Henry surprises the girls…

Alison Pill’s Betty asks her friends why someone would move somewhere they knew they weren’t wanted. They conclude that they would move because where they were coming from was worse. We have seen hints of the worse and this show opens with yet more, perhaps the clearest indication that something horrendous happened two Lucky and her family in North Carolina.

The show starts with Henry having taken the girls out for the day, leaving Lucky on her own. After the events of episode 2 it feels like the actions of a good man trying to give his partner some space.

Lucky decides to go and visit friends and family in the city. We are shown her journey and how the city changes, how skin colour goes from all White to all Black and how that is accompanied by changes in the quality of the buildings and the streets and the fabric of the city itself.

Yet arriving for Lucky is a case of finding refuge, of literally coming home and the contrast with her actual home is stark. It is a place of life, love and laughter which, in the end only underscores her isolation.

The others attempt to have an entirely normal day, shopping eating out and having fun. For the most part they succeed, Los Angeles appears to accept them without judgement beyond the kinds of micro aggressions people of colour continue to experience even today. After the unrelenting tension and hostility of their street it is a palpable relief to see them experience people being normal.

Into this normality, the supernatural prises its way and if we have seen individual spirits haunting both Gracie and Lucky, we now get a sense that Henry is pursued by his very own predator. What is strange with Henry’s experience is we do not know quite how he feels about it; there is no sense of confused disbelief, or fear, almost as if while not expecting it he isn’t surprised.

So while the supernatural may be associated with a bad place, Henry’s reaction may suggest they have brought it with them. For now we can only watch as each of them is pursued by something refusing to come out of the shadows but clearly speaking to them from those dark places. As an analogue for racism each of the spirits we have seen so far provide a solid reading for how different people in different roles encounter it. For instance, Henry’s lack of surprise and also his lack of fear and confusion are easily read as the responses of a man who has lived with racism his whole life and has done everything he can to overcome it. He knows he will encounter it, he knows he will have to shape himself around it but what is that when it is what he has been doing since before he could talk.

Or think of Lucky, for whom in that time and that place encounters with White people are full of terror yet rare because much of her life has been spent inside as a family carer as someone whose job is to look after the home. Her greatest fear is to be found in exposure or in invasion. When one builds walls, to find those have been breached does bring disbelief and fear in deep contrast to Henry.

And finally we come to Gracie – the young child facing authority wherever she goes, experiencing it as being stubborn and controlling yet being told these experiences are benevolent and for her own good. Her spirit is exactly that of the child being abused by cruelty masquerading as kindness. She knows somewhere that she can never be good enough, there is a standard she can’t attain but she cannot articulate that such an impossible judgement stems from mind which regards her as little more than an animal.

For Ruby the show has yet to clearly give us a sense of how her profound loneliness will empower whatever evil spirit is pursuing this family. I have no doubt it will come.

This show is consistently tightly written with multiple set pieces that wow in their composition, their colours and the constructed soundscape. I want you to experience those for yourself with no spoilers so I will not discuss them except to say each character has their moment this episode. And in each situation colour, sound, and the very furniture of those characters’ world serve to deliver us microcosms of what is happening.

Although the supernatural is increasingly present this week it is again the actions of ordinary people which provide the nastiest horror. In part I think this is because I can imagine these things happening to me more clearly and being haunted by a ghost or spirit. Having frequently experienced racism although almost never to this degree, the experience of the Emorys in a community which does not want them feels like it is just one world over from the life I have lived.

Verdict: The clean lines and hyper reality with which this world is presented make it even more emotionally draining than it would be otherwise. By the end of each episode you are relieved to see the credits whilst still wanting to watch the next one and find out what happens. In that regard this is the purist kind of horror and in my mind, after just three episodes, deserves to become part of our canon.

Rating? 8 out of 10.

Stewart Hotston

Them is streaming now on Amazon Prime Video