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Black Summer made its debut back in 2019 on the popular streaming platform. The series somehow manages to make you feel more scared thanks to its unique and unsettling tone. And it does this better than The Walking Dead.
One character might turn into a zombie in a second. The handheld cameras follow the character even though the character is infected. The black liquid coming from their mouth, the unending growls and the hateful frenzy are all over the place.
This has a couple of reasons. Unlike The Walking Dead and other survival-horrors, the lives of Black Summer’s characters are much more fragile. In such a setting, you find yourself watching different sequences of various characters that can die at any moment.
The characters you see all through the season might vanish in an episode. You just see a few sequences of a group that tries to survive in an outbreak. It Depicts Chaos Like No Other Black Summer has a unique way of telling its apocalypse story.
Black Summer, especially with its second season, delivers the ultimate chaos. And when that chaos is on your screen, you say to yourself “yes, this is probably how it would go during the zombie apocalypse.” Although The Walking Dead has created a solid foundation for the zombie genre, Black Summer has come with something more refreshing and more mature.
What do you think about these two series?
How Many Seasons Into The Walking Dead Is One Lonely Walker No Longer Poses The Same Threat As It Once Did?
Black Summer season 2 spoilers follow, but they’re pretty minor. There’s an episode in the first season of Black Summer that anyone who’s watched the show will struggle to forget. It’s unbearably tense, stripping down the zombie apocalypse to its most basic — and horrifying — components.
The zombie genre as a whole seems less concerned with horror these days too (Kingdom aside). It also helps that the (unofficial) Z Nation prequel is set at the start of a zombie outbreak. Of course, it’s only natural that Daryl and Michonne would become expert zombie killers over time.
There are no safe scenes that encourage viewers to let their guard down. Fear The Walking Dead could — and should — have been The Walking Dead’s version of Black Summer. Netflix Of course, there’s a big drawback to the way that Black Summer prioritises horror.
With no subtitles to help non-Korean speakers, it was Christine Lee’s emotive performance that sold her plight to us, and that’s also true for the most part in season two as well. And while it’s thrilling to follow such an unpredictable story, most of the deaths only end up moving us in a visceral, fear-based way. Early on, there was a sense that most characters weren’t safe on The Walking Dead too, although that’s not necessarily true now in the way it once was.
This content is imported from {embed-name}. Black Summer season 2 is now available to stream on Netflix. UK viewers can also catch up on the show via NOW.
What Is The Name Of Netflix’S Z Nation Spinoff?
The arrival of Netflix’s dramatic Z Nation spinoff Black Summer has some online commentators pitting the freshly-released series against AMC’s The Walking Dead and spinoff Fear the Walking Dead. Set in the immediate wake of a societal collapse brought on by a widespread zombie virus outbreak, Black Summer centers on Rose (Jaime King), a midwestern mother who stops at nothing to reunite with her daughter when the two are forcibly separated. Rose and other strangers are forced to band together in a desperate attempt to survive a harrowing journey and attacks from the reanimated undead, who unlike the slow-moving walkers seen in AMC’s Walking Dead Universe, are fast-moving sprinters comparable to the running zombies seen in the Zack Snyder-directed Dawn of the Dead.
Black Summer on netflix is intense, reads one tweet. Basically a darker faster paced walking dead. My word, Black Summer is making The Walking Dead look like a kids show after two episodes, another tweet reads.
Z Nation producer Jodi Binstock previously told SYFY the series was birthed out of creators John Hines and Karl Schaefer’s desire to do something very different in the genre that is extremely popular. You stand the chance of, ‘Oh, that old trope, that old zombie thing, I’m done with zombies.’ John’s philosophy is that one realistic zombie is far more terrifying than a horde of them coming at you.
Z Nation is more of a PG show and I would say that Black Summer is much more of an R show. AMC next debuts its fifth season of Fear the Walking Dead Sunday, June 2, ahead of The Walking Dead’s Season Ten premiere expected to reach the network in October.
What Is One Of The Most Important Horror Television Shows Of All Time?
And I suppose that’s precisely what I’ve done with the above headline, but those who read my weekly recaps of “The Walking Dead” know that I’ve always been a big time supporter and fan of AMC’s series, even when it hasn’t been so hot. My point is, I love “The Walking Dead,” which will go down in history not simply as one of the best but also one of the most important horror television shows of all time. And while the stellar first season of “The Walking Dead” was no doubt far superior to the debut season of Netflix’s brand new “Black Summer,” the latter zombie series has impressed me by excelling in a couple areas that the AMC series has been having trouble with of late.
