New Horror-Comedy Web Series ‘Semi-Dead’ to Debut

I’m always rooting for a good independent Horror-Comedy and one that has zombies is always worth a watch. Semi-Dead is a new web series set to premiere on Blip.tv, October 28. The series is created by Chris Wiltz, a student Emmy award-winning writer and producer.

Chris and Joe are roommates, both former military, trying to live normal, productive lives in this modern, Internet-dominated world…It’d be a lot easier though, if the city weren’t swarming with zombies.

On the plus side, it seems that somebody forgot to turn out the lights and, despite the city being ravaged by zombies, much of the infrastructure remains in tact. For the time being there are still utilities, electricity, gas and even Internet access available. But that doesn’t stop this whole thing from affecting the two in wildly different ways. Joe goes into full on survival mode–struggling to fight against the zombies and sometimes finding rather disturbing and unorthodox ways to survive. Chris however, has suffered some form of PTSD and is living his life as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened.

So, while Joe embarks on an endless quest of survival (so long as he doesn’t have to leave too many of the comforts of home behind), Chris continues to go to “work,” run errands, look for dates, make sure Joe pays the rent on time, and generally maintain his 9 to 5 existence all without ever even noticing the zombies.

But things are not always as they seem and, as Chris and Joe encounter other survivors and gradually stumble onto the truth of what is happening to the city, survival may not be a matter of sanity but rather which one of them is crazier.

Horror-Comedy seems to be making a big comeback and while Wiltz has always been a fan of the genre, he found it to be a key ingredient for Semi-Dead. “I think it fits really well with the unpredictable nature of the characters in the show,” he says. I wondered if he was deliberately avoiding using the term ‘zom-com’ and he confirmed that the emphasis is on more than just zombies:

The real comedy and horror comes from the main characters. We got two fantastic actors (Keith Bolden playing Chris and Andrew McMennamy as Joe) who have this great chemistry on screen and can really switch gears in their performances in a really organic and believable way. One minute you’ll be laughing at them and the next you’ll be pretty disturbed by what they do, Joe especially.

In the giant grab bag of zombie EVERYTHING, how does Wiltz hope the series will stand out?

At this point, I feel that to really stand out with zombies you have
to do something fresh with the characters and the context. And I
really wanted to think of a way to bring technology into the equation,
especially social networking. I think we all have our ideas of what
would happen if the zombie outbreak sent us back to the dark ages, but
what if it didn’t? When I see huge wildfires in Southern California
and riots in Middle East, and people are Twittering away in the midst
of all this, it creates a lot of questions in my mind. I even remember
reading that, had the cellular companies been better prepared and able
to anticipate, there could have been full cellular service in the
immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It makes you wonder nowadays
just how long it would take for everything to really shut down and to
what extent it would. Didn’t that mall in “Dawn of the Dead” still
have power? It probably had WiFi too. Doing this opened up the show
for a lot more possibilities and allowed us to put a nice new twist on
things and really add an extra layer to the show about how technology
can be a big help or actually create a whole bunch of problems
depending on the situation.

Not only does the web series format for the show play nicely into its technology angle, Wiltz agrees with me that it’s an interesting new medium to conquer:

I think web series create some amazing opportunities not just for
filmmakers, but for audiences as well. For audiences it’s giving us a
chance to see stories that we may not ever have found otherwise. As a
film geek there’s nothing I love more than finding something new
that’s really cool and exciting (especially before everyone else so I
can brag about it).  For filmmakers it’s opening up the possibility to
create and deliver all sorts of stories in a variety of styles and
formats. With “Semi-Dead,” for example  Season 1 actually follows the
British model for delivering a series – 6 episodes (airing monthly)
with the story advancing fairly rapidly. Hopefully by episode 6 we’ll
really have viewers hooked and clamoring for Season 2 and we’ll go for
more episodes (and more craziness).

While Wiltz has high hopes for the series, his number one priority is to make sure he rallies the support of the fans. He concludes, “If the fans are there and keep showing their support I’d be more than happy to just keep making the show in any format Web or otherwise.”

Check out the trailer for Semi-Dead below. Peak your curiosity?