If there’s been a zombie-shaped hole in your viewing habits, we’re about to fix that for you.
A Netflix zombie series that has slipped under the radar is now being hailed by a certain contingency of viewers as being ‘better than The Walking Dead‘.
In the same way that the Resident Evil series stands alone as the greatest zombie video game, and Dawn Of The Dead can’t be matched in terms of beginning to end big screen living dead madness, The Walking Dead remains the benchmark for ‘how to do zombies right’ across several seasons.
However, some Netflix viewers might argue that there’s an overlooked contender that gives the iconic franchise a run for its money.
Black Summer landed on Netflix in 2019 and stars Jaime King (White Chicks) as a mother separated from her daughter in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse.
Rose, along with a small group of refugees, embarks on a harrowing journey to find her loved one. She must brave a hostile new world and make brutal decisions during the most deadly summer of the apocalypse.
If the description isn’t enough to entice you, the show has also received the Stephen King seal of approval.
Arguably the greatest horror writer of all time, King tweeted the following about Black Summer in 2019: “Just when you think there’s no more scare left in zombies, THIS comes along. Existential hell in the suburbs, stripped to the bone.
“No long, fraught discussions,” he added. “No endless flashbacks, because there’s no back story. No grouchy teens. Dialogue is spare. Much shot with a single handheld camera, very fluid. Showrunners could learn a lot from this. If they could work, that is.”
Aside from surviving the episode-by-episode chaos, there is also an overarching story in Black Summer that these survivors have to make it to a stadium in order to be picked up by the military and escorted out of the city before they drop bombs in an attempt to contain the zombie virus spreading further, but even in the few weeks since all hell has broken loose, the zombies aren’t the only problem the survivors are facing.
Yep, when faced with decimation, we get to see the worst depths that some of mankind are willing to get to just keep their own heads above water. There is a constant sense of foreboding, which is only alleviated when replaced by out-and-out panic.
