A hazily recalled episode of the Twilight Zone, perhaps the one with ape
on the plane wing or the aliens who, it emerged, ate humans? A little
older? You likely remember the
supremely creepy Alfred Hitchcock
Presents. Much younger?
Fresh terrors still haunt you from Are
You Afraid of the Dark, which proved the ageless power of puppets and
clowns to scare the bejesus out of 8 year-olds.
If you share a taste for being frightened witless in the comfort of your own home, then AMC's series The Walking Dead is right up your alley.
Adapted from an on-going comic book series with the same title, The Walking Dead is the tale of
sheriff's deputy Rick Grimes, who wakes from a coma in an abandoned Georgia
hospital to a world overrun by -- wait for it -- zombies. And I mean
terrifying, flesh-eating, nothing-can-stop them-but-a-bullet-to-the-head,
zombies. Legions of them. With a
mere scratch from them, you join their number.
While the vampires breaking out
everywhere lately leave me (sorry) cold, zombies are a whole different story
for me. A 1964 movie called The Last Man on Earth scared me to death
with its tale of a heroic Vincent Price hunting plague-spawned zombies by day
and being hunted by them by night. I’ve been lying awake nights ever since.
Deputy Grimes is in the same basic
pickle as Price was, but this time the virus is a supercharged millennial
strain, a “zombie apocalypse. These zombies stay up all night AND all day and
show a remarkable, stomach-turning resilience to dismemberment.
A word about the stomach-turning
part: The Walking Dead camera never
turns away. But what will stay with you is not the horrific special
effects, but the panic you experience as the undead shuffle towards the abandoned
car under which the living are hiding, trying to silence their thundering
hearts. No wait – that’s your thundering heart.
Now in its second season, jump right
in whenever you can catch this on demand.
You'll figure it right out. This is television not Dostoevsky.
And resist the urge to find metaphor here. Zombies are scary enough
without standing for something else.
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