Editorials
“The Walking Dead” Just Took Horror to an Uncomfortable New Level
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.
From child-eating witches to village-burning dragons, fairy tales have always had a foot in the horror genre. That’s why it makes sense that, for every The Hobbit and The Chronicles of Narnia, there are also darker and more adult-oriented stories about magical worlds inhabited by ravenous monsters and cruel villains.
Funnily enough, these sinister tales were precisely the ones that I gravitated towards back when I was a kid, and I was reminded of this while watching Netflix’s recently released I Am Frankelda, Mexico’s first ever feature-length stop-motion animation and one hell of an entertaining parable about the intersection between fiction and reality.
In honor of this special kind of horror-adjacent fairy tale, today I’d like to share this list recommending six Dark Fantasy films that horror fans might enjoy.
For the purposes of this list, we’ll be defining Dark Fantasy as fantastical stories that don’t shy away from the more macabre elements that fuel classic fairy tales. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own grim favorites if you think we missed a particularly thrilling one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
6. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)
I’m fascinated by bizarre attempts at blockbuster filmmaking – especially when the resulting movies are somehow still fun despite their corporate-mandated origins. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is precisely one of these strangely compelling studio projects, as this surprisingly successful action-thriller boasts a lot of heart (and tongue-in-cheek humor) for a CGI-heavy creature feature.
Directed by Dead Snow’s Tommy Wirkola, Witch Hunters re-frames the classic fairy tale as an origin story for a duo of badass monster-slayers. Of course, it’s the flick’s anachronistic aesthetic and overall visual flair that make it stand out from other action-horror endeavors from around the same time.
5. The Wolf House (2018)
Made in the tradition of faux cursed films in the same vein as Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made, the eerie backstory to 2018’s Chilean animated flick The Wolf House (La Casa Lobo in the original Spanish) already makes it a nightmarish experience before the flick even really begins.
After all, the movie is presented to us as a faux propaganda film produced by the leader of a death cult (heavily inspired by the real life Colonia Dignidad), with this hybrid animated feature using complex movie magic to simulate a single uninterrupted shot as it tells the story of a lazy young girl who runs away from an isolated colony and encounters a creepy old house in the woods.
4. The Brothers Grimm (2005)
Out of all the Monty Python alumni, Terry Gilliam has had the most interesting career outside of the original comedy group. From fascinating canceled projects (such as his scrapped adaptation of Watchmen) to dystopian parodies that feel more relevant by the minute (1985’s Brazil), even his “lesser” films are still intriguing in their own way.
2005’s The Brothers Grimm is one such project, with this peculiar movie attempting to combine the comedian-turned-filmmaker’s unique visual style with a more blockbuster-oriented plot reimagining the titular brothers as con-artists rather than mere writers. The end result isn’t exactly a masterpiece, but it’s still a legitimately fun ride with plenty of memorable monsters and wonderful performances by both the late, great Heath Ledger and Matt Damon.
3. Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic (2010)
2010’s Dante’s Inferno game may have a reputation as something of an unapologetic God of War clone, but I’d argue that the now-obscure game was aesthetically unique enough to deserve a bigger fanbase. However, while the title remains trapped on the seventh console generation, its highly underrated anime adaptation is a lot easier to get a hold of!
Animated by 6 different studios in order to make the 9 circles of hell feel unique from each other, this may not be a completely faithful adaptation of Dante Alighieri’s poem, but it’s still one heck of a great (not to mention gory) time that I’d highly recommend to fans of Netflix’s take on Castlevania.
2. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009)
My personal favorite entry in the Underworld franchise, Rise of the Lycans, is a highly ambitious prequel that actually works better if you haven’t had the story spoiled to you by the previous Underworld films.
While the rest of the series features plenty of urban fantasy elements as the movies combine machine guns and modern environments with gothic storytelling, Patrick Tatopoulos’ prequel fully embraces its fantastical origins and tells a classic tale about a doomed romance between a werewolf and a vampire amid a medieval uprising.
And the best part is that we get a lot more Michael Sheen as the fan-favorite Lucian.
1. Solomon Kane (2011)
One of my personal favorite movies on this list, MJ Basset’s criminally underseen adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s other iconic warrior is thoroughly steeped in horror ambience and features plenty of memorable monsters. However, it’s also a classic origin story for a swashbuckling hero that wouldn’t feel out of place in a tabletop RPG.
While I’ve already written about how the film deftly combines both horror and fantasy elements without breaking the bank, I’ll never pass up an opportunity to recommend the bizarre movie where James Purefoy expertly plays a puritan John Wick.
It’s just too bad that we never got the other films in this intended trilogy.
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