11 Best TV Shows Similar to The Walking Dead
Joko Anwar's Nightmares and Daydreams
Joko Anwar is no stranger to telling stories that serve as a mirror reflecting Indonesia’s sociopolitical situation. In his folk horror Impetigore, he delves into the topics of poverty and the abuse of power, while his superhero flick Gundala tackles the theme of mass hysteria. It is no surprise that in his 7-episode anthology Netflix series Nightmares and Daydreams, he portrays various everyday situations from his homeland, touching on issues like the struggle of being in a sandwich generation and systemic challenges faced by Indonesian society. Through his distinct narrative style, Anwar confronts pressing issues with a blend of supernatural intrigue and science fiction. In each episode, the show immerses us in compelling tales that not only entertain but provoke thought. Set between the years 1985 and 2024, the series chronicles the experiences of everyday individuals in Jakarta who encounter peculiar phenomena while simultaneously navigating their struggles. While each episode focuses on different characters, the events depicted throughout the season are interconnected and gradually reveal something more sinister. In our recent conversation with Anwar, he shed light on the inspirations behind Nightmares and Daydreams. From the show's inception to the intricacies of character development, Anwar's meticulous attention to detail underscores his commitment to crafting narratives that resonate on multiple levels. Moreover, his fascination with the aliens adds an intriguing layer to the series, sparking discussions among the audience. Continue Reading →
The Boys
If you’ve watched any previous season, you should have a good idea of what The Boys Season 4 offers. More to the point, it is almost certainly clear to you if it’s something you enjoy or despise. If you have formed an opinion, that should inform your decision to tune in. Because, five years after its debut, one thing you can absolutely count on is The Boys remains completely, unapologetically, itself. That isn’t to say there isn’t anything to discuss. In fact, there’s almost too much as the series continues to offer some of the most boldfaced political commentary on streaming. Not bad for a show that also boldly illustrated how that whole “Ant-Man should shrink down and enter Thanos” thing might look if the MCU took the bait. Following that memory, the gore seems as good a place as any to engage with this new season. There has perhaps never been a show as impressive in its ability to wield its considerable blood and guts touch on a wide range of emotional beats. The Boys Season 4 does not fall off in this department. If anything, it has an even more impressive level of control this time out. One moment, it proves itself intensely capable of pulling out sick laughs as a Vought event rehearsal unravels into an ever-escalating series of mishaps. Imagine it as a sort of a Rube Goldberg machine of carnage. And yet, later, when a confrontation forces a character to kill someone, the camera captures both the arterial spray and the guilt play across the protagonist’s face. Both moments play, and neither feels out of step with the series. It’s quite the magic trick. Continue Reading →
Sweet Tooth
It is not typical when I review a new season of an established series that I find myself utterly lost and befuddled. Nonetheless, Sweet Tooth Season 3 earned that rare achievement. I retained the broad strokes. Gus (Christian Convery), a hybrid child, travels a US ravaged by the Sick with Big Man Tommy Jepperd (Nonso Anozie). Together, they search for Gus’s (who’s also the titular Sweet Tooth on account of his, well, sweet tooth) mom and anything that might bring the plague to an end. The quest is complicated by many survivors' hatred of hybrids. They blame the animal-human kids for the virus and Gus is Baby Zero of the new species. However, the specifics of how Season 2 led to Season 3 had utterly vacated my brain. I realized why after doing my due diligence and doubling back to watch the previous season first. Season 2 was a dark, dreary affair. It was still well-made and acted but a largely unpleasant viewing experience. It stood in contrast to Season 1’s almost fairy tale vibes, where pain and tragedy existed, but an undeniable sense of hope buoyed the show. In retrospect, it seems I forgot so much of Season 2 as something of a defense mechanism. Rosalind Chao and Louise Jiang's mother-daughter relationship may trigger some past unpleasant memories. (Matt Klitscher/Netflix © 2024) I say all this as, yes, an acknowledgment that I had to play catch-up with Sweet Tooth Season 3’s first two or so episodes. But also, I do so as a warning to prospective viewers. To truly immediately get Season 3—not necessarily like, but at least understand—it would not be a bad idea to take a quick look back on Season 2. Continue Reading →
Fallout
Few titles in the world of video game RPGs are as stylistically significant and cherished by fans as Interplay Entertainment’s Fallout. First published in 1997, the post-apocalyptic RPG has spawned countless sequels (including the acclaimed Fallout: New Vegas) and garnered millions of devoted fans through meticulous worldbuilding and its (now signature) atomic age-inspired retrofuturist aesthetic. Thanks to shows like The Last of Us proving naysayers wrong and paving the way for high-budget, critically acclaimed video game adaptations, Prime Video has joined forces with Bethesda to bring the Fallout franchise to the small screen with an eight-episode series of the same name. Bolstered by source material with a baked-in sense of aesthetics and a pair of winning leads in Ella Purnell and Walton Goggins, Fallout is a clever, twisted apocalyptic odyssey that soars as both a video game adaptation and a standalone series. Starring Purnell, Goggins, and Aaron Clifton Moten, Fallout follows Lucy (Purnell), an idealistic, sheltered “Vault Dweller” who has spent her entire life in an idyllic vault built to keep wealthy Americans happy and healthy in the event of nuclear devastation. When surface raiders disrupt her vault’s peaceful existence and kidnap her father, Lucy is forced to leave the safety of Vault 33, encountering all manner of unlikely enemies and allies along the way. Continue Reading →
