Editorials
“The Walking Dead” Just Completed Its Best Half-Season Story Arc
It’s not about the individual episodes. It’s about the big picture.
This season of “The Walking Dead” has caught more shit from fans than perhaps any other. After a near record-breaking premiere that took the show’s horror to a whole new level of disturbing, ratings for the hit AMC series began to dip considerably – and think-pieces across the web announced that the series had become, in its seventh season, a shell of its former self. Of course, anyone who’s been around these past several years knows that none of this was new. The ratings always dip between premieres and finales, and viewers are constantly bemoaning the show’s slow burn storytelling.
But like always, “The Walking Dead” won many of those disillusioned viewers back with last night’s mid-season finale, which paid off all of the storytelling that began on the unforgettable night of October the 23rd. After spending the season fractured and apart in the wake of Negan beating in the heads of both Abraham and Glenn, our beloved group of heroes finally came together inside the walls of the Hilltop Colony, their emotional reunion kick-starting a brand new chapter in the saga. If you found your eyes welling up with tears when Rick and Daryl embraced, you sure weren’t alone.
The reunion was an earned moment of raw emotion, to say the very least, and as has always been the M.O. of the show, it only meant what it needed to mean because of the slow-paced storytelling of the previous episodes. Many viewers have spent the last several weeks complaining about the fact that the group has been split apart, but those with a patience for the show’s storytelling knew that was for a reason. Why were they apart? Because them coming back together was the overarching story being told in the first half of season 7. And when it finally happened, there was no doubt in this fan’s mind that “The Walking Dead” had just completed its most exceptional story arc to date.
We all have a tendency to review individual episodes of TV shows as they air, but the problem there is that episodic television is always about the bigger picture that those episodes collectively paint. You wouldn’t, for example, read the first chapter of a book and write a review of what you read, but it’s somehow become standard procedure for us to judge single hours of television. Sure, this season’s episode of Tara on the island of badass women wasn’t the show’s best to date, and maybe you were bored when so much time was spent on Rosita and Eugene’s mission to make a bullet. Maybe you didn’t even care for the Hilltop episode, which again took the focus away from what you wanted to see most. But as part of the bigger picture, it’s undeniable that those “boring” episodes meant something. They weren’t filler. They were all building to last night’s incredible finale.
Rosita’s heartbreaking attempt to kill Negan would have meant nothing if we hadn’t gone on her journey with Eugene, nor would we feel as connected to Tara if it weren’t for the episode that put the spotlight squarely on her. And without spending so much time apart, the triumphant reunion of the group wouldn’t have had the emotional power that it had last night. That’s storytelling. That’s how it works. And if you give up on “The Walking Dead” whenever it takes its time to tell a story, to give us horror fans something more than mindless blood and guts, then you’re doing both the show and yourself a disservice. The reality is that the series has always been story-driven, and last night was one of countless reminders that the writers damn sure know what they’re doing.
When the seventh season premiere aired back in October, many people seemed to give up on “The Walking Dead” because it had become too depressing. It had become, in their own words, “misery porn.” Indeed that episode was the show’s most truly depressing to date, but again, it was because of that fact that the winter finale, full of hope as it was, worked so damn well. Over the course of the past two months, us viewers have been subjected to as much abuse as the main characters have at the hands of Negan and his Saviors, and emerging from that darkness last night, if only just a little bit, felt like some form of catharsis. Seeing the group back together and once again confident in their united ability to survive was a triumphant moment as a viewer, and it was because it was such a far cry from the horrifying Season 7 premiere that it moved me to tears.
“The Walking Dead” has always been about hope. About having hope in the face of an utterly hopeless situation. Rick, Michonne, Daryl and all of our fictional friends embraced that hope once more last night, and it made for one of the show’s all-time best moments – a moment that wouldn’t have meant anything had the show not taken its sweet time building towards it.
From where I stand, the only real fault of “The Walking Dead” is that it dares to tell slow-paced stories in a time when nobody has the patience for storytelling. And thank god it does.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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