Review

Hannah wakes up in her four wheel drive to discover she is recovering from smashing into a tree, on a suburban street. Her next shock is finding her two children, Jamie and Billy, are missing from the car's backseat. Panicked she discovers there is no mobile reception and no one else is around, though indications are something terrible has happened given the dead body she finds and the blood.

Rounding a corner Hannah finds two people are munching into a dead body on the pavement. Naturally she attracts the attention of one of the diners and is soon running from the ghoul who has a strange lumbering gait. No prizes for recognising what has gone down, Hannah has woken to the zombie apocalypse and she is in deep trouble.

I'm actually pretty happy to be embarking on another Walking Dead webisode series, because it's the walking dead and because it keeps our short movie reviews rolling. I was particularly pleased to lock horns with Torn Apart as the series covers one of the most iconic zombies from the first series of the television show, the one fans have dubbed "bicycle girl". For those with short memories Rick Grimes encounters the zombie in the first episode of the television show, and feeling sorry for her puts her out of what we suppose is her misery.

While A New Day runs for a scant 2:37 minutes it packs an awful lot into that time and pretty much sets up the other five episodes. Hannah awakes behind the wheel of her car, clearly after swerving into a tree, and discovers while she was unconscious the world has changed for the worse. Besides the kids missing from the backseat, and we hope for the best considering there's no blood, its utter mayhem on the streets. It looks like a mob of zombies has crashed the street party and no one is left around to tell the tale. Effective, quick, and efficient story telling y'all since we all know what's gone down, zombie outbreak, we don't need anything additional. I would have added a few gun shots to the background noise, but apart from that minor idea I couldn't fault what Director Greg Nicotero had going down here.

Ever wondered about the bicycle girl zombie, no never did I really, but going to be a hoot to find out the backstory

Hannah only has a few blocks to walk to her ex-husband's place and Nicotero turns that small journey into hell for her. She comes across a couple of zombies feasting on one unfortunate, Hannah hasn't yet learnt that quiet is preferred in the new world order, so she immediately attracts the attention of one of the feeders. Actually excellent makeup right there, with the zombie outbreak just beginning we aren't seeing the heavy decay that The Walking Dead is starting to show through seasons two and three of the television series. Hannah is able to outpace the zombie but it keeps on coming after her and since she has no weapons you really wonder if this isn't going to be one of those sudden deaths that shock you when a lead character goes down. Thankfully this isn't the case, Andrew, her ex, has already learnt that you need to shoot them in the head. Either Andrew is a Romero fan or the outbreak has been going a tad longer than we all thought.

Guess I should add the entire action of A New Day goes down in broad daylight, not exactly the happiest of hunting grounds for horror. While most hauntings and the like are pretty much always happening in the dark, witness Paranormal Activity for example, the zombie outing doesn't want to hide anything, it wants to dial straight into disturbing images and the like and isn't apologetic in generally trying to gross the audience out rather than to have them hiding their eyes from what might creep onto their screens. Director Nicotero is well aware of this and is confident enough to get things out in the open, to shine a light on the lumbering dead. While your average gorehound thrives on the red stuff most other viewers will find open wounds, ripped flesh etc disturbing doing the job for the Director.

As one would expect the opening episode leaves a lot of questions up in the air. Why does the dude immediately answer the door with a rifle and doesn't hesitate in taking down the walker? Where are the kids from the backseat? And won't more zombies be attracted by the gunshot? Answers no doubt forthcoming over the next couple of episodes, I'm thinking there will be the odd additional complexity thrown at our screens as well. Writer John Esposito knows what he is about, though we must keep in mind this is the background to "bicycle girl"; ergo it's not going to end well.

Was rocking along to the first episode of Torn Apart, it may be short but it sets the series up nicely. With five more episodes to go I'm expecting some real out of control mayhem as the zombie apocalypse picks up a head of steam and we learn how one of the iconic zombies came to be. Nice for a change to see the apocalypse out in the middle class suburbs, time to arm up the neighbourhood watch, this is our turf now yo!

Once again the Australian Distributors are being arseholes, but do a google and you'll discover a whole bunch of options to view the episode.