Review

Late night, a camp is being overrun by zombies, there's a full scale fire fight going down but the zombies have swarmed and the camp is toast. Paul grabs Karina, forcing her to leave some unnamed chick, and the pair disappear into the night. As they make it out of the camp the chick Karina was sobbing over turns, get's up, and starts shuffling after our escaping couple. There's a bunch of zombies in the woods but Paul and Karina manage to avoid them and find a car next morning with each relief station in the area carefully marked.

Paul is injured, apparently he cut his side badly on glass as a result of a truck overturning sometime previously, it's up to Karina to find safety and medical help. However most relief stations have been over run and Karina makes the decision to stop at what appears to be an abandoned medical facility. Of course nothing is ever abandoned in the Walking Dead universe; Karina and Paul look to be in big trouble.

With a running time of surprisingly 8:14 minutes Alone gets us underway in solid fashion. Director Greg Nicotero doesn't waste a single second of his episode, we get introduced to the characters, their situation, and the problems they are facing post apocalypse. The camp being overrun was done well, lack of blood and guts is likely to upset gorehounds, but the icky factor is layered on as Karina needs to retrieve a set of car keys from a decaying body. Nicotero rounds out the episode with his central characters in a lot of trouble making us really want to tune in for the next episode to see what happens.

As far as I can tell, and this is only a three episode romp in the undead meadows, it's about Paul never leaving Karina, which brings a whole bunch of nuances given this web series is based in The Walking Dead universe. The oath itself breaks down to "one lives we all live", which should provide theme enough as let's face it, you can't trust anyone, once again the zombies are the least of your problems.

Solid start to the web series that promises some salient reminders of what the sub-genre is all about

While the isolated locations don't require the CGI splendour of Torn Apart it does indicate we are sometime after the initial breakout, people have fled the major cities and are banding together in the Countryside, plus the whole zombie "swarm" thing. Nicotero has depopulated his landscape to allow focus to remain on his two shot leads, this is going to be all about their bonds and I'm expecting those bonds to be put to the test real soon. On the bright side the zombie makeup is awesome, as one would expect in this franchise, with some nice touches to the three zombies that feature prominently in the webisode.

If there is something to bitch about it is probably a slight rift on 28 Weeks Later that will either underline the theme of The Oath or leave me thinking "what the funk". After our couple of survivors leave the camp the chick Karina was cradling goes through the change, sits up with that milky eyed thing going down, and then proceeds to follow Paul and Karina. If this zombie shows up somewhere down the track then I'm going to be somewhat irritated, a brain dead zombie isn't Lassie, i.e. it isn't going to travel 100s of klicks to find home.

For those wondering yes Ashley Bell is the Ashley Bell who starred in the Last Exorcism movies. So The Oath does have some star pulling power, I for one am always up for Ashley in a dark genre outing, here she clearly plays a completely different character to that of Nell Sweetzer in the movies. Bell delivers a solid performance as the chick who is overwhelmed by her loses that needs to find some steel in her backbone in order to survive. Paul is out of it with the loss of blood from his wound so it's up to Karina to make sure they stay alive in a hostile world.

I'm always ready for something set in The Walking Dead universe, particular so after our Exorcist binge over the last couple of weeks. The Oath looks very promising with writer Luke Passmore having already set the scene both in the narrative and thematically, fingers crossed it delivers from here. Alone pretty much states it all, two people are cut out of the herd and will need to find their own way through the next two episodes. The production values are up to the high standard this franchise demands, I'm looking forward to what gets delivered in the next episode. If you haven't caught this one yet then I would waste no further time in doing so else you might find you are alone at the next dinner party you hit when people start discussing the series.