The Walking Dead, the smash hit rom-com TV series about a worldwide zombie apocalypse, premiered on Halloween night in 2010 with six episodes. Eleven seasons later, the ratings juggernaut series concluded November 20, 2022 with a comprehensive 24 installments. All told, 177 episodes that turned flesh-eating into a national pastime.
Since that time The Walking Dead Universe spun off into the character-dense but solid Fear of the Walking Dead, which managed to keep us chewing from 2015 to 2023 with 113 episodes. In the uneaten leftovers of FTWD came the ill-conceived/ill-fated The Walking Dead: World Beyond, 2020 to 2021 and 20 episodes, none of which were memorable OR watchable. Then there was Tales of the Walking Dead, the six-episode related-in-zombie-only anthology series, which concluded with a quiet thud September of 2022.
For fans of The Walking Dead, which includes me and whoever’s pants I’m wearing, it’s a good time to live as The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live series, reunite the once thought-dead Rick Grimes and Michonne (“a weapon with a weapon”), returning for an unlikely but compelling relationship arc for the end of the world. And this happens on February 25, 2024 when AMC™/AMC+™ with the title being a quote from Rick Grimes’ daughter Judith, who utters her father’s famous last line at the end of TWD’s run, “We get to start over. We’re the ones who live.” Personally, I would’ve mentioned at the top of my apocalyptic lungs, “Let’s get naked and paaaarty!”
Other Walking Dead spin-offs included Daryl Dixon, featuring the unkillable Daryl, whose last name I believe is Dixon. He ends up in France, where the zombies wear no pants. And there’s The Walking Dead: Dead City, which teams up Maggie and Negan (a LOT of brutally violent emotional baggage between them) to search for her kidnapped son in the stink remains of New York City. Then there’s the upcoming Book of Carol, featuring Carol (aka, Queen of the Apocalypse) that’s within Daryl Dixon’s second season.
So while we reload our snack-depleted cupboards post Superbowl and fill ‘em with meat snacks to rip apart with our mouths of all things while watching The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, here are a few upcoming horror/sci-fi movies that may or may not be memorable OR watchable…
PREY FOR THE BRIDE / February 16, 2024 (Tubi™)
“A group of bridesmaids travel to Napa for a bachelorette party and find themselves in great danger as a man wearing a wolf mask seeks revenge for the death of his friend.”
As this is a bachelorette party, I think the guy wearing the wolf mask is probably a hired male stripper. Hope he waxed his bikini zone.
WHEN A STRANGER KNOCKS (Release pending February 2024 (VOD)
“Fulfilling their father’s final wish, Sky, her husband, and brother return to their remote childhood cabin. Reminiscing their past and navigating through intense memories they soon find out that there is something menacing lurking in the dark.”
Couldn’t be Bigfoot as Bigfoot doesn’t usually knock. But I’ll give this to him — he always wipes his feet before smashing down remote childhood cabin doors.
THE WOODS ARE REAL / March 12, 2024 (VOD)
“Joba and Quincy are a privileged, fiercely progressive Brooklyn couple – they buy the right things, donate to the proper foundations, and march for every just cause. But when their friend, Caleb, returns from a country pilgrimage challenging their bleeding liberal hearts, Quincy is initially skeptical. But when Joba insists they take up an invitation to the same off-grid spot, they are met by a kitschy cabin in the woods peppered with analog devices of a simpler age: a rotary phone, religious iconography, an Edison machine. And when a curiously labeled record plays a menacing message, Joba and Quincy rapidly learn that their bank accounts have been drained, their digital records erased, and their family businesses are collapsing. They try to flee, only to grow more enveloped by the woods.”
They found a record that plays menacing music? So THAT’S where I left it. And the record? Motörhead’s No Sleep ‘Til Hammersmith. Duh.
THE BEAST / April 5, 2024 (Select Theaters)
“The year is 2044: artificial intelligence controls all facets of a stoic society as humans routinely ‘erase’ their feelings. Hoping to eliminate pain caused by their past-life romances, Gabrielle continually falls in love with different incarnations of Louis. Set first in Belle Époque-era Paris, Louis is a British man who woos her away from a cold husband, then in early 21st Century Los Angeles, he is a disturbed American bent on delivering violent ‘retribution.’ Will the process allow Gabrielle to fully connect with Louis in the present, or are the two doomed to repeat their previous fates?”
Humans regularly ‘erase’ their feelings during Happy Hour. Also before and after Happy Hour, or as I like to call it, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004).
Drinkin' & Drive-in 