The zombie apocalypse moves to the West Coast in the AMC prequel series “Fear the Walking Dead” now available on Blu-ray.
When Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) woke up from his coma six years ago, his world was turned upside down. While he lay incapacitated recovering from a bullet wound, The Walking Dead had claimed the planet. As the police officer made his way out of his hospital confinement, Grimes couldn’t have anticipated what was waiting for him — and neither could television audiences.
What ensued has been one of the most unpredictable fights for survival ever televised, and one of primetime’s most watched events. Rick and his makeshift family have faced insurmountable odds while dodging growing hordes of the undead with an insatiable hunger for destruction. So when AMC announced that it would introduce a spin-off series, fans waited with great anticipation to see what the show’s creators would come up with.
Fear the Walking Dead isn’t essentially a prequel, but it does fill in the blanks. Where the original series flung audiences into the thick of the horror, the new show — situated on the opposite coast — sets the gears in motion. Through the lives of a small family in East Los Angeles, we learn how it all began — though not necessarily who (or what) is responsible.
Similarly to how The Walking Dead launches with Rick Grimes waking up from a long sleep, Fear the Walking Dead similarly stirs into existence. Nick Clark (Frank Dillane) finds himself phasing into reality after experiencing a drug binge. When he can’t find his girlfriend he starts to weave his way through the mostly abandoned crack den he’s spent the night in; when he stumbles into the main atrium, he finds several dead bodies.
One body though is feasting on the remains of another, and as it comes for Nick he stumbles his way into the daylight and gets struck by a car on an East Los Angeles street. Nick is our introduction to this show’s nuclear family. Which includes Travis Manawa (Cliff Curtis) and his live-in girlfriend Madison Clark (Kim Dickens). Nick is Madison’s drug addicted son.
Their world begins to fall apart around them as Travis (Cliff Curtis) and Madison (Kim Dickens) attempt to navigate the impending threat and Fear the Walking Dead.
Not completely sure that what he’s seen is in fact reality, Nick tries to pursued his family, but it isn’t long before the world around them starts to systematically fall apart. After a riot moves across the streets, the military moves in and quarantines the safe neighborhoods, but it isn’t long before everyone begins to take matters into there own hands.
Where TWD has set-up the rules of surviving against walkers, in Fear there are no rules because no one knows what’s going to happen yet. Audiences are in the unique situation to actually no more about what’s happening — or going to happen — than the show’s characters. It’s made for a very slow leap into the action, but at least it’s helped to really flesh out (no pun intended) the family at the center of it all.
The six premiere season episodes of Fear the Walking Dead are now available on Blu-ray and are suitable for binge watching especially before the return of the full Second Season returning in 2016.