But I think the first episode sets the mood better than any other zombie film, expect perhaps Vincent Price's Last Man on Earth, which was a model for the later zombie movies. Most zombie movies have zombies as anonymous monsters, but in the Walking Dead (and LMOE), it doesn't gloss over that the dead have families and people that cared about them. The two scenes where Morgan is trying to kill his wife but can't , and when Rick kills the Bicycle zombie, are very strong scenes that don't take away the former humanity of the zombies.
hardly anything going in means hardly anything coming out.