ABSTRACT
The very idea of a serial horror television program is a difficult prospect for a number of reasons. The basic structure of horror demands a circuit of anticipation, fright, terror, and, if not resolution, then at least respite. The zombie is unique in the West's monster menagerie, as it is a non-European construction. The contemporary zombie narrative, of course, owes everything to George Romero's original zombie trilogy: Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead. AMC's The Walking Dead owes its popularity to the multimedia zombie craze that has consumed popular culture since the early 2000s. The notion of a zombie film that never ends is a wonderfully dramatic hyperbole, as is the suggestion that it is only after the apocalypse and the loss of the power-grid. From the outset, this extended narrative focus on the living shifts the position of the zombie as a figure of horror in The Walking Dead.
