We thought we were prepared. We were not prepared.
While the horror movies that air during AMC’s annual FearFest may be trimmed of gore, curse words, and well, all the good bits, the network sure doesn’t give the same treatment to their biggest original series. I’m of course talking about “The Walking Dead,“ which kicked off Season 7 last night with an episode that I’m not sure we’ll ever stop talking about.
If you haven’t seen it, please exit this post RIGHT NOW.
Oh who am I kidding… I’m sure some idiot already spoiled it for you.
The hotly-anticipated Season 7 premiere, appropriately titled “The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be,” finally answered the question of who Negan killed at the end of Season 6: it was Abraham. Oh and it was Glenn too. And he almost made Rick cut off Carl’s arm. One of the most disturbing hours in the history of television left us with two of the most beloved characters lying in literal pools of their own blood and gore, and it also ended with Rick a completely broken man and Negan completely in charge of the whole group. The show, as we knew it to this point, will truly never be the same again.
But did “The Walking Dead” go too far last night? Was it just a little too much?
I’ve been watching disturbing entertainment my entire life. But you know what? The Season 7 premiere of “The Walking Dead” was the most grueling, upsetting thing I have honestly ever witnessed. Sure, I’ve watched plenty of movies and television shows wherein characters I fell in love with met brutal, awful demises – many of those upsetting deaths came courtesy of, go figure, “The Walking Dead” – but I don’t recall ever feeling the way I felt last night, glued to the couch and forced to endure a seemingly endless barrage of cruelty. I found myself questioning why I even enjoy watching violent entertainment, and what I felt more than anything, maybe for the first time in my life, can best be described as true horror.
The horror genre is often fun, especially when it’s at its most violent. There are few things I love more than gruesome practical effects, and when characters are torn apart by zombies or sliced in half with machetes, I often find myself cheering and reveling in the gore. We all do. And that’s okay. It’s all fake. It’s all fun. But last night was different. I wasn’t impressed by the sight of Abraham’s splattered head on the ground, and I damn sure wasn’t admiring the effects work that went into literally popping Glenn’s eyeball out of its socket. Instead, I was in tears. I was shaken. I was thoroughly and unmistakably horrified.
Not only were the brutal deaths incredibly realistic and way more grounded than some of the over the top violence we’re used to on “The Walking Dead,” but the episode dragged both of them out to a downright nauseating extent. Negan must’ve bashed Abraham’s head in with at least ten blows from his trusty baseball bat, but it was Glenn’s murder that was particularly hard to stomach. After one blow to the head dislodged his eyeball, Glenn was left to suffer for an excruciating amount of time, only able to utter a single line before being finished off: “I’ll find you,” he told pregnant wife Maggie, barely able to get the words out.
And that was just the beginning.
After several more blows, we saw Glenn’s head literally explode like a watermelon, his arm flop around on the ground afterwards, and then to top it all off, the camera lingered on a shred of his scalp that was stuck to the barbed wire of Negan’s baseball bat. Talk about pulling no punches.
In horror movies and television shows, especially “The Walking Dead,” characters die. That’s a foregone conclusion. We’ve seen countless characters die on the show, and it’s always upsetting. But the sheer brutality of Glenn’s murder, a character we’ve spent the last six years with, was quite unlike anything I have ever experienced before. There was no catharsis. There was no closure. We watched a man who was about to have a child with his wife get beaten to a pulp by another man. We saw every second of it. It looked the way it probably would in real life. And it was truly awful. It was revolting. It was disturbing.
Did “The Walking Dead” go too far last night? Unquestionably. But that’s what was so brilliant about the episode. Because horror entertainment isn’t supposed to be safe. It isn’t supposed to be comfortable. And it isn’t supposed to make you feel good. If “The Walking Dead” ruined your night last night, and if you’re angry at the show for crossing a line, I assure you that’s only because the creative team did their job and they did it really damn well. They wanted to ruin your night. They wanted you to be angry. More importantly, they needed to shake you to your very core.
“The Walking Dead” just became the most horrifying horror show in the history of TV.
And for the first time, I’m scared to watch next week.