都市懼集
A quick overview of the high highs and middling disappointments in horror this year. With the social media app formerly known as Twitter now a shell of its former self, horror fans have been forced to return to Facebook to continue such interminable debates as “What does or doesn’t qualify something as ‘horror’?” “What the hell is ‘elevated horror,’ anyway?” “Are remakes inherently bad?” “Have horror movies gotten too ‘woke’?” “Were we wrong for letting women make horror?” In a year when both David Gordon Green and M. Night Shyamalan released new movies, the horror discourse was especially spicy, and that’s before we get to the really interesting stories, like the surprise viral success of Skinamarink, which, with the way time seems to be passing nowadays, feels like it was released five years ago. Both indie and mainstream horror made daring choices, not looking to appeal to as broad a range of audiences as possible, and treating the genre as a serious art form, as opposed to just a machine that prints money. But the biggest surprise came in October, with the release of Saw X, the tenth film in a seemingly unkillable franchise, which ended up being one of the best, most coherent entries in the entire series. Continue Reading →
Scott Pilgrim Takes Off
The ScienceSaru-produced animated series rebuilds rather than retells Bryan Lee O'Malley's beloved comic. Late in the final volume of Bryan Lee O'Malley's 2004-2010 comic series Scott Pilgrim (Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour), once the action's done and the hateful Gideon Graves has been slain, protagonists Scott Pilgrim and Ramona Flowers take a moment to process everything. Defeating Gideon meant facing not only the vicious misogynist swordsman but also their respective character flaws (It's telling that one of Scott's key moments is his realizing just how alike he and Gideon are, and by gaining that understanding, he affirms that, yeah, Gideon has so got to die). There are a few candidates for Scott's actual finest hour in Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour. His after-action conversation/reconciliation/renewal with Ramona is my pick. Bryan Lee O'Malley/Oni Press. As Ramona says, change is one of life's constants, which applies to Scott Pilgrim's ventures into new mediums. Edgar Wright's thoroughly enjoyable movie shifted around characters and reworked some of Scott's flaws. The colorful, impeccably soundtracked, hair-tearingly difficult Ubisoft-produced video game ramped up the goofy save for one particularly pointed ending. And now, with the Netflix animated series Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, creator O'Malley—joined by co-writer and co-showrunner BenDavid Grabinski and animation studio ScienceSaru (with episode director Abel Góngora) have changed things up yet again. Rather than retell Scott Pilgrim as it's been since 2004 (a story already told, with riffs, as a comic, movie, and video game), the creative team opts for something more radical. It's a work as much in conversation with the Scott Pilgrim that came before as an adaptation. Continue Reading →
Goosebumps
Do we need another live-action Goosebumps adaptation? After a ’90s Fox Kids series and a pair of 2010s films, one would assume that the ground of turning Slappy the dummy and other frightening beings into flesh-and-blood creations has been well-trodden. Continue Reading →
Doom Patrol
Doom Patrol Season 4 Part 2 dives headfirst into what has consistently been a series favorite topic since the beginning: death. While much of Patrol has pondered what it would be like to live agelessly—essentially without fear of any possible death except the violent and unusual—but still struggle with every other aspect of being human. The members screwed up, had mental issues and physical ailments, struggled with vanity and loneliness, and frequently gave in to any number of self-loathing varietals. They would never age, but they wore their pain the same as the rest of us. Continue Reading →
怪~ayakashi~ Japanese Classic Horror
An often-overlooked decade for horror gets the spotlight, & we’ll tell you what to watch & what to skip. This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the work being covered here wouldn't exist. Hurry up and finish watching everything in the Criterion Channel’s High School Horror collection, because they’re doing it again with a brand new one devoted to 90s horror, starting today. Unlike last year’s expansive 80s Horror offering, there’s just eleven films in this collection, with three more coming in November and December. That’s cleverly reflective of the state of horror in the 90s, as are some of the selected films stretching the definition of “horror.” Continue Reading →
The Fall of the House of Usher
The most gripping moment in 2022’s Academy Award-winning documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is when members of the now disgraced Sackler Family, whose pharmaceutical company manufactured and marketed the highly addictive painkiller Oxy-Contin, are ordered to attend a virtual hearing in which they're confronted by families who had been impacted by the drug. Listening to tragic stories of accidental overdoses, birth defects, and young men cut down in their prime due to a prescription medication that had been promoted as safe and non-addicting, the Sacklers could not look more bored, even slightly annoyed. It’s a chilling reminder that extreme wealth often results in a loss of empathy, if not one’s entire soul. Continue Reading →
The Horror of Dolores Roach
On a fundamental level, The Horror of Dolores Roach confirms that old chestnut, “You can never go home again.” The titular Dolores Roach (Justina Machado) tries it twice over the course of the limited series—adapted from a Gimlet podcast which, itself, was adapted from an off-Broadway play—and each time finds an increasingly hostile environment has overtaken the “home” she knew. Continue Reading →