Critic Reviews

They also don’t know what’s happening back East, so we don’t start with any crossovers or even cross-references. There’s just the uneasy sense that something is wrong, which for TV drama purposes means something is right.

It’s off to a very good start. Dickens and Curtis and the actors playing their kids (Dillane, Alycia Debnam-Carey, and Lorenzo James Henric) are terrific.... Fear The Walking Dead has art on its addled mind, and is all the better for it.

Fear The Walking Dead, like The Walking Dead before it, does a stupendous job of establishing an eerie tone. (Hopefully it will do a better job than its forebear at maintaining that tone without forsaking character development and inventive plots.) Early on, there are the requisite B-movie beats where camera angles, pacing, and the soundtrack combine to promise very zombie developments that, psych, don’t arrive (until they do), but the real chills come from well-chosen details.

Even if zombies aren’t your cup of TV, there is plenty to appreciate about the construction of Fear the Walking Dead.

Fear the Walking Dead is a wonderfully refreshing reboot that reminds viewers of the exciting, moving, and dramatic potential The Walking Dead had in its first season - a potential the show has all but squandered.

Fear the Walking Dead pulls off a great feat in prequel land: using that nagging sense of inevitability to its advantage. It shouldn’t work, but it totally does.

Fear the Walking Dead’s second season manages to maintain the great momentum of the first, even as it transitions to a new arc. It’s also much more fun than it sounds (even though half of the cast is made up of angsty teenagers), as the show takes typical story tropes and manages to smoothly mix them with zombie-horror adventures.

Fear of the Walking Dead is, at times, decidedly schlocky, but this time around, there’s a welcome emphasis on fleshing out the motivations and convictions of a new cast of characters who could become potential adversaries down the line.

Since Fear The Walking Dead isn’t featuring any pre-end-times people or places from the other show, it’s missing a sense of irony that might’ve made its early scenes more meaningful.... What makes Fear The Walking Dead so promising is that it doesn’t require any knowledge of The Walking Dead to jump in and watch.

The first two episodes are creepily suspenseful--they’re great examples of how effective a slow pace and a moody atmosphere can be.