The popularity of movies of the Zombie Apocalypse genre and the inconsistency of judgments about their effects on the audience presented in academic literature determined the importance of the research. Particularities of perception of The Walking Dead TV series and its characters by teenagers were revealed. A hypothesis that the existential problematics of the film presented by artistic means comprehensible to the age of adolescence, would contribute to the development of the personality of a moviegoer, was tested. For four months, 48 male adolescents, including 24 deviant ones (10 of those with mild mental retardation), watched the six seasons (82 episodes) of The Walking Dead. Using the method of semantic differential and the statistical procedure of factorial analysis, the structure of semantic evaluation of the characters of the film was determined-it was carried out the following considerations of 'usefulness', 'intelligence', 'complexity' and 'realism'. Verifiable differences in group ratings of the film and its characters were identified. It had been determined that the image of Daryl, a character from a socially disadvantaged environment, was characterized by the greatest identification potential for deviant adolescents, while reformatory potential of the series determined constructive transformations of his personality. It was demonstrated that meanings communicated using metaphorical and symbolic means by the film, were more difficult to understand for the adolescents with intellectual incapacity. Teens from the groups of intellectual normalcy, including the deviant ones, showed appropriate understanding of the characters of the film. Using the methodology of psycho-semiotic analysis of free composition written by deviant adolescents at the beginning of watching the series and after its completion, positive trending of indicators of the level of development of their semantic domain was determined. That afforded making conclusion about the reformatory potential of The Walking Dead.