Frank Darabont directed the pilot of The Walking Dead, and he immediately went for the jugular and shock factor by having the show's lead star, Andrew Lincoln, put down a little girl zombie. He didn't pull back by pulling the camera away. It was a way of saying that this show would impact you with subject matter that might be difficult. Dramatic music to build the moment into something significant is certainly Darabont's style. In saying all that, Romero introduced the horrifying dilemma of a child corpse emerging as a dangerous undead walking flesheater. In Night of the Living Dead (1968), Romero unleashed upon us a dying child bitten by a zombie soon becoming one herself, stabbing to death and feeding from her parents. In Dawn of the Dead (1978), Romero momentarily throws two kid zombies at Ken Foree's Peter when Stephen is filling up his chopper at a depot. Romero doesn't kill the kids on screen, allowing an anguished Peter's face as he fires his gun to sell the scene instead. It's a scene I think impacts without much dramatic pomp or circumstance but is quickly taken care of before the next zombie shows up...Peter, like others in Romero's Dead films, have little time to dwell on the enormity of being placed in the position of shooting two up-and-moving dead kids trying to chew the flesh from his person.
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