Movies
TV: ‘Demon Knight’ Director Talks Undead with ‘The Walking Dead’
Things are moving forward without Frank Darabont and AMC has their director for the second and third episodes of The Walking Dead season two, based on the Image comic book series created by Robert Kirkman.
In this latest dispatch from the set, Ernest Dickerson (Demon Knight, “Dexter”, “Treme” – and episode “Wildfire” of season one of “The Walking Dead”), the director for Episodes 2 and 3 of Season 2, shares his secret for surviving the wilds of rural Georgia, explains what “The Walking Dead” has in common with The Wild Bunch and describes trying to outdo Season 1’s guts.
Q: What was the inspiration to direct two episodes back-to-back for Season 2?
A: It was the set of the highway, which was going to be common to both episodes. So we felt it would be better to shoot all of that for Episodes 2 and 3 at one time because that was going to be the last time that the government was going to let us block off the road. Artistically, it was better to keep it all together. So part of the day I would be shooting Episode 2 and the other part I would be shooting scenes from Episode 3. It got kinda crazy juggling both episodes but it seemed to work. These shows are always fun to do — they’re just difficult. We always had to protect ourselves from ticks and snakes and poison ivy and poison oak and poison sumac along with the weather and uneven ground, all kinds of stuff.
Q: Did any of those afflict you personally?
A: No, I wound up being okay. My fiancée hinted me to the fact that peppermint soap is one of the best things to deter ticks and a lot of other insects, so I was showering with that every night and every morning and shampooing with peppermint shampoo. Usually mosquitoes love me, but I had no problems with the bugs. It turns out everybody that did not use the peppermint soap wound up finding ticks on them whenever they went home.
Q: You cut your teeth working with Spike Lee, and are known for directing urban stories. What was it like to be shooting in rural Georgia?
A: Yeah, I did all those urban films, but I’ve been a student of good horror since I was a kid. It was also good to get back to the woods because I used to go out camping quite a bit when I was younger. It’s interesting shooting in the woods: Like any different environment, you have to go and just adapt. So we just dragged all of our tools and equipment into the woods and tried to make it through the day.
Q: You’ve said one of your greatest influences was Alfred Hitchcock. Is there anything about your work on The Walking Dead that’s reminiscent of him?
A: Well, Hitchcock was a master visual storyteller. He believed in something that he called “pure cinema,” where the dialogue is almost superfluous. And I do try to tell the story as visually as I possibly can. For The Walking Dead, most of my influence comes from Westerns. Everything is there: Our main characters are pioneers trying to survive in a strange new world, the rules of which they’re learning every single day; it’s a hostile environment and they’re trying to hold on to a semblance of civilization. And that’s what westerns are about, especially the films of John Ford and Sam Peckinpah. The Searchers, The Wild Bunch, they influenced me quite a lot.
Q: You directed last season’s Episode 5, where Andrea had to kill the zombified Amy. Did anything compare to that intensity in these episodes?
A: I’m really proud of that scene because it was beautifully written and just working it out with Laurie Holden on how to play it worked out really well. I think we got some pretty good scenes this time also: We have a walker autopsy. When we were shooting it, I kept wondering if it’s gross enough. I can get pretty critical because I know what everything is, and that this is just plastic or rubber, so is it gross enough? I was actually trying to outdo the episode from last year where Rick and Glenn had to smear the zombie guts on themselves. [Laughs]
Q: What was your favorite aspect of being on set?
A: I think one of the reasons I’m a director is I’m 60 years old, but I’m still a big kid. And hopefully everybody else that I’m playing with feels the same way. Honestly, that’s one of the things that I feel is my job as a director, to allow the actors to feel like they can play and try things and bring things to their characters as long as it works with the script. So I think the big kid in me tries to make sure — as tough as it is, because it is tough — that everybody’s having a pretty good time doing it.
Q: What has The Walking Dead taught you about surviving the apocalypse?
A: Have lots of canned food, lots of bottled water, peppermint soap, and watch your back. Usually people that don’t watch their backs, those are the ones that get jumped and eaten by the zombies.
I first heard about The Mandela Catalogue through a couple of nephews who were obsessed with the ARG’s sinister mythology. It was only after watching Wendigoon’s in-depth analysis of the series that I realized just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
In fact, I’d already been exposed to the nightmarish visuals of Alex Kister’s YouTube creation for years at that point without even realizing that it was the origin of several viral “cursed images” and spooky memes that had leaked into the wider internet – with this viral element actually being a part of the Catalogue’s overarching narrative.
Flash-forward to 2026 and the unprecedented success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has led to Hollywood betting on horrific internet properties with existing fanbases, which means that Kister’s unique hybrid of both religious and analog horror is finally headed to the big screen with a script written by Kister himself alongside Tyler Clifton.
