The Walking
Dead scares me to death. Nightmares. Running to the bathroom in the night. Don’t
glance at the mirror in the dark (well, you don’t know who’s looking back).
How? Why?
I know it’s
about zombies. They are everywhere all the time – a constant in the show. Yet,
I jump, scream and hide behind my fingers like a five year old seeing a Dalek
for the first time. The camera zooms in for the close-up in the eerily quiet
empty place – zombie swoops in –I jump out of my skin. Every time.
It scares me
so much I have considered simply not watching it. No can do. I need to know the
next bit of the story. I need to know who lives. I am addicted.
CUT TO hubs
saying, “There’s that English zombie thing on telly tonight. Second series.
Maybe it’s good. Want to watch it?”
“No,” I say,
“they look too much like the Exorcist. Can’t do it.” (That’s another story…)
We watch
another drama, but the zombies are playing on my mind, my imagination, my
addiction??
As our programme finishes, I say, “Well, maybe let’s watch ten
minutes and see how it goes.”
And we did.
I wasn’t
remotely scared. Not even when the fully-blown zombies attacked and ate people.
So here’s the question: given my viewing history, why not scared?
The first
answer: In the Flesh is The Walking Dead meets Eastenders. Hubs sings the tune,
‘da, da, da, da, da, da, aaaargh!’ Beloved Aspie has joined the conversation, “Surely
that’s no different from the normal Eastenders?” (In fact the next morning he
tells me in his considered opinion that they have merely over-humanised the
zombies, hence not scary.)
What it is
really about is timing: how the script writer draws you in and catches you out.
Done right – you’re on the edge of your seat. Done wrong – the thrill never
comes.
Compare to a
somewhat corny movie on the same evening, White Girls. Two black detectives go
under cover as white women to catch a kidnapper. Painful and obvious. But…even
though the plot is transparent and I can speak the next line before the actor, it
is so well timed that you still find yourself laughing at the jokes.
Timing (and
no doubt, good camera work) will keep me thinking for a while yet. I’m puzzling
over how to be mindful of it in my writing of longer pieces. I’ll leave you
with this.
Next day, BA
and I are out for a walk in the woods and a visit to a National Trust place. We
get back to horror movies and the Blair Witch project (another that got nothing
from me). I return to In The Flesh, describing the scene where the woman is out
in the silent garden calling for her cat in the dark, no cat coming, but of
course you know what is…rabid zombie from nowhere is on her like a flash. Did I
jump? No.
BA replies, “
you didn’t tell me about the rabbits.”
