Expected at the turn by video game fans, The Last Of Us promises beautiful moments of jitters but also a very scary plot according to the actors.
The most anticipated series of the beginning of 2023, The Last Of Us promises great thrills. In any case, this is announced by its two main actors, Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey.
They respectively play Joel and Ellie, two survivors of a pandemic in post-apocalyptic America who must navigate a hostile environment filled with infected.
On air from January 15 on HBO and HBO Max in the United States, The Last Of Us is the adaptation of the famous video game, signed Craig Mazin (Chernobyl) and Neil Druckmann (creator of the video game franchise).
The various trailers promise a faithful transcription of the disturbing and poetic universe of the video game, and recent statements from the cast confirm this, especially concerning the infected, which should be much more frightening than “classic” zombies. From The Walking Dead for example, another major undead series.
Realistic, science-based “zombies”
In The Last Of Us, the infected are humans affected by a fungal infection caused by a fungus called Cordyceps. Their behavior becomes aggressive and they attack any uninfected person. There are several categories of infected, such as the Clickers or the Colossi, but all the “zombies” in The Last Of Us are scary.
If Pedro Pascal confessed to IGN that he finds them truly horrifying – even calling them “a monstrous floral nightmare” -, Bella Ramsey explained that knowing that this infection came from a fungus was what disgusted her the most:
“Cordyceps infection is science-based. Theoretically it’s possible, and that’s what’s so terrifying.”
HBO
“It’s not a supernatural person who resurrects and turns into a man-eating monster“, continues Bella Ramsey during a roundtable interview for Moviepilot.
“It goes through something that exists in our world: fungi. The idea that it’s theoretically possible […] gives it a more real element that makes it all the more scary.”
This is exactly what interested and terrified coshowrunner Craig Mazin. For him, they are scarier undead than the stereotype of other zombies on TV or in movies. He explained to Slash Film:
“It’s not zombies crawling out of their graves. There’s no magic. There’s no spirits and ghosts. It’s science. And to me, nothing is wrong. scarier than a scientist who’s scared. That’s where I’m scared.”
In addition to the physical appearance of the infected, it is therefore their origin that freaks out the cast and the creative team. And this aspect developed in the HBO series adaptation should give you some chills too.
For the moment, The Last Of Us does not have a broadcaster in France.