Like its monsters, zombie fiction refuses to die.
Revival is the latest TV series to imagine a world in which the deceased rise from the grave to complicate the lives of the living. Based on Tim Seeley and Mike Norton’s Image Comics title of the same name, Syfy’s 10-episode show, premiering June 12, is a supernatural saga steeped in multiple mysteries, all of them set in a town that’s suddenly and irrevocably changed by the reappearance of the men, women, and children that were thought forever lost.
Far less interested in horror than whodunit-like suspense, it’s a novel twist on a familiar premise, and bound to entice those who can’t get enough of the undead.
In the small town of Wausau, Wisconsin, everything goes topsy-turvy when the recently expired catch a magical second wind on what comes to be known as “Revival Day.” Whether it’s in a coroner’s office where corpses sit up on tables and burst out of crematorium ovens (while still on fire), or at graveyards where they emerge hopelessly confused about their circumstances, this turn of events is a radical shock to the community.
It’s an especially big headache for Sheriff Wayne Cypress (David James Elliott), a perpetually angry lawman who’s aided in his quest to wrestle control of this situation by his cop daughter Dana (Melanie Scrofano), who was primed to move to Chicago with her son Cooper (Hudson Wurster) before everything transformed into a George A. Romero film.
Unconventionally, Revival’s zombies aren’t rotting and hungry for brains; instead, they’re just as they always were, save for the fact that they now have regenerative powers that render them more or less immortal.
This freaks out Cooper’s classmates, who don’t know how to deal with resurrected student Jordan (Flora McInroy) returning to school, and it rattles Mayor Dillisch (Conrad Coates), who does his best to calm the populace by going on TV with a “reviver” to demonstrate that they pose no threat. While that’s largely true, it’s not a certainty. In response, the government indefinitely quarantines Wausau and sends in Centers for Disease Control specialist Ibrahim Ramin (Andy McQueen) to research this bizarre phenomenon in the hopes of deducing a cause and, just as importantly, a remedy.
Dana has no sooner wrapped her head around this predicament than she’s sent to investigate a dead horse found by 82-year-old exercise guru Lester (Peter Millard) in the middle of the street. Nearby, Dana discovers a coyote in a trap and human teeth nearby—incisors that match those subsequently found in the steed.
It doesn’t take a genius to surmise that this is related to the sudden influx of local zombies, and Dana quickly winds up in a confrontation with a ferocious reviver whose inability to die makes it a persistent adversary. That melee inadvertently reveals to Dana that someone close to her is a secret reviver, and moreover, that they don’t know how they perished, spurring a secondary inquiry that’s clearly connected to this baffling miracle.
The identity of that individual is embargoed ahead of the series’ premiere, but suffice it to say, their quest to understand how they wound up dead in a river, puking up a wedding ring at the precipice of a waterfall, is one of the story’s prime focuses.
Revival expands its purview at a swift pace, also turning its attention to Dana’s younger sister Martha (Romy Weltman), who goes by “Em” and who’s coping with a drug addiction and is somewhat on the outs with her domineering dad.
Em joins Dana’s mission to figure out what’s going on in Wausau, all as she strikes up a relationship with punk-rock singer Rhodey (Kaleb Horn)—who intimately understands her struggles—and crosses paths with a clan of scary narcotics-dealing siblings whose big-brother leader Anthony (WWE legend CM Punk) is currently stuck in New York City because no one is allowed in or out of Wausau.
Revival trades in little gore, such that even the sight of a person being impaled on the side of a barn is shot to obscure any actual gruesomeness. Its preference is character-driven murder-mystery sleuthing, and in that regard, it benefits from a strong lead performance from Scrofano as Dana, whose personal and professional concerns are soon messily overlapping.
Scrofano radiates a nice mixture of toughness and tenderness, and her rapport with McQueen provides the material with a welcome touch of playful romance. Simultaneously, the series attempts to create tension between hard-headed Wayne and liberal Ibrahim, much of which comes from the fact that Wayne wants to lock up the revivers until answers about their condition are forthcoming, and ultimately settles—with the aid of Wisconsin’s governor—on forcing them to register with authorities.
With that thread, Revival strives to infuse its action with social commentary about intolerance for the “other,” although the specific nature of this premise—the revivers aren’t just minorities; they’re the walking dead!—makes Wayne’s tack seem less discriminatory than precautionary.
Nonetheless, showrunners Aaron B. Koontz and Luke Boyce don’t dawdle on any one element long enough to get caught up in such intricacies, and over the course of their first four episodes (which were all that were provided in advance to press), they keep things spry. They additionally proffer a few shout-outs (Evil Dead 2, 28 Days Later) without resorting to fanboy cutesiness, and have director Amanda Row embellish the proceedings with lens flares that lend it a J.J. Abrams-esque sheen.
Revival carves out a distinctive personality that’s pitched somewhere between grim and goofy, and its hints about the malevolent forces at play in this enclave—including an end-of-days rabblerouser named Blaine (Steven Ogg) and an enigmatic ghoul with a Freddy Krueger face—indicates that it intends to keep piling on surprises until its primary plot is resolved.
In a TV landscape awash in zombie stories, there’s no doubt that Koontz and Boyce’s venture will have an uphill battle convincing viewers that they should commit to another long-form living-dead tale. Still, their show’s blend of intrigue, humor, and otherworldly mayhem is surehanded and satisfying, and suggests that there’s still a bit of unique life left in this most overdone of horror subgenres.
The post There’s Finally a Good Zombie TV Show Again appeared first on The Daily Beast.