Point being, the zombies on “The Walking Dead” are incredibly cool looking, but they’re very rarely… scary. Even when several of them are approaching our heroes, a few quick slices from Michonne’s katana separates their heads from their bodies with ease. From the immediately mad opening sequence to the equally insane final moments, the first season of “Black Summer” frequently delivers intense, immersive chaos that’s sustained across entire episodes, and that’s primarily because the *running* zombies are actually fearsome foes; it doesn’t hurt that the show begins at the start of the zombie apocalypse, ensuring that the characters aren’t very well equipped at dispatching the flesh-eaters.
“Alone” primarily sees one character being chased around town by one zombie, beginning at a school and making pit stops at a grocery store, a garage and eventually, a bookstore. Remember how I said that “The Walking Dead” frequently sees its characters easily killing off entire hordes of walkers like it’s going out of style? Well in “Alone,” we truly get to see how much havoc a single zombie can wreak.
Due to the anthology-like nature of the series, which splits up two primary groups of characters but never really establishes any one character as the “main” character, “Black Summer” allows itself to really do whatever the hell it wants. One could argue that Jamie King’s Rose, a mother looking for her young daughter, is perhaps the main character of “Group A,” while Sal Velez Jr.’s William is arguably the main character of “Group B,” but even those distinctions are shattered to pieces when, in one of the final moments of the season – SPOILERS INCOMING – William is not only killed off, but he’s killed off by Rose. And it’s not even just that William dies unexpectedly, it’s that he’s written out of the show so unceremoniously.
No long, drawn out ethical debate. No buildup to it. The blink-and-miss-it moment is even shot from behind, ensuring you don’t even get the comfort of seeing William one last time.
If nothing more, it’s a series worth checking out.
Who Directed Black Summer?
I want to feel like these characters are a second away from death. It’s not about character development or meaningful relationships. It’s about survival.
Directed by Abram Cox and with cinematography by Spiro Grant and Yaron Levy, most of the 38-minute episode follows Lance (Kelsey Flower), Black Summer‘s vaguely dumb resident bro. After being abandoned by his friends in the elementary school from hell, Lance wakes up in this show’s zombie-filled nightmare completely alone. However it’s the way this episode is constructed that makes it remarkable.
More than any other ghoul, that’s what zombies inspire: self-evaluation in the face of fear. No one wastes their afternoons thinking about what they’d do if Godzilla attacked, but almost everyone has a zombie strategy at the ready. The best zombie shows, movies, novels, and games drill into terror about the masses, our secret fear that we could be overpowered at any point by the people we’ve come to trust.
For me, zombie dramas have never been about individual characters or stories. They’re horror fantasy fulfillment, what-if machines covered in bile and blood that let you imagine yourself as the ultimate leader of the apocalypse. Watch Black Summer on Netflix
Who Created Black Summer?
Black Summer relies on long takes and handheld camera shots that give it that realistic feel. It’s loose plot, uneven pace, and vignette format contributes a lot to this feeling of intense realism, along with the sudden and often jarring departure of characters. Black Summer was created by John Hyams and Karl Schaefer, who also created SyFy’s Z Nation.
However, Black Summer is actually a completely unrelated series – just one look between the style of the two shows makes that clear enough – and, according to King, doesn’t even consider itself a zombie story. “Zombies was never mentioned in the script, ever. But that’s not even what’s important about the show, because it’s more about the human aspect of a national emergency rather than a plot-driven mystery about what appears to be a zombie outbreak.
The word zombie is never used in the show and they spend zero time talking about the specifics or origins of the sickness. The whole zombie mythos is largely sidelined in favor of examining the lengths to which ordinary people will go to in order to survive and what happens when society breaks down. The Walking Dead also examines this sort of human aspect to a large extent.
As a series, it is a very carefully and conventionally plotted show, whereas Black Summer meanders in a purposeful way. “That’s why Netflix is amazing,” says King. And let’s not forget one of the most important characters in Black Summer, a Korean woman named Sun who neither speaks English nor has accompanying English subtitles for her Korean dialogue.
But the beautiful thing about this is that lack of a shared language doesn’t keep the characters from feeling empathy or caring for each other. That might just be the most important thing you can take away from the series. No grouchy teens.
What did you think of Black Summer? Be sure to tell us in the comment section below!
What Is The Name Of The Netflix Zombie Series?
NETFLIX fans have claimed that new zombie series Black Summer is the most stressful experience – and BETTER than hit TV series The Walking Dead. The eight-episode show was released on the online streaming site yesterday, and it has already proven to be a hit. Finished binging #blacksummer on Netflix and it makes #TWD seem so slow moving.
Loved it. There’s not alot of exposition. No one explains what’s going on.
4 Black Summer is a prequel to SyFy series Z Nation Credit: Netflix This show is not tongue-in-cheek, it’s very, very serious: it’s as if the zombie apocalypse really happened in 2018 and explores what that would be for all of us. It’s only told from the point of view of the characters – we don’t learn anything that the characters don’t and it’s fantastically shot.