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The Walking Dead: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Disc Review

The Walking Dead: Season One [Blu-ray]

THE WALKING DEAD: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON (2010, Blu-ray released March 8, 2011 – MSRP $49.99)

TV SERIES: ★★★½☆ 
VIDEO: ★★★★☆ 
AUDIO: ★★★★½ 
EXTRAS: ★★★☆☆ 
BLU-RAY: ★★★★☆ 


Much like the groaning, lurching undead creatures themselves, the zombie genre refuses to lie quietly in it’s grave. AMC‘s The Walking Dead series proves that there’s some life left in the old carcass, producing a thrilling, if flawed, six-episode season that looks and sounds great on Blu-ray.

    After waking from a coma in an abandoned hospital, police officer Rick Grimes finds the world he knew gone – ravaged by a zombie epidemic of apocalyptic proportions. Nearby, on the outskirts of Atlanta, a small encampment struggles to survive as ‘the dead’ stalk them at every turn. Can Rick and the others hold onto their humanity as they fight to live in this terrifying new world? And, amidst dire conditions and personal rivalries, will they ultimately survive one another? AMC’s The Walking Dead is an epic, survival adventure series from the director of The Shawshank Redemption and the producer of The Terminator and Aliens.

The Walking Dead might borrow heavily from 28 Days Later for it’s setup but the series quickly and boldly heads off on its own direction, becoming a complex soap opera of a sort. The interpersonal drama that fuels the series’ engine is well balanced with zombie action that’s surprisingly (and I hate to say it, but refreshingly) gory and graphic for television, well realized in special effects work that rivals that of big budget motion pictures. But for every well crafted zombie attack there are just as many missteps in the writing – cliché action beats abound and characters act out of turn, seemingly to support flimsy plot devices, far too often. Gripes aside, The Walking Dead is a compelling viewing experience. It’s addictive. Once I started into the two-disc set I couldn’t stop watching.

The Walking Dead was shot dirty and gritty on 16mm but looks incredible on Blu-ray, despite not having the benefit of the visual information of the larger film stocks used for feature films. Anchor Bay has done a bang-up job here, translating the grainy texture of the film to 1080p. Blacks are deep and inky, there’s detail aplenty and the ever-present sheen of film grain hearkens the series back to some of the finer b-movie zombie extravaganzas of the ’70s and early ’80s. Paired with an unflinching, dynamic Dolby TrueHD 5.1 that has the teeth to rip out your jugular, this is one of the finer technical presentations a television series has received on Blu-ray.

This Complete Season One two-disc Blu-ray set goes the distance in the special features department, offering up a nice half-hour long making of doc, along with shorter episode-specific featurettes and a ton of interviews and behind-the-scenes videos. It’s unfortunate that there aren’t any commentary tracks to accompany the episodes but the included features do manage to cover a lot of ground.

Recommended!

Special Features:

  • The Making of The Walking Dead
  • Inside The Walking Dead: Episode 1-6
  • A Sneak Peek with Robert Kirkman
  • Behind the Scenes Zombie Make-Up Tips
  • Convention panel with producers
  • Extra Footage:
    • Zombie School
    • Bicycle Girl
    • On Set with Robert Kirkman
    • Hanging with Steven Yeun
    • Inside Dale’s RV
    • On Set with Andrew Lincoln
  • Trailer

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  1. [...] Series review from “The Walking Dead: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Disc Review” – March 14, 2011 [...]

    Posted by The Walking Dead: The Complete First Season – 3-Disc Special Edition Blu-ray Disc Review | October 4, 2011, 1:41 am

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