Walking the Road

I've just finished a 3 day marathon of Season 5 of The Walking Dead... I actually hadn't planned to watch this latest season anytime soon, but a screening of John Hillcoat's film of The Road put it in mind and from there on I was hooked. There's a moment in Season 5 where Rick Grimes utters the title of the show - a first time I think, when he reflects: "This is how we survive. We tell ourselves that we are the walking dead", and interestingly it echoes a line from Cormac McCarty's novel when the unnamed wife spits "We’re not survivors. We’re the walking dead in a horror film." Despite the astonishing levels of splatter in The Walking Dead, and the writers willingness to kill off the cast, I feel the series doesn't have the hardness of The Road - there's been nothing yet to match the moment in the book (and the film) where the Man and the Boy discover a basement full of naked human livestock - a truly chilling turn of events. With Season 5 behind me, I look forward to the next series and the introduction of the sinister band of hostiles, the Wolves.