"The Walking Deader" is an American live action short film from 2014, so this one is already over 5 years old and the writer and director here is Chris Moss. As you can see from his body of work, he is also a prolific actor (actually this is his main profession), so it should not be a huge surprise to anybody that he also plays the main character in here. And if you take a look at the title and now the series this is based on, you know exactly which character this is gonna be. But not only that. He also plays Hershel, the old dude from "The Walking Dead". No it has been a really long time since I last watched an episode of the original show, but I will change that pretty soon, so this one here was a nice little appetizer. Actually, it ent longer than I thought, but still stayed under the 20-minute mark. No problem. I'd also have watched and liked this film had it run for half an hour. It was pretty funny. One reason for that is that there is zero political correctness in here, especially in these conversations the protagonist has with a Black fella. I can see social justice warriors already complain before my imaginary eye. I liked it a lot though. I think that Moss also got in some individual creativity here and that is always a challenge of course if the core of a film is that it is a parody. And this parody element was also really nicely done. The moments with the walkers are almost exclusively in the first half, but they were certainly effective and funny enough and I also liked that the filmmaker here was not scared of depicing violence. It is a major factor in the real series, so it should be in here too. Maybe it was one or two people being killed by gunshots too many in the end and felt slightly for the sake of it, but this is almost the only negative criticism I can come up with here. This was made when the show still featured the Governor as the main antagonist and I think he is fairly memorable, so of course he is included here. So are some other characters like Darrell. Is that how you write him? I can never remember. I am not a big fan of this character, so I was totally fine with him not getting too much screen time, actually almost none. It's all about Rick. The dream sequence was good too. And the comedy prevails most of the time because of how over the top it all is, but it feels real and actually sometimes it also felt like that in the actual show. They were spoofing the right scenes here for sure. Just take for example the father-son relationship that always seemed to be one of the more normal aspects in the show and here it is mocked in a hilarious fashion. I liked that especially because I always thought that the actor who plays the son is really not talented at all, so it made for some cringeworthy moments. In the actual show I mean. And the ending with Michonne having the hots for the son? Haha that was unexpected. But it made me smile or even laugh. There are like 3 really funny moments in here. Sllightly enough for a film of this duration I'd say. I give it a thumbs-up overall and I think people should watch it. If I didn't have to rate this as an individual movie, but as a parody, I'd give even 4 stars out of 5 (i.e. 8 out of 10), but I even considered giving this higher rating on one or two occasions. It's certainly a success. Watch it, no matter if you like the show or not. The most important thing is you know it. Otherwise you probably will get almost none of the references, but then again everybody knows the show by now I guess. They should let Moss write or direct an episode of the show haha. His effort here clearly shows he understands the material, even if for other than the obvious reasons. Or at least give him a cameo as a walker.
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