AMC’s The Walking Dead
Season 5, Episode 4: “Slabtown”
Directed by Michael E. Satrazemis
Written by Matthew Negrete & Channing Powell
* For a recap & review of the previous episode, “Four Walls and a Roof” – click here
* For a recap & review of the next episode, “Self Help” – click here
A change of pace in this episode, as we segue into where Beth (Emily Kinney) was taken after she and Daryl (Norman Reedus) were holed up in the funeral home. She wakes up in a clean room. An actual working clock counts through the hours. Although she’s locked inside, unable to get out. A woman named Officer Dawn Lerner (Christine Woods) and a man called Dr. Steven Edwards (Erik Jensen) show up, saying some of the other police came across her on the road; “surrounded by rotters” and now in the debt of these people, supposedly.
Yikes, I don’t like the look of this place one bit. Don’t dig that officer, either.
Note: One of my favourite minor things about the series is how everyone has their own term for zombies, such as walkers, biters, now rotters. Some people think it’s dumb to not say the word zombies. I think it’s perfect, because this doesn’t take place in a world where zombie movies are part of the zeitgeist, as many films usually don’t. So shut up complaining, dummies.
The hospital still runs with power, machines pumping, clocks running. They’re taking care of people. But there’s also a sinister undercurrent. The remaining police force in the city seem to be running the place, under commander of Lerner, of course. There are other normal people, too. Such as Noah (Tyler James Williams), mopping floors and doing various jobs; other patients in rooms, none of them seemingly eager to say much about their life in the hospital.
Beth: “If you feel safe enough to be bored, you‘re lucky.”
Beth’s finding out that living at the hospital is a give and take situation, of the worst kind. Eating food, you’ve got to pay in work; or worse, if some of those male officers had their way, I bet. I fucking hope nothing nasty happens. Else there’s hell to pay.
That’s the last of things. Officer Lerner and Dr. Edwards have a contentious relationship at times. He takes pity on Beth in private, though plays the part in front of the boss. He’s also more stable than her. When he knows he can’t save an injured man she slaps Beth across the face drawing blood, like a psychopath.
In general the hospital’s not a nice place. Other than Noah, who leaves Beth a lollipop and tries explaining how things work there. It’s not exactly how Officer Lerner paints the picture. You’ve got to escape to get free. Right now our girl is feeling the pressure from Dawn as she acts like the saviour only doing good for others.
Later, Joan – a woman who’s had an arm amputated after a bite – makes clear to Beth there are bad things going on. The men there, they are devious. Scary. And the boss lady feels it’s easier not to keep them on too tight a leash. Officer Gorman starts harassing Beth, clearly an animal, and Dr. Edwards steps in. This cop is doing awful shit.
The doc tells Beth about a guy named Hanson, Dawn’s previous boss; he went a bit nuts, before she took things over. Beth can’t accept that staying there is better than anything else. She’d rather be on her own than in that hell, especially if she could find her sister and the others again.
Beth gives a patient an injection, helping Dr. Edwards. The guy ODs, after which Dawn has to put him down for good. Noah covers, saying he accidentally unplugged a machine. Beth gave him the wrong drug – did she? – but he took a beating for it. Dawn knows, either way. This woman is over the edge, though. She thinks they’re going to rebuild the world while many others are merely trying to survive the next day.
Dawn: “Some people just aren‘t meant for this life”
Now, Noah and Beth are planning on leaving together, getting away from the hospital. They start enacting their plan to leave. But she gets found by Officer Gorman as she sneaks where she shouldn’t be sneaking in Dawn’s office. Looks like the cop wants to get nasty, he’s a true predator. She pretends momentarily, as Joan – lying dead on the floor behind the desk – reanimates and chews into his throat. CHRIST! Great practical makeup effects here.
Beth sends Dawn unknowing to her office while she and Noah head for the elevator shaft to flee. He lowers her down; at the bottom in the basement is a pile of corpses. Both of them reach the floor, though he does so with a fall. On through the darkness the pair goes, slow and steady. They finally make it outside, only to find more of the dead wandering free.
As Noah manages to get away, Beth’s take back by Officer O’Donnell (Ricky Wayne). They’ve, of course, found Gorman, gutted in the office. Beth calls out Dawn for letting bad things happen while she pretends things are fine, like they’ll all be saved soon. All for nothing, these horrors. This woman is fucking insane, too.
