The Walking Dead does zombies right

At NewsOK’s TV blog, Staticblog’s George Lang shares his take on “The Walking Dead,” the AMC series developed by Frank Darabont based on the Robert Kirkman comic-book series.

Series creator Darabont is known best for directing “The Shawshank Redemption” and “The Green Mile,” two Stephen King stories based largely in some semblance of reality, but his most recent film was an adaptation of King’s “The Mist,” a raging B-movie style monster piece. Working closely from Kirkman’s story, Darabont, who directed the pilot, has fashioned a zombie-infested world in which the survivors must be ingenious enough to fight off the decaying hordes — zombies might not be smart, but they are tenacious. In the second episode, Rick and several other survivors including Glenn (Steven Yuen) and Andrea (Laurie Holden, “The Mist,” “The X-Files”) come up with a method of disguising themselves that might be the most disgusting concept ever presented in zombie fiction.

This brings up the question of the hour: does Darabont pull any television-enforced punches when depicting zombie splatter? The answer is an emphatic no: this is possibly the most gory, visceral series on television. You can put “The Walking Dead” up against George A. Romero’s series beginning with “Night of the Living Dead” onward, Zack Snyder’s remake of “Dawn of the Dead,” Danny Boyle’s “28 Days Later” or last year’s “Zombieland” and it’s clear that Darabont’s blood is not watered down. This is tough stuff: treat “The Walking Dead” like the old rule about swimming — wait a decent amount of time after eating.