**Spoilers and half-baked opinions alert**
Perhaps I am over-reading things here, but I've a feeling these are not you typical horror movie zombies. They seem to have semblances of memories, which I've a feeling will play on later in the series.
The little girl zombie picks up a teddy bear. Wife/Mom zombie keeps trying to get in the house...even seems to be talking to herself. The zombie in the park the cop shoots seems to be obsessively crawling towards something. There was also a zombie in a business suit in Atlanta who seemed just a might bit more attentive than the others (dude with wavy hair).
Even without that, there is quite a bit of the human element which is well played so far - the husband not being able to shoot his wife was well done.
The original Dawn of the Dead was social commentary of how people, even if they are brain dead, walking dead, a zombie, will still have natural tendencies such as consumerism and that is why a lot of those zombies flocked to the mall. Remember the guy who was bit, can't remember his name, and as a zombie he went to where they boarded up the hallway where they were hiding at?
Zombies, at least depending on how far decomposed they are, still hold the chance of retaining simple memory and able to remember pathways and most likely deep seeded memory and most recent memory.
As time goes on and decomposition sets in the zombie will soon be reduced to a crawl, especially if haven't eaten flesh for the body to burn instead of just it's own body to burn up.
Of course, zombies are often reinvented, now they can seemingly run, recognize people, even have coherent thoughts with fits of primal rage/instinct, and leadership skills. Naturally a zombie is decomposing and as time goes on it will soon be nothing but bits of flesh on bone and brain reduced to complete nothingness.
I don't like that the "Walkers" killed and ate the horse. I don't remember zombies eating animals before.
A zombie was eating a rat in the second episode. They eat whatever flesh they can get a hold of. Most the time it is human since humans get in their way and trapped by them easier. That horse was there had a lot of meat and flesh to it. They had a heyday with that meal. Birds that eat dead bodies contract the disease that way from entering the bloodstream.
The horse just got in the way. Zombies eat any warm flesh.
Geek zombie lesson over. :hatsoff: