, and so is its hero, Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), a Southern sheriff???s deputy and a man of few words and many firearms. Yet amid all the carnage and oozing close-ups of cannibalism, ???The Walking Dead??? does make room for several complicated relationships and at least one love triangle.
Romance is not forbidden in zombie circles of course. Long before the fad of Jane Austen mash-ups like ???Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,??? the 1943 classic ???I Walked With a Zombie??? drew its story line from Charlotte Brontë???s ???Jane Eyre.???
But vampire stories mostly focus on the relationship between the undead and the living, usually with lots of overwrought dialogue, erotic subtext and decadently lush scenery. Zombies don???t as a rule socialize with their prey. It???s the group dynamic among survivors that provides the drama. Conflicts matter more than courtship, and the characters spend most of their time barricaded behind bolted doors and boarded windows. There is little occasion for conversation, let alone changing into evening attire.
???The Walking Dead??? follows in the tradition of the 1968 cult film by George A. Romero, ???Night of the Living Dead,??? which is to say that ???The Walking Dead??? is a straight tale of horror, not a tongue-in-cheek takeoff like the 2009 movie ???Zombieland??? or ???Dead Set,??? a British series that began on IFC this week, about contestants on a ???Big Brother???-like show who are the last to learn that zombies are destroying the world.
One oddity of the genre, and perhaps its appeal, is how orthodox it is. For all the many sequels, remakes and parodies, zombies stick pretty closely to the original flesh-eating model: They don???t have personalities, they lurch, and they are always hungry for human flesh. Sometimes the predators are from outer space, but more commonly zombies are spawned by a man-made armageddon. (Variations are usually minor, as with the light-sensitive zombies in the Will Smith movie ???I Am Legend.???)
The exact cause of this zombie apocalypse is left unclear. While on duty one day Rick is shot and winds up in the hospital. Like the hero of the 2002 movie ???28 Days Later,??? Rick wakes up from a coma to find the hospital deserted and zombies scavenging across his empty and denuded town. The sheriff???s station is abandoned, and he can???t find his partner, Shane (Jon Bernthal). Rick staggers home to discover that his wife, Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies), and son, Carl (Chandler Riggs), have vanished. Rick sets out for Atlanta, hoping his family is waiting for him there.
He eventually joins forces with a group of survivors trapped in an abandoned city overrun by zombies; aerial shots pull back high above the streets to reveal what looks like swarming armies of cockroaches. And he quickly learns that while the undead are a formidable ??? and disgusting ??? external threat, he also has enemies among the living.
???The Walking Dead??? is not for everyone, obviously, but it is well made: a hard-core zombie story that even vampire lovers can watch.
The Walking Dead
AMC, Sunday nights at 10, Eastern and Pacific times; 9, Centralt ime.Pilot written and directed by Frank Darabont, based on the comic book series by Robert Kirkman; Mr. Darabont, Gale Anne Hurd, Mr. Kirkman, David Alpertand Charles Eglee, executive producers;Jack LoGiudice, co-executive producer;Denise Huth, producer. Produced by AMC Studios. WITH: Andrew Lincoln (Rick Grimes),Jon Bernthal (Shane Walsh), Sarah Wayne Callies (Lori Grimes), Laurie Holden (Andrea), Jeffrey DeMunn(Dale), Steven Yeun (Glenn), Emma Bell(Amy) and Chandler Riggs (CarlGrimes).
http://tv.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/arts/television/29walking.html?_r=1&nl=&emc=a28
