Those of us addicted to AMC’s The Walking Dead tuned in warily but eagerly last night for the premiere of Fear The Walking Dead—a title I’m still not crazy about—to see if creators Robert Kirkman and Dave Erickson could bring us new (fresh?) scares and an intriguing prequel storyline to compliment those bedraggled Southerners we love so much. In many ways this new series feels almost like Kirkman appealing to Hollywood more than to his fans, even to the point of setting the story in Los Angeles and focusing much of the first episode around junkie Nick Clark (Frank Dillane). And this is the only major stumbling block of the pilot, not enough walkers, way too much family drama.

The diverse family dynamic certainly makes for quite a few characters, which is a smart move in that those of us familiar with The Walking Dead will know that starting with a crowd means more people to choose from when the significant deaths start happening. Gruesome? Yes, but it’s the way of the walker world we’ve come to know. The pilot started and ended with a newly deceased walker—which may not end up being what we even call these zombies in this new show—but otherwise followed Kim Dickens’ Madison Clark, a school guidance counselor mostly concerned with her junkie son, Nick, and vaguely aware of the subtle signs around her that something major is happening in LA. One of those signs is that a lot of her students aren’t showing up for school, blamed on a bad strain of the flu going around.

When Madison isn’t at the hospital with Nick—where he insists he wasn’t hallucinating and did indeed stumble upon his girlfriend eating the face off a junkie in the church they were crashing at—she’s trying to get through to her teenage daughter, Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey), who is going through an all too familiar, just-need-to-get-to-college phase. Madison’s live-in boyfriend (soon-to-be-husband?) Travis (Cliff Curtis) is the only one who thinks to check out Nick’s crazy story about cannibalistic girlfriends and finds a gruesome sight at the church to back it up. (You’d think the cops would also follow-up on that. LAPD, amiright?) Madison insists Travis keep his findings to himself so as not to “enable” Nick. And thus the zombie apocalypse begins, and our main characters write it off as either the flu or a drug-fueled hallucination.

Granted, the show couldn’t jump right into survival mode. The epidemic didn’t likely happen over night, but it also didn’t take that long. Rick Grimes woke up about a month after things got started and the world was already a pretty dismal place by then. Getting to see how news of the epidemic spread initially, and the reaction of a city as large as Los Angeles, is what I’m most intrigued to find out about, but the first episode was incredibly insular. As a devoted watcher of The Walking Dead, it was hard not feel a lot smarter than these new characters. In the end they encounter their first undead person, they run him over twice and watch as he still tries to get up. Madison and Travis look at each other with incredulity but not nearly enough terror. If FTWD is going to match the scares of TWD they are going to have to get the characters on-screen a lot more amped up over the insanity happening. We Angelinos are tough, but we’re not numb to blood-covered dead people trying to eat us.

The look and feel of the show are there, casting orange-ish L.A. hues in abundance in contrast to TWD’s green ones, and the music maintains decent tension, even if I was rather craving Bear McCreary’s frenzied strings (no complaints about Atticus Ross’s opening theme). Because of the newness of the disease-spreading, there will be a lot more opportunity for blood and gore on the show, rather than the decayed look of TWD. Madison Clark isn’t nearly as compelling as Rick Grimes was in his pilot episode, but Nick Clark is and so far is the only one displaying a little gravitas toward the situation. But considering that the similarly short season one of TWD played out in a slow Georgian sizzle, I’m trained well enough in Kirkman’s world-building to know its worth sticking around to see what’s coming.

Rating: 7/10

We’re shaking with excitement. For those, like us, who can’t get enough of any type of Walking Dead, Feared or otherwise, any morsel of what’s in store for us in the future gets us all geared up and ready to take on the apocalyptic world. So we’re sharing it with you.

The Fear the Walking Dead clip posted by Variety just this morning really puts the “tease” in teaser. It doesn’t give away much. Except that there will be a lot of…fear. No smidgen of a zombie is seen, but rumor has it they will have quite a different look from the current zombie type in Walking Dead as they will be a bit, well, more fresh. The trailer is titled “Nick’s Escape” so we’re guessing this is a character who might get more than a quick grisly death. IMDB credits a “Nick,” played by Frank Dillane, with six episodes in the series so we’ll see.

Also starring Ruben Blades, Mercedes Mason, Cliff Curtis, and Kim Dickens, to name a few, Fear the Walking Dead is set in Los Angeles at the very start of the walker outbreak. Or whatever we’re now calling it. Walking Dead fans may get a little bit more information on all that led up to where they started out back in 2010, but no one’s promising anything.

Check back with us in July when we cover the San Diego Comic-Con as both shows will be there along with Talking Dead host Chris Hardwick.

Fear the Walking Dead is set to premiere in August on AMC in what is as yet a two-season commitment.

Gone Girl is the film adaptation of the Gillian Flynn best seller of the same name. The first official trailer for the film released earlier this week. Gone Girl stars Ben Affleck as Nick, who on his 5th wedding anniversary finds his wife Amy has gone missing from their home. As the search for Amy begins, a case of suspected murder is building as lies and deceit come to the fore and fingers gradually point to beloved husband Nick. This all leads to that burgeoning question: is he guilty or innocent? With David Fincher at the helm of this thriller set to hit theatres on October 3rd, Gone Girl looks to have viewers gripping their seats in suspense.

Watch Gone Girl trailer