As the PRIDE group try to determine how to procure another sacrifice, the fractures in their ranks begin to widen. Meanwhile, the kids have disagreements of their own – after all, do they really believe that their parents are killers, and even if they do, what can be done?

The opening flashback scene of the episode deals with the death of Amy, until now only referenced by the characters as a historical event. The issue is that it asks more questions than it answers, and not necessarily in a good way. There’s one particularly annoying element to it which rather undermines a lot of what we have seen to this point.

Still, the episode then moves on, getting back to the present where things are not going especially well for either the parents or the kids.

In the case of the former, it’s clear that Victor is becoming somewhat of a liability. Not only is the blame for the issues with the ceremony being laid firmly at his door, but his behaviour seems to be becoming increasingly erratic, culminating in a very reckless course of action that then goes wrong, causing more potential issues.

Dale and Stacey, meanwhile, have the dual issues of searching for a missing dinosaur and wanting to be as far away from PRIDE and everything to do with it as possible. Gert’s reluctance to believe that her parents are as bad as maybe they appeared when gathered around the ritualistic sacrifice of a young girl is perhaps understandable given her age and that they are her parents, but then again the body of said girl has since been discovered and she also knows that they keep a dinosaur in the house – it’s starting to stretch credibility a little.

And that’s the other issue here – all the kids, bar Nico and Chase, spend most of the episode trying to find ways in which perhaps their parents might be innocent after all, but that doesn’t really sit with the abundance of evidence that’s before them. It starts to feel like the episode is basically spinning its wheels to a certain extent, nothing really happening and what does making less sense than usual. Why can a teenage child hack an encrypted bit of data (and why was the data left so carelessly unguarded?) Why is a memory that is so clear only just surfacing for a character whine there is no reason given for it having been missing in the interim?

That said, there is good stuff here. There’s real tension in several scenes as various people face down one another. There’s a well-intentioned if still slightly clumsy further address of the attempted rape of Karolina at the party, and Chase clearly handles it in the most positive way he can as he tries to shield her. But there’s also odd bits of exposition and even odder bedroom scenes.

A mixed bag then. Definitely the weakest episode to date though still not bad. The deliberation in pace that served so well in the opening trio of episodes is starting to feel a little over-used as we reach the credits, and we need some action to start happening in episode 5 to get things back on track.

Verdict: Oddly off kilter in terms of both pacing and internal logic. This almost feels like a different show from the first three episodes, and we can only hope this is a glitch and not a feature. 6/10

Greg D. Smith