How long can Beth last here? How long can she stay alive?
Well, there’s a familiar face that just came in on a stretcher: Carol (Melissa McBride), of all people.
Nice to catch up with Beth, I can’t imagine what’ll happen next. If Noah somehow comes across her people, it might lead them to the hospital. “Self Help” is the following episode, hopefully showing us more of Beth’s situation, as well as pointing towards a way out for her, somehow, some way.
The Terminus cannibals are juxtaposed well visually with the zombies, tearing human flesh between their teeth. These people were essentially just waiting for the world to end, so that they could become who they were; I don’t care what happened to them at Terminus, they didn’t have to eat anybody. It’s just how they chose to deal with the post-apocalypse landscape. They weren’t strong enough, they’re weak and nasty people.
Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green) worries about her man, so she goes looking. Tyreese (Chad Coleman) and Rick (Andrew Lincoln) meet up with her, also worried about wherever Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Carol (Melissa McBride) took off. They go back to have a talk with Father Gabriel (Seth Gilliam), wondering if he has something to do with the disappearances. They want to know what he did, what secrets he’s hiding. Turns out he wouldn’t let people from his congregation inside, leaving them to the walkers outside his door.
So off goes Rick & Co, looking for the cannibals to dole out revenge, some real justice. However, Gareth and his people are watching closely, and they slink out of the forest when the crew leaves. Oh, fuck me. Only a few people remain, one of which is Carl, along with Rosita (Christian Serratos) and a couple more.
Abraham, Rosita, Eugene, Maggie, Glenn – they’re heading out on the bus for Washington. Although Rick and the rest confirm they’ll meet them again. Somewhere down the road. For now it’s a goodbye, or a see you later.
Another great episode, especially seeing as how we’re privy to the revenge against the Terminus cannibals. That’s a refreshing thing to see, instead of any further terrorising. Makes that villain plot quick, succinct, rather than dragging it out too far. Perfectly written, this arc.
We see the journey of Daniel Salazar (Rubén Blades), after escaping from the massive fire where he and the group were staying awhile back. So glad to see him back. Although not without struggle and pain. He didn’t simply escape the fire, he barely made it out. His hands and neck and legs burned. Walking through the streets, he winds up stalked by one of the dead. He barely makes it away from it when a dog draws the thing away.
Daniel comes across a man named Efrain (Jesse Borrego), he seems like a bit of a religious man. He kills the dead like an old school vampire hunter, only putting his version of the stake – a long nail – through the zombies’ heads. Either way, it’s another human to help Daniel, at least for now. He aids the old man in getting someplace safe; our friend isn’t well, and definitely parched. They get a bit of water from a nearby fountain, it looks like it only comes on at certain times a day. Each Tuesday, 5 PM. Ah, the water wars we saw last episode, a situation into which Strand (Colman Domingo) has put himself. Looks like Daniel may wind up there, too.
“Something is rotting in you far worse than your leg”
With this revelation, Daniel’s ingratiated himself into the inner circle of the dam. Dante wants him on their team. Although our guy is mostly just concerned with finding a way to search for his daughter. So he’s out on patrols with the boss’ boys, they’re looking for sneaky people stealing water where they shouldn’t be. Daniel watches the clock, worried Efrain will show himself at 5 PM. Afterwards he leads them right to his new friend. What a cold move. He tries telling Lola that it was to protect her, that they’d find out sooner than later. Same kind of bullshit he used to convince himself while working on a Salvadoran death squad years earlier.
WOW, this is a stunner of an episode! One of my absolute favourites. Because Daniel Salazar was always interesting to me, this only upped the stakes. His backstory, his history is vile, and with the fall of society, the fall of civilised men comes another moment where he must face the ugliness of his past.
Season 4’s premiere starts several months on from the finale of Season 3 when all hell broke loose, and the group lost Andrea. They’re still in the prison, still together. Trying to live whatever kind of normalcy is available to them. Rick (Andrew Lincoln) spends his day out in the garden tending to the crops. He finds a gun buried deep in the soil, like he’s tried to bury the violence with it. Is he just kidding himself? Yeah, I think so. If you’ve watched the series all the way to where it’s currently at, as of the time of this writing (end of Season 7), then you know pretending violence isn’t part of the equation is merely fooling oneself.
One thing that’s improved since last we left the group is the relationship between Rick and his boy Carl (Chandler Riggs). They do the farming together, looking after the field and their pig, Violet. Dad gives out an important lesson, though: don’t name the animals they’re preparing to slaughter for food.
