Is The Walking Dead scary?

It’s October, which means we have Halloween on the brain. Speaking of brains, you might want to keep yours away from any zombies around, because we all know how much they enjoy a good feast.

But if you’d like to jump into the world of zombies anyway, a safe way to do that would be in the comfort of your own home by watching The Walking Dead. For years, The Walking Dead has been the zombie television series, so much so that AMC not only has several spinoffs on the air right now, such as Fear the Walking Dead and World Beyond, but there are also several other series and movies in the works, such as Tales of the Walking Dead and the Rick Grimes movies.

If you haven’t watched this series, you may be wondering if The Walking Dead is scary. There are tons of zombies after all, which usually guarantees scares. But movies like Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland make zombie outbreaks light and humorous. So where does The Walking Dead fall on the scary scale?

How scary is The Walking Dead?

To put it lightly, The Walking Dead definitely isn’t a series for children. As you follow the adventures of main character Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and the countless others he meets along the way — including Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) and Michonne (Danai Gurira) — they have to do some intense things to survive.

While we won’t go too in depth, it means multiple scenes full of graphic zombie slaughter per episode. And even the characters themselves meet some violent ends as a result of zombies or the amoral humans who thrive after the apocalypse. All this has to be appropriate for cable television on AMC. But as someone who is quite squeamish myself, I’ve found some scenes that were a bit too much for me to watch.

So the violence is the scariest part of The Walking Dead franchise. Tonally, though, I wouldn’t consider this series to be a traditional horror show. It’s more like a drama than anything else. The characters have intense, complex relationships with one another. The events can range from thrilling to absolutely heartbreaking. And no two episodes are alike.

If you’re looking for something scary scary, then The Walking Dead probably isn’t it. But if you do want to watch the show but are afraid of horror elements, you can safely watch this series — as long as you can handle the graphic killing scenes every now and then.

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