While this news shouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing success of The Mandela Catalogue (both myself and Wendigoon having previously predicted that the series would inevitably make the jump to theaters one day), plenty of horror fans are likely confused as to why so many folks are excited for what appears to be a Hollywood adaptation of a series of creepy .jpeg images under a VHS filter.
With that in mind, today I’d like to invite fellow readers to accompany me as I explore the origins of Alex Kister’s viral hit and attempt to explain exactly why we should all be excited about the Mandela Catalogue adaptation!
From High School Writing Project to Internet Horror Phenomenon
The first seeds of The Mandela Catalogue were sown when Kister was still in high school and developed a writing project subverting religious tropes in a world where biblical history had been altered by demonic forces. A little while later, Kister came across an analog horror contest on Reddit and decided to adapt his ideas into a standalone video where he would edit a religious kids’ cartoon –The Beginner’s Bible: The Nativity, to be specific- into something far creepier. This is how the iconic Overthrone video was born, with this viral short film taking on a life of its own as fans demanded more eerie content from Kister.
Though the video was originally meant to be a one-and-done sort of affair, with Kister actually regretting some of its primitive visuals and considering the editing amateurish and “YouTube-Poop-like” when compared to his current standards, fan reaction and free time during the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged the (then) seventeen-year-old filmmaker to continue producing content set in this same world. The Mandela Catalogue name was inspired by the Mandela Effect conspiracy theory, as the series would slowly begin to explore the subtle horror of alternate histories.
Inspired by existential dread brought on by extended periods of quarantine as well as a personal crisis of faith, Kister continued to expand his alternate timeline where the rise of Christianity had been prevented by what was presumably the Devil disguised as the Archangel Gabriel. This alternate course of fictional events led to the existence of certain paranormal anomalies that had come to be accepted as “normal” by the 1990s, which is why most of the series’ supernatural horror is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Most of this background information and religious lore is delivered by increasingly cryptic broadcasts and in-universe PSAs, as well as the occasional found footage video, that often have to be decoded by clever viewers. Of course, it’s the consistently disturbing imagery that made the series so popular – much of which was originally created by Kister on a smartphone!
The Alternates: Horror’s Most Unsettling Modern Monsters
The show’s early episodes mostly take place within the fictional Mandela County in Wisconsin and depict life in a world where demonic entities are capable of using media to enter our reality. This process usually involves scaring victims into killing themselves and then repurposing their bodies as horrific doppelgangers referred to as “Alternates”. This terrifying phenomenon has become so common that local police already have specialized procedures in place to deal with the issue, though this usually consists of simply ignoring calls for help so as to avoid spreading so-called “Metaphysical Awareness Disorder” any further.
Over time, Kister would expand this mythology and incorporate different kinds of Alternates into the mix, though the story never stopped deconstructing religious concepts. The series’ second volume exponentially increased both video quality and the overall narrative scope as we began to follow the lives of characters who had already grown up in this dystopian hellscape where the government is forced to prohibit religion, television, and even mirrors in the hopes of mitigating the damage done by the ongoing invasion of otherworldly entities.
The really interesting part comes into play when you realize exactly how the Alternates make use of scary media in order to spread their demonic influence, with the analog horror of it all being a diegetic part of the story and something of a memetic trap orchestrated by the false Gabriel.
I particularly appreciate how some characters begin to suspect that there’s something wrong with their version of reality and that things weren’t meant to play out this way, especially when Mark utters the haunting line “who have I been praying to all this time?” That’s why I think The Mandela Catalogue is an effective piece of religious horror even if you don’t subscribe to the Christian worldview, as the mere idea of a world where evil has already won is a universally terrifying concept in and of itself. Not only that, but the series’ uncanny analog imagery alone is already worth the price of admission, as you’ve likely already noticed by looking at the pictures accompanying this article.
Why The Feature Adaptation Could Be Horror’s Next Big Success
It’s actually been a whole year since Kister first announced that he had been working on a feature-length screenplay for a Mandela Catalogue movie since 2022, with his proposed story following an ensemble of high-school graduates who uncover a supernatural conspiracy after the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student. This premise sounds similar to narrative elements present in the series’ second volume, but I’m pretty sure that Kister is going to go the Kane Parsons route and make the movie more of a spin-off than a re-imagining of its source material.
While notable Hollywood producers like Aaron B. Koontz, Scott Stuber, and Steven Spielberg himself are backing the upcoming project, I feel like there’s no one better to adapt this deeply personal exploration of faith and the dark side of communication than the person who first came up with it. That’s why I can’t wait to see Kister’s work on the big screen, as I have a feeling that this young filmmaker is the next one on the list about to make cinematic history – especially since this is clearly a passion project that has been in the works for years at this point!
That being said, there’s always a chance that the film could end up unleashing a fresh wave of Alternate incursions, but I guess that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.
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