The truth is, I’m not a big fan of comparing one piece of entertainment to another piece of unrelated entertainment, which is often done to boost up the one thing while taking a crap on the other. And I suppose that’s precisely what I’ve done with the above headline, but those who read my weekly recaps of “The Walking Dead” know that I’ve always been a big time supporter and fan of AMC’s series, even when it hasn’t been so hot. Mind you, the recent ninth season fired on cylinders the series hadn’t in a couple years, but I digress.
My point is, I love “The Walking Dead,” which will go down in history not simply as one of the best but also one of the most important horror television shows of all time. And while the stellar first season of “The Walking Dead” was no doubt far superior to the debut season of Netflix’s brand new “Black Summer,” the latter zombie series has impressed me by excelling in a couple areas that the AMC series has been having trouble with of late.
And now that I’ve got your attention, I’ll explain what the hell I’m talking about.
1) THE ZOMBIES ARE ACTUALLY SCARY
Whether you love “The Walking Dead” or you hate it, one thing you cannot deny is that the zombies the series has brought to the small screen are some of the downright coolest in the sub-genre’s history. Makeup master Greg Nicotero and his team are constantly upping their game to create truly memorable walkers, from the half-corpse zombie seen in the pilot episode to “Winslow” the scrap metal zombie from Season 7. Many of the show’s zombies have been iconic enough that they were turned into action figures by McFarlane Toys, and many of them even pay direct tribute to zombies from classic horror movies.
Point being, the zombies on “The Walking Dead” are incredibly cool looking, but they’re very rarely… scary. Especially at this point in the show’s run, nine seasons deep, the characters have become so adept at dispatching zombies that the gut-munchers have become an afterthought. Even when several of them are approaching our heroes, a few quick slices from Michonne’s katana separates their heads from their bodies with ease. Often, it’s as if the zombies are made of a gelatinous goo, which makes for some gruesome bits of mayhem but also ensures that the zombies on “The Walking Dead” never feel like much of a threat.
In “Black Summer,” however, each and every zombie is presented as a vicious killing machine who’s almost impossible to escape from, even if you’ve only got *one* on your tail. No, they don’t look even half as cool as the zombies on “The Walking Dead” – they’re newly infected humans rather than full-on monsters, bleeding from the eyes and mouth but otherwise looking quite human – but they pose a credible threat that brings genuine suspense and terror to “Black Summer.” And at its best, the Netflix series is nothing if not TENSE.
From the immediately mad opening sequence to the equally insane final moments, the first season of “Black Summer” frequently delivers intense, immersive chaos that’s sustained across entire episodes, and that’s primarily because the *running* zombies are actually fearsome foes; it doesn’t hurt that the show begins at the start of the zombie apocalypse, ensuring that the characters aren’t very well equipped at dispatching the flesh-eaters. All of these elements particularly allow the series to shine in its fourth episode, titled “Alone.”
“Alone” primarily sees one character being chased around town by one zombie, beginning at a school and making pit stops at a grocery store, a garage and eventually, a bookstore. Remember how I said that “The Walking Dead” frequently sees its characters easily killing off entire hordes of walkers like it’s going out of style? Well in “Alone,” we truly get to see how much havoc a single zombie can wreak. The extended, multi-location chase sequence is unbearably tense the whole way through, with one particularly effective portion putting our ill-equipped survivor on top of a school bus… with the hungry zombie trying to get up there with him. Another episode has a different group of characters holed up in a diner, and only two zombies outside are enough to ensure they won’t all make it out alive.
Most zombie purists tends to prefer the slow-moving rotters found in George Romero’s films and on “The Walking Dead,” but there’s something to be said for the fast-moving types that you really can’t escape from. And “Black Summer” makes a good case, like the Dawn of the Dead remake before it, for the effectiveness of “fast zombies.”
Speaking of which, that brings us to the second point I want to touch upon.
2) NOBODY IS EVER TRULY SAFE
Now I realize it’s hardly fair to compare a brand new series in its first season with a ratings juggernaut that’s now up to its tenth, the former allowed to take chances while the latter is naturally beholden to keeping certain characters alive for the sake of ratings and storyline continuation, but the debut season of “Black Summer” has nevertheless excelled in the “nobody’s safe” department. Due to the anthology-like nature of the series, which splits up two primary groups of characters but never really establishes any one character as the “main” character, “Black Summer” allows itself to really do whatever the hell it wants.
And it often wants to kill off characters.
One could argue that Jamie King’s Rose, a mother looking for her young daughter, is perhaps the main character of “Group A,” while Sal Velez Jr.’s William is arguably the main character of “Group B,” but even those distinctions are shattered to pieces when, in one of the final moments of the season – SPOILERS INCOMING – William is not only killed off, but he’s killed off by Rose. And it’s not even just that William dies unexpectedly, it’s that he’s written out of the show so unceremoniously. Whereas “The Walking Dead” has become known for telegraphing its character deaths, often giving characters extended, emotional sendoffs, “Black Summer” makes the decision to end William’s life with an almost shocking level of disregard. William, a character we’d gotten to know and care for across the previous seven episodes, is suddenly shot in the head by Rose the second a leg injury leads him to hold her back from getting to where she needs to be. No long, drawn out ethical debate. No buildup to it. No moment to process it afterwards. It just… happens. The blink-and-miss-it moment is even shot from behind, ensuring you don’t even get the comfort of seeing William one last time.
The shocking decision no doubt angered some viewers, but I for one can’t help but applaud the filmmakers for hammering home just how dangerous and vicious their world truly is. And even with Rose now firmly in the “main character” position in the wake of that bullet being fired off, the show has made it pretty clear that nobody is truly the Rick Grimes of this particular television series. “Black Summer,” in that regard, is high stakes in a way “The Walking Dead” cannot realistically be, and that should continue to make it an exciting watch.
The second characters become “death proof,” well, it’s much harder to be invested.
If we’re being honest here, I could also sit here and write up an article listing off the ways that “The Walking Dead” is far superior to “Black Summer” – and that list would be a bit longer than this one – but the point I’m trying to make here is that “Black Summer” is a fast-paced, vicious slice of small screen zombie chaos that has thus far proven itself to be a nice little alternate option for anyone who’s maybe bored with “The Walking Dead” at this point in time. In contrast to the slow-paced nature of the AMC series, Netflix’s zombie series crams an entire season into less than 5 hours, upping the intensity and bringing some real bite back to the undead horrors of the small screen. If nothing more, it’s a series worth checking out.
Yes, even if you’re sick of zombies entirely. A true classic never goes out of style.
