Waking the Dead

Ask and ye shall receive.

Just last night I said that if writers and directors took the zombie genre seriously we could build upon what we have in both the literary and theatrical field. Brad Pitt is making World War Z into a film and Mira Grant has written a thoroughly smart, entertaining book in Feed.

Now this morning, the iconic Pumpkinrot posted a link to a bootleg trailer of a new TV series(!) that is set to launch this fall on AMC called "The Walking Dead." As 'Rot urges, view this trailer ASAP because it's likely to be taken down from YouTube at some point, though it wouldn't surprise me if it turns out to be some sort of "underground" viral marketing campaign.

You should also look at it ASAP because the show looks simply awesome!

The Walking Dead is about a police officer leading a group of survivors looking for safety. In many ways, it follows a similar plot line from 28 Days Later in that the cop wakes up in a hospital after having been shot and after the world has been overrun by zombies. The zombies here, though, don't look to be the fast kind.

From the trailer, the zombie special effects are instantly recognizable from any number of zombie flicks you might have seen -- greyed out flesh, dark blood stains around the mouth, etc. -- but there are also a few otherwise original shots. For example, towards the end of the trailer, there appears to be a torso crawling towards someone and the face of a woman is partially skeletonized. For a TV series, it looks like it has excellent production values.

Here in my area of Bergen County, NJ, AMC is on Cablevision Channel 43, Dish Network Channel 890, DirecTV Channel 254, and Verizon FiOS Channel 201. You can find what channel it's on near you by using the handy "channel finder."

Happy viewing!