Later, out past the walls of the prison, Rick comes across a hungry woman in the woods. She’s found a deer carcass. She needs to get food back to her husband, they’ve been starving for days on end. Rick offers up food he has with him. Her name is Clara (Kerry Condon), she wants to know if he has a camp. Life’s been rough for her, it’s obvious by the layers of dirt caked onto her skin. Rick also mentions “three” questions he needs to ask the couple before they can possibly come back to his people. So she leads him on to wherever her husband is waiting.
In the store, Bob and others load up on supplies. He goes to the wine section. Above him, the ceiling leaks. Then a rack of wine tips over on top of him. Walkers on the roof notice the sound, walking further towards the helicopter. They start sinking through the weakened structure, falling inside one by one. A terrifying sequence, very unique! Lots of good blood and guts, too. An absolute shitshow. Bob nearly gets the chomp before Daryl saves him. Unfortunately, young Zach gets bitten and chowed down on by a nibbling zombie.
Another taste of unhappiness comes to Beth, more loss as she finds out that Zach has died. “I don‘t cry anymore,” she tells Daryl. Glad for the time she had with him, rather than sad for not having him around. The two bond over loss, as he mentions he hates losing people. Something that won’t ever change in this new world.
Stellar episode. Love this one because it’s a solid season premiere, as well as the fact it leads into more stories, more intensity and emotion, more action, MORE EVERYTHING for the beginning bits of Season 4. Next is “Infected” and, you guessed it: there’s trouble!
Fleeing in helicopter, Travis (Cliff Curtis), Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey), Luciana (Danay Garcia), and Jake (Sam Underwood) head for the Otto family ranch. Travis is, naturally, worried. He just reunited the family and quick as that, they’re torn apart. Their trip gets nasty when bullets fly through the window, someone below firing on them. Then Travis takes a bullet through the side of his neck. He goes into shock, opening the vehicle’s door. When Alicia tries helping she sees he also has a wound in his stomach.
Back to the hotel by the beach where the group fled in Mexico. The gates are teeming with people trying to get in, to see the doctor inside. The people remaining include Victor Strand (Colman Domingo), who calms the near rioting crowd. He claims to be the doctor, asking that the people be let in and given rooms. What’s he up to? You can bet he’s scheming, he’s always the planner.
So the Otto family, they’re “building a new nation” on the new frontier. Trying to make sense of a mad world. He acts like the Clark family are ungrateful. He doesn’t want to believe his son Troy is a fucking psycho, and y’know, I don’t fully trust either of the Ottos; except for Jake, who’s seemingly still a human being. But I do not like Troy, neither do I like anything about Jeremiah just yet. Nick’s got the idea, he doesn’t dig any of this stuff. Moreover, he’s blaming himself – he took Luciana to the base, Travis and Madison they went looking for him there. Poor guy, I hope he doesn’t let his old addictive habits crowd his mind again.
The helicopter crew ready themselves to walk for the ranch. “It‘s a terrible world, isn‘t it?” Jake quips to Alicia, who even without response probably agrees wholehearted. They soon get to the ranch carrying Luciana, barely conscious in their arms. Then, daughter is forced to explain to mother where her husband has gone, why he hasn’t come back. A devastating moment.
Intense episode, all around. Wow. I cannot wait for the next episode “TEOTWAWKI” because I just know… Travis can’t be dead. He survived too much in that pit to simply die this way; by law of the TV gods!
Madison Clark (Kim Dickens), her daughter Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey),Travis Manawa (Cliff Curtis), they’re in the clutches of military men. Leading them pasts fields of corpses, of all kinds. Into a gated military base. My guess is these are less the honourable-types, more the sort we saw in the depths of depravity during 28 Days Later. Or maybe I’m wrong. Only time will tell. The place is massive, relatively untouched by any of the world’s latest troubles. Except that sinister things are most certainly going on.
Travis scoots over next to them. He tells Nick that his mom and sister are there, too. And, without words, that Chris is gone. They do a little catching up, though nothing overly cheery, seeing as how they’re in one hell of a nasty spot. At least together they’re able to start thinking, to start figuring out a way forward.
A guy named Steven (Ross McCall) says that if Travis can get them out of the room, he’ll help free them from the compound. At the same time, Travis and all the others are forced to watch a man be chosen, then killed in front of them. Another experiment, to reanimate and study. This is a dark, dark place they’ve wound up. Travis bides his time, hard as it is, waiting until the right moment to try escaping.
