The Walking Dead: Season 1 Review

Movie: The Walking Dead: Season 1
By: The Stunted Boy Wonder
Date: June 13, 2011

The Walking Dead: Season 1

The acclaimed graphic novel crawls and staggers onto the television screen, but the Stunted Boy Wonder finds it lacking.

Hordes of zombies

Zombies are a hot topic lately. Movies and videogames starring our undead friends are popping up like mushrooms. So it wasn’t surprising to learn that the popular graphic novel series “The Walking Dead” was made into a live-action television series.

A guy wakes up from a coma and...

The plot revolves around police officer Rick Grimes who wakes up in the hospital from a temporary coma. He finds the hospital deserted apart from what seems to be several moaning maniacs. If you’re unimpressed at this point it’s because this is only the umphtiest fantastical pop story to use this narrative device. It was cool in “Day of the Triffids” up to “28 Days Later...” but is a terrible cliche now. Once out in the city he learns the terrible truth. Later, Grimes meets a larger group of survivors which includes his best friend, his wife and his son. His wife has in the meantime started an amorous relationship with the friend. The other group members are as uninteresting as the next. When their camp just outside the city is unexpectedly raided by zombies and several characters die, you’re rooting for some gory special effects instead of the protagonists surviving. For a series claiming to be about fighting for survival against zombie hordes there’s just too much uninteresting drama involving cardboard characters and too little fighting for survival.

Missed opportunity

The series follows the graphic novels closely, yet despite the high production value of the sets and the sometimes impressive digital matte paintings, it never achieves the same sense of solitude and danger that the original story invokes. The same cliches and drama grace the novels but the backdrop makes it worthwhile in it’s case. Maybe if they’d had made the series in black and white and eschewed the familiar fast and shaky television editing to allow for longer shots and give the actors more room to work out their characters it would have carried over some of the same charisma. “The Walking Dead” is shot as if it’s a convincing action series while it’s not: it’s really more of a pop survival epic with larger-than-life characters.

Resurrected

That is not to say that the end result is all bad. The zombies themselves are impressive. They’re slow and convincingly dead and the producers have sometimes cleverly used special effects to emphasize that point. Also, it’s great to see zombie stories in the mainstream while still retaining special effects that were considered shocking in the 70s and 80s. It’s just a pity that with names like Frank Darabont and Gale Anne Hurd attached and the promising previews we got, the end result isn’t just simply better. A second season is now well into production. This reviewer’s prediction is that if they continue on like this they will lose viewers instead of gaining them- for fear of turning into groaning undead themselves.

BLURAY REVIEW

Image quality

The Walking Dead debuts on blu-ray with a deliberately rough and series-accurate 1080p blu-ray transfer. Though a touch of banding and a few bouts of blockiness are evident from time to time, the transfer captures the depressed look of the original elements quite well. It's a good look that's handled with much accuracy on blu-ray.

Sound

The Walking Dead arrives on Blu-ray with a high-quality Dolby TrueHD 5.1 lossless soundtrack. This is an action-packed mix that's never lacking in either volume or space; blaring car alarms and police sirens penetrate the soundstage with ear-piercing ease, general directional effects are splendid, and the surrounds carry plenty of the action. Gunshots tear through the speakers with startling accuracy, but shotgun blasts are the most fun; the heavy booms lumber through the soundstage with a bone-rattling precision, a battle with zombies at the end of episode four really putting the hurt on both the undead and the aural senses.

Extras

Were to begin with this one.. even if you have seen the series on HBO or anything you can still buy the blu-ray edition. Great extras on these discs. Special Features: The Making of The Walking Dead, Inside The Walking Dead: Episodes 1-6, A sneak peek with Robert Kirkman, Behind the scenes Zombies Make-up tips, Convention Panel with Producers. Extra Features: Zombie School, Bicycle Girl, On set with Robert Kirkman, Hanging with Steven Yeun, Inside Dale’s RV, On set with Andrew Lincoln. The make-up tips part is where you should really pay attention if you are a zombie freak.

Overall

The episodes will last you around 270 minutes but after those episodes you can watch some good things. It’s not that everything is worth seeing but for the true Walking Dead fan it is pure pleasure. This is an excellent item for your zombie collection and if you don’t like zombies you can still enjoy this series. Great visual effects and sound, enjoyment from start to finish.

E1 Entertainment