Spoilers

More chilling discoveries…

Episode 5 felt like it turned a corner but as with large tankers, it can take a while for the vessel to settle into its new course. From took that impetus and spent much of episode 6 turning the ship.

Having said that it was thoroughly enjoyable as far as oppressively terrorised small communities go but the real joy here came in episode 7.

At last we see the horror chops, at last we see how that tight writing and plotting delivers something sharp and on point. We see panic, monsters, danger and, through it all, impetus from the main characters to get their shit together and find a way out of the hell mouth they’ve landed in.

There’s a big question here about the structure of the series which is that so far we’ve had what was clearly act 1 – the arrival of the cast – and now we’re deep into act 2 which has turned into several threads of Scooby Doo.

There are some pieces that don’t quite work – we’ve spent four episodes building characters but here we discover some very large and consequential things about people that drive significant decisions. Beyond that we also have secondary characters making decisions that impact the entire town but who we haven’t met before their sudden arrival (and departure). This doesn’t feel like good writing to me in that there’s no foreshadowing, no coherence in a story where unnamed agents enter the story, turn it upside down and then depart again – their only purpose being to drive the plot forwards. When so much else of the show is focussed on character work this is jarring.

In that sense this is a mess that doesn’t know how it wants to get to where it’s going.

Which is a shame because when the action kicks off and the characters actually have things to do the show really gets it right. The sheriff, the pastor, the tech billionaire are all interesting to watch and their stories, when tightly focused on, bring a sense of what this show could have been if the lens had been more narrowly focused on just these few characters. In calling out the three most interesting characters I find that they’re all male. Which made me review the writing for non-male characters and here it falls down a bit. Not a one of the female characters feel as solid as the men. Everyone here’s a cliché (mostly in a good way) but the men have more substance. For the women we have, by turns, a bratty teenager, the gold hearted waif, the foreign mother and the plucky and resilient single older woman who obviously leads a commune. Yet for all that they’re fairly lightweight – almost nothing they’re doing has any impact upon the plot whereas each of the main male characters has a strong impact upon the world. This is frustrating and unnecessary.

Beyond all that, the world building continues to impress. Some of it is in small moments – like how the town’s prepared its response for when that axe you knew might fall finally does so. Or in how little ideas and memories and pieces of background are littered throughout without being shouted about. If the show’s structure is a lesson in how not to bring a story together then its world building is a real master class in how to tell your audience the rules and the lore without having a character sit down and explain everything to another character.

So I have gripes about this show. I also have some pieces that I love. That’s not the end of it though because the tension here as the show builds towards its climax was palpable and I wanted to know exactly who was toast and who made it through to the next episode. In keeping with good horror, there’s a strong vibe here that no one is safe (except perhaps the kids) and the show delivers on that threat.

Verdict: I want to see what was happening and, in the end, it doesn’t matter too much what doesn’t work when you’re left at the end wanting to see the next episode.

Rating? 7 out of 10.

Stewart Hotston