Madison attacks Troy when he returns. He almost gets one up on her, before she puts a spoon into the bottom of his eye socket. She sends Alicia to find Travis, or else he loses an eye. Likely more.
The Otto family have a ranch where it’s much safer, apparently. Their father’s prepared well for the end (he’s Jeremiah Otto; played at the end of Season 2 by Dayton Callie). Mostly, the Clark-Manawa clan want to get the fuck out of there, away from those madmen. Just nice for Season 3 to start out on an equally brutal and emotionally rewarding note – Travis sort of got out a few demons fighting all those walkers, in such terrifying fashion, and now their family’s been pieced back together. Although they face another ugly trip ahead of them outside the base.
What a whopper to open Season 3! I don’t care, I love this series. Have from its beginning. Excited for “The New Frontier” next.
So what about Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and his search for escapee Daryl (Norman Reedus)? That fruit will come to bear soon enough. Right now at Hilltop, Maggie (Lauren Cohan) is teaching everyone, Enid (Katelyn Nacon) included how to defend themselves properly. At home Enid and Maggie are like buddies, or almost a mother-daughter relationship. And Jesus (Tom Payne), he’s both a help to Maggie, as well as to others.
We also discover that Jesus is gay. Or at least that’s how it sounds. He and Maggie have a heart to heart, which as usual, as any conversation in this new world does, leads to more of what’s next to do, in order to survive.
What a great chapter in the last bit of Season 7! I can’t wait to see whatever excitement comes in the last couple episodes. So tense. So many sacrifices for Rick, Rosita, Sasha, Maggie, Daryl, all of them. Will they gain any ground? Or will the end of Season 7 provoke more devastation? You know someone’s dying, but who knows who’ll that be, either.
Things at the Saviors compound are looking grim for Dwight (Austin Amelio). After discovering Daryl gone, the others arrive back with their spoils, including Eugene (Josh McDermitt). Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) greets his new guest with a smile, and Lucille.
Not that we didn’t see it coming. Dwight’s been put in the same room where he put Daryl, one where he’s been before himself. Negan isn’t happy about he and his Saviors looking from “tip to taint” and he’s definitely not happy about one of his wives – Sherry (Christine Evangelista) – having left not long after Daryl. Not happy at all. So now it’s a case of whether Dwight will go find Sherry. If he’ll try and repair the damage between him and his leader. Personally, I hope to see him change, after all the brutality on his part, as well as the brutality he’s seen from others; most specifically from Negan. It’d be one of the biggest redemption songs of the series. One thing we know for certain is, despite all that has happened Dwight does love Sherry, he never stopped.
I love any kind of undead horror, whether it’s specifically Romero-style zombies, or even if it’s something different – like Amando de Ossorio’s Tombs of the Blind Dead. This would be the first of four films about his living dead Templar Knights, followed by Return of the Evil Dead a year later in 1973, The Ghost Galleon the next year in 1974, and a final 1975 instalment titled Night of the Sea Gulls.
The cinematography is noticeable right away. So many great shots, but mainly it’s the breathtaking landscapes which grab you. This goes well with the slow build of the plot. After about 25 minutes, the graves start to crack, the ground splits, and the rise of the Templars finally commences! Part of its goodness is a satisfactory anticipatory wait that doesn’t bore you for over 20 minutes starting out.
Soon as the dead woman reanimates, biting into a fleshy neck, the nastiness begins. Only briefly, without lingering. However, it’s a creepy and effective sequence with lots of build, which is the name of Ossorio’s game. The best part is when we get a flashback to the Templars (in the original Spanish version this comes later in the film; in the English one it’s the initial scene). There’s a dose of horrific, visceral practical effects work, we witness the Templars hack away at a splayed out woman on a woman contraption before biting and sucking her bloody wounds. Some dastardly Satanic rite of sorts.
There are absolutely missteps and mistakes along the way. But Ossorio’s Tombs of the Blind Dead is an awesome little relic of the early ’70s in horror. All the great locations in Spain and Portugal make for a wicked backdrop. This Templar tale uses the story of the Knights in a fascinating way that draws you in, especially considering half the undead movies out there have a plot so thin you could floss your teeth.
The finale is upon us! Who will survive, and WHAT WILL BE LEFT OF THEM?
