Last week the The Walking Dead brought its fifth season to a close with a stunning 15.8 million viewers, an accomplishment once unimaginable for a horror franchise. In a thought-provoking coincidence this finale kicked off Holy Week, a sacred period for Christians that culminates symbolically in a particularly terrifying narrative.
In general, the horror genre is about the inversion of the natural – and thus sacred – order. Consider Victor Frankenstein who creates new life (previously the exclusive domain of God) from dead scraps, H.P. Lovecraft’s Great Old Ones and their madness-inducing forays into our mundane universe, and, yes, the zombie, now a staple of popular culture, a shambling reversal of the inexorable power of death.
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