Fear the Walking Dead - S01E01 Pilot (2015)

Sex :   Violence : 

Director Adam Davidson
Writers Robert Kirkman, Dave Erickson
Starring Kim Dickens, Cliff Curtis, Frank Dillane, Alycia Debnam-Carey
Genre Zombie
Tagline Fear Begins Here
Country
Fear the Walking Dead - Pilot

Review

"If there's a problem, we're gonna know about it. The authorities would tell us." - Madison Clark

After some wait the much anticipated first episode of The Walking Dead spin off dropped last night and I for one rocked out to the pilot of Fear. Ordinary people in extraordinary situations, we're in horror Nirvana folks, let's rock out a review and see why some people are going to hate this one while the vast majority of viewers are going to be sweating on each new episode airing. Viewer records were set folks, can the show retain its audience?

Things kick off with Nick waking up in a dilapidate church, seems Nick is going to be one of our core characters and he's a junkie. He goes searching for his girlfriend Gloria and comes across a body with its throat ripped out! Not the best thing to wake up to and it gets worse when he finds Gloria chowing down on some dude's face, talk about your bad trip. Fleeing the scene, Nick has a good self-preservation sense, he eventual gets run down by a car in a nearby street and rushed off to a local hospital as a result. Think we'll start to call Nick Mr Lucky from here on in. His family duly arrive at his bedside and we get to meet the other three leads. Don't form attachments yet folks, this is The Walking Dead universe, any one of the four could be toast by the end credits of next week's episode.

Travis is a school English Lit teacher who has fallen for Madison, the school counsellor. Nick is Madison's druggie son and her daughter Alicia while highly intelligent is a bit of a princess. Okay with me so far? Travis while trying to form the family unit with the brood also has an estranged wife and a son who wants nothing to do with him. Anyways Nick escapes the hospital and contacts his supplier Calvin, who just happens to be his sister Alicia's boyfriend, to find out if the drugs he took were laced with PCP or something. Like everyone else Nick thinks he might have been hallucinating.

Meanwhile Travis and Madison discover something very bad went down at the Church of the Needle, but there are no bodies or anything. Adding to the general concern is a video that has gone viral which may show an early walker attacking ambulance staff. Rounding out this fandango Nick eventually meets up with Travis and Madison with all three being presented with evidence that there's no more room in hell. Anyone going to mention the "Z" word?

Now this is horror, slow intro to the leads folks, I'm rocking out!

Okay first up I absolute dug what Fear threw in my direction. The Pilot episode took the time to introduce the main characters, though to be honest at this stage I'm surprisingly only bonding with Nick the junkie son, go figure, and had me at least concerned about their continued welfare. There's an ominous atmosphere settling in already, the interaction between Madison and minor character Tobias was awesome - such haunted and fatalistic eyes, lots of single lens shots of background decay. And I got to say the tension was raised to a high level, with even a few red herrings thrown at the audience. When Nick was in Hospital who didn't think he was imminent danger, especially constrained with a clearly dying patient in the next bed. Excellent stuff, just what the Doctor ordered in the modern wham bam world of horror. See what I did there?

What's really a pleasant surprise with the pilot at least is just how grounded in reality it really is. There are a lot of subtle pointers that the "virus" is spreading, the growing number of kids not showing up to school, the gradual breakdown of society - already in evidence, and of course our central characters who are going about their ordinary lives and dramas with the apocalypse only dimming registering on their radars. As state above I wonder if anyone will mention the word "zombie", I'm pretty sure the Writers aren't going to throw on a world where the whole zombie sub-genre doesn't exist. What should be amazing is watching the characters come to the realisation that zombies aren't fictional, they are up and biting in their very own neighbourhood.

In terms of continuity with the parent show Fear is batting a thousand, at least in terms of the zombie angle. You die, you come back, and you go on a feeding frenzy. To take one down you need to shot it in the head, kill the brain etc. Zombies do not move at a fast pace, it shouldn't be very long before one character or another warns others to not get encircled. Oh and zombie numbers increase exponentially, remembering Rick Grime's coma was five weeks. So Los Angeles is going to fall within the next say three weeks, we're talking a rapid collapse here kids, anyone else punching the air with a closed fist! Oh and before I forget the deceased aren't as oozy as the zombies in Walking, decay isn't yet a problem on Sunset and Consume.

While the first episode moves at a snail's pace in terms of getting to the gooey stuff, I was actually surprised there were zombies involved; gorehounds are still going to be happy. We have a couple of scenes that might just be beyond the pale for younger viewers and the promise of a lot more of the red stuff hitting the screen. Don't expect full on zombie shenanigans however, we're talking the outbreak here rather than the post apocalypse. And before anyone asks, nope the episode didn't offer any reason for the zombie shambling. Needless to say T&A isn't going down, not a staple of The Walking Dead universe folks.

Overall I had a good time with the Pilot and for sure will be tuning in next week to see where things might head. The show thus far is logical, people not quite sure what is going down with society starting to stutter around then, and I would expect more to be concerned about in coming weeks as invariably martial law is declared in an attempt to get ahead of the situation by what is left of the Authorities. If after a show that is geared toward adults, and not simply firing off crowd friendly gore scenes, then you are in the right place. Recommended viewing for horror fans and non-fans alike, good wholesome drama with throat ripping.

ScaryMinds Rates this episode as ...

Sign me up for the spin off, this show is going to rock!