In the modern age, the potential for all of pop culture to rally around a single idea is higher than ever. One huge hit can change the entire Hollywood ecosystem and leave audiences worldwide clamoring for more. But, what happens when the phenomenon that lit the fuse lives on well beyond the death of the last resulting ember? AskThe Walking Dead.
The Walking Deadis finally over. After 11 seasons and twelve years of consistent and visible decline in quality, the show has reached its conclusion. Of course, no one thinksthat this is the endof the franchise, even though it should have been.
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In 2003, Robert Kirkman’s monthly comic book seriesThe Walking Deadhit store shelves. In the zombie genre, that series' premiere shared space with precisely one moderately popular zombie film,Uwe Boll’s terribleHouse of the Deadmovie. The following year saw Zack Snyder’s remake ofDawn of the Deadand Edgar Wright’s masterful deconstructionShawn of the Dead. The early 2010s were a veritable apocalypse of Zombie Apocalypse films. Zombie films have been around sinceNight of the Living Dead, but most examples were minor examples that would be unknown today. The 2010s featured non-stop big zombie films and TV shows. The arguable climax of the trend was 2013, which held both themassive blockbusterWorld War Z, the highest-grossing zombie film of all time, andWarm Bodies, the ill-fated zombie rom-com. It was all downhill from there, but, even as the corpse of the craze wasted away,The Walking Deadkept on going.
Why was there a zombie craze to begin with? Why did society at large decide that from 2009 to 2014, the ideal horror story was amodern riff on Romero’s classics? Horror tends to move in big broad phases. There are always exceptions, but horror media at large tends to have one central concept that lasts a few years. In the 80s, slasher movies ruled the day. In the 90s, snarky teen murder mysteries were in charge. The villain shifted from an iconic masked killer to a member of the central cast as paranoia shifted from the woods to the suburbs. Possession movies were all the rage back in the 2000s, followed swiftly by a broader wave of ghost movies afterParanormal Activity. In almost every case, the movement was kicked into high gear by a single hit in the genre.The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Scream, The Exorcism of Emily Rose,Paranormal Activity, and soon. The zombie craze had an inciting incident too, it was calledThe Walking Dead.
The series premiere ofThe Walking Deadand the subsequent first season was an absolute cultural phenomenon. There wasn’t much like it in terms of investment and the resulting response. The first season was made with an eye toward film production, rather than traditional TV success. After AMC fired the director that made the first seasonsuch a massive success, the following seasons got into the rhythm of identical boring stories. The precipitous drop in quality seemed to go unnoticed by a lot of the show’s audience. The zombie craze was kicked off by the outstanding first season, and the sheer excitement of the audience carried the show along well beyond its early success. The show is an institution, and it’s hard to believe that the world will be withoutThe Walking Deador a spin-off for long. Unfortunately, while the show has never recaptured the glory of its first season, it’s also suffering the long death of its larger cultural importance.
Perhaps more than any other cultural phenomenon, the worldwide response to zombies shifted from eager acceptance to widespread distaste. People talk a lot about superhero fatigue, but if the world needs an example of how sick fans can get of a concept, look to the world of zombies. Zombie shows and movies still come out, but every single one has to come with a disclaimer assuring the world that there’s something more to the project.Train to Busancameout in 2016, and it’s one of the best films in the genre, but many ignored it because it’s a zombie film.The Walking Deadkickstarted the craze, stuck around long enough for people to get sick of it, and is still here now, as people gradually become neutral towards zombies once again.
The Walking Deadshould’ve wrapped years ago. The cultural negativity towards the pitch of the show combined with its enormous decline in quality resulted in the slow death of its impact. Ironically,like the zombie outbreak,The Walking Deadused to be a massive event that changed everything, but now it’s just an omnipresent background detail that we never have to think about. The zombie craze was a weird time, but nothing lives forever.
