The Emory family move to their new home in Compton, California…

Them is a horror anthology. The anthology part is less relevant for this first series since it follows the story of a young Black family in 1950s America all the way through. It fits neatly into the context of other stories in this space such as the closely related US, Get Out, and Lovecraft Country.

It is also a close relation of American Horror Story to which it owes its structure. I say this by way of giving you context into which we can read the show, what it is trying to achieve and, in many ways, how it sees itself.

To say there is a new sub-genre of black horror in this vein is perhaps to overstate things; a handful of new stories does not constitute a proper trend and whether this will continue to be a well mined vein is yet to be seen.

Into this new space steps Them, created by Little Marvin and starring Deborah Ayorinde and Ashley Thomas as Lucky and Henry Emory respectively. Right from the start the show is polished, beautifully shot and tightly scripted. It presents us with a family who are part of what was a real life internal migration in the USA; essentially fleeing a still deeply racist Southern United States for the promise of a new life in the rapidly growing California.

Anyone who knows, or is an immigrant themselves, will understand that the causes which finally provoke people to uproot their entire lives and move to a new land where they know nobody are never good ones.

We do not know what ugliness sent the Emorys west, but it is there in the fabric of those first few moments. What we do know is Henry has a good job, is a war vet, and is well educated.

This first episode is interested in examining the social context into which the Emorys are being inserted. If the Black Lives Matters movement has underscored anything it is that racism in the United States is not confined to the deep south, and so it is here.

This opening episode is saturated with dread and threat, all of it directed at the Emorys. The focus here is on how they are received, how they are perceived, and the response their simple existence provokes.

The framework for the show is carefully drawn from real life; one border being red lining, another being music, and the third being the ongoing impact of Jim Crow. Like Lovecraft Country, Them deploys its music like hand grenades, not in a sense of screaming orchestras warning you of monsters but by bringing songs we know and turning them against us and it works to chilling effect. Music which in other contexts elicits hope and joy here uses those very associations to warn us that what little hope the family brings with them will be insufficient for what they are about to face.

This artful weaving together of real life events and artistic artifice create a crucible in which I felt I was being burned. As a person of colour, albeit not one from the United States, this show feels especially close to the bone. There are no moments of levity, no moments where one feels like the protagonists are going to win. Much of the horror in this first episode comes from being given a white viewpoint. We are shown that much of the community are nervous and ignorant but not particularly malicious. However, we are also shown how those few who are explicitly racist are deeply nasty and are capable of easily swaying others who in other circumstances might simply have got on with life, perhaps growing to except the Emorys as their neighbours.

It reminded me of the school yard and how the nastiest cliques found meaning and self-worth in destroying others. It was a surprise to get a white point of view and a double surprise to see that point of view offering no excuses for their behaviour except to say this is what they believed. It is excruciating to watch and I wished at times for some other opinion to be available. Yet it is hard to escape from the conclusion shown to us by history – that these communities felt exactly this way about their new neighbours whose only difference was the colour of their skin.

This first episode has its share of supernatural shenanigans but they are backgrounded, dreadful but rightfully struggling to grab in the same way as the evil of the Emorys’ neighbours. I suspect Little Marvin will compare and contrast the two types of horror throughout the series. I’m not sure my gut can take it.

We end this episode with the Emorys having moved in, with the community hating on them, and there being something unnatural hunting in the shadows. Where we go from here is not going to be sunshine and roses.

Rating? 8 out of 10.

Stewart Hotston

Them is available to watch on Prime Video now.