One of the genres that have been underplayed in the New Golden Age has been horror. Horror is played for camp value (mostly in the world of Ryan Murphy) and for sexual value (True Blood comes to mind) but there have been very few series that I’ve seen that are genuine terrifying (Evil has come the closest). Then a few weeks ago, Lovecraft County premiered, and we got not only monster horror, but the horror that is eerily appropriate to the era we are living in.
Atticus Freeman, an African American who just came back from Korea, has returned to Chicago to find out what happened to his father. Atticus is a huge sci-fi/horror buff and his relationship with his father is, shall we say, troubled. So when he receives a letter telling him that ‘they have a birthright in Lovecraft Country” he is reluctant to go searching for it. But his uncle George (Courtney B. Vance in one of his best roles) wants to find his brother and fill out ‘his guide for black people’. Accompanied by Letitia (Jurnee Smollett, a long way from Friday Night Lights) they go searching.
A lot happens, which I will detail in a minute. And they find this manor house, where they are expected, and somehow everything is fitting for them. With the exception of one manservant, no one is happy to see them, and it’s pretty clear that there’s something truly mystical and horrifying about the place, and dark rituals are easily performed. Then they find out Atticus does have a birthright, and he uses it to find his father. (It may tell you everything you need to know about the man that Montrose Freeman is played by Michael K. Williams, HBO’s John Barrymore of complicated black people.) They find him, they try to escape, but they are stopped. And then…
Let’s stop right here. If you’ve seen the trailers for Lovecraft Country, you know that it deals with otherworldly creatures, worms and demons and monsters you haven’t seen. Hell, if you’re even an amateur with horror, you know who H.P. Lovecraft was and what his stories meant. But what if I was to tell you the most suspenseful and horrifying scenes in this series have nothing to do with those monsters?
Two of the most terrifying scenes I’ve seen in television in a long time came in the Pilot. George wants to try and find a diner for his guide. The three of them drive out there, and it’s very clear very quickly that is not the kind of town that would welcome African Americans, much less serve them a meal. George tells them to go into the restaurant. The chef and the waiters are stunned to see them, and perhaps the only reason they allowed to sit at the table and look at the menu. Letitia goes to the bathroom, and she hears the manager the phone saying he didn’t ask for them to come in. She busts out of there like a bat of hell, saying that they have to run, and they make it to their car just before the police arrive. A gunfight erupts between the two cars, and Atticus knows if they don’t get away, death is by far the least horrible thing that will happen to them. When it seems that they are on the verge of death, another car intervenes like a miracle… only the driver of that car is a key factor to the story.\
The next scene is similar in nature. They’ve stopped in the middle of a forest. And a deputy pulls them and asks them what they are doing there. He spends the next minute taunting them, and then he tells them this is a ‘sunset county’. The kind of county where if black people are caught after sunset, it’s okay to lynch them. He tells them it’s illegal to turn around. Or speed. Then he tells them they have exactly eight minutