The much anticipated television series The Walking Dead premiered on AMC last night. I know I was like a little kid at Christmas, practically giddy as I waited for the show to start. And it did not disappoint. While the pilot had its weaknesses (some overacting, a bad Southern accent or two, a few trite plot devices), I must say I am hooked. The special effects are absolutely amazing. Quite frankly, I found myself shocked more than once. I don’t know when I last saw zombies that looked that good (or that bad, as the case may be). The makeup effects were better than most big-budget movies. And bloodier. Much bloodier. There were more than a few times that, squealing through fingers half covering my eyes, I exclaimed, “They can’t show that on television!”
Well, they can and they did. And I for one am ecstatic.
I will be tuning in again—and not just for the gore, though that will be a guarantee for future episodes, I am sure.
What really struck me was the humanity that the show itself has been built upon. The show appears to be written as more of a character study than pure survival zombie apocalypse story. At times, this seemed forced: the mother zombie causing her still-living son to burst into sobs. At other times, the humanity was gut-wrenching. One particularly difficult scene to watch was when Rick Grimes (played by Andrew Lincoln) sees a zombie woman crawling on the ground and decides to kill her out of mercy. The woman was in an advanced state of decay (missing a good part of her face, her legs reduced to fleshless bone), and it was the visual that first stopped me. I found the image profoundly disturbing. Zombies from recent films have seemed much more cartoonish—fast moving, strong—certainly not like this woman, who reflected the true horror of death. It is this, the idea of death, that makes zombies a lasting trope in movies and literature. As a culture, we are both fascinated and disturbed by the idea of death—dying, what happens after death, the possibility of everlasting life.
Perhaps my viewing of the show last night was colored a bit by a recent suicide in my community. The death shocked everyone, leaving more questions than answers. I don’t always have the right thing to say, and certainly not in this situation, but I do know a few things that I feel compelled to share, particularly in light of the rash of suicides that I hear about every time I turn on the news: We are not alone in this world. God made us to love each other and to take care of each other. More than that, God is a loving God, who is in control, even when it seems like the world itself is spinning out of control.
Hebrews 13: 5-6: Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you. So we say with confidence, The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?
1 Corinthians 10:13: No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful, he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.
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