At the colonia, Luciana (Danay Garcia) patches up Alejandro (Paul Calderon), whose bite is fierce. He’s getting sick, and fast. She wants to try making him look “presentable,” but he sees the end coming now. It doesn’t look pretty. She stays with him to help, although Luciana’s not impressed. “This is ending,” Alejandro says. But she thinks there’s still a future there for the rest of them.
In front of everybody, Alejandro limps sickly to his people and confronts them with the truth about Marcos. He does his best to inspire them. Simultaneously, Nick heads for the wall of zombies. He smears himself well with blood, then ventures into the vast unknown past their wall. While Alejandro spins a fairy tale of bullshit to the colonia, Nick spies a helicopter touching down in the distance.
Alejandro gets a surprise visit from Nick. He’s come back after seeing the helicopter, finding Alejandro incredibly sick. They have a frank chat about dying. About whether to leave. Nick believes actually caring about the people in the colonia would mean doing the right thing; getting them out. To be a good man, Alejandro must “let them go.” That helicopter, it landed across the border in a camp. Nick sees hope out there.
A tragic and exciting end to this season. I dig it! Very ominous. Lots could happen.
People talk a good game about horror remakes being no good. Some also seem intent on believing there are no actually scary horror movies anymore. Both of which is nonsense. Now, not all remakes are good; a nice chunk of them are actually, in my mind, a load of garbage. For every 5 bad ones, though, we do get a good one. I won’t go into a list of the ones I feel are actually good (a couple are even – dare I say – great).
There are plenty of scenes worth mentioning in regards to the ones I still remember vividly. Hell, when they sit out in that boat early on above the sunken plane, it’s damn unsettling. Then the shot moves out, further and further, until we see it on that satellite view. Not only is that little part of the scene sort of creepy, it’s then we start to understand the gravity of the situation about to come. Barely a minute later, Sheriff Dutten (Olyphant) utters the line: “We‘re in trouble.” An almost surreal moment follows this, as Dutten heads out in the street and sees an older woman, dressed like a little girl, riding on her bicycle through the empty road (trivia: the woman is Lynn Lowry, from the original Romero flick). This is the first deeply chilling shot. By the minute, we understand the town of Ogden Marsh is in more trouble than even Dutten knows.
The autopsy tool, the small saw, that Dutten faces down a little before the half hour mark of the movie is an ingenious horror scene, one of its best. We’ve seen plenty different moments such as this one throughout the history of the genre. Something about this scene, the coroner being infected and the frantic scramble of the Sheriff to get away from the saw sprinting across the floor at him, is just spot on. Add to that most men will probably find their butthole puckering while Dutten watches the saw get closer to his genitals with each second. This is only the beginning; a proper way to get the horror adrenaline flowing, which kicks off all the action.
Olyphant and Mitchell are perfect for the roles of David and Judy Dutten, the town Sheriff and doctor. They’re the everyperson-types, people you can actually envision living in a small place like Ogden Marsh, where everyone knows one another and everything about them and they all see each other at the local ball games. Mitchell makes us feel for her character, both a loving mother and loving doctor to the various residents of their town. Once we discover she’s pregnant it only makes us empathise more, as the fear of what’s going on gets greater imagining what might affect her unborn child in the process. Alongside her is the sturdy, classic leading man in Olyphant. Whether Seth Bullock, Raylan Givens, or any other character, he always projects an undeniable confidence. Even in Sheriff Dutten’s weakest moments he’s a beacon of solidarity for the others to rally around. But again, you believe him as the Sheriff, just as Mitchell comes across so much like what you’d expect from a doctor in a rural area. They’re a good team and help sell the main plot, as David and Judy try fleeing the horror that’s come down on Ogden Marsh.
I’ve got to give this a 4-star review. There are genuine moments of horror mixed with that human drama which makes stories like this work. It’s never perfect, some bits could’ve been tightened to make the pacing better. Those are nitpicks. In the end, The Crazies effectively creeps me out. Not once do you find any true respite from the madness. And even in the scenes where we think the fleeing group are about to catch a break, in true survival horror fashion they only wind up in the midst of more savagery. Any movie that can keep me grounded with the characters while the horrific imagery and exciting pace doesn’t let up is worth a great grade. You won’t be disappointed in this remake. I do enjoy Romero’s original film. I feel like this improved on it in the right ways without changing too much or getting too far from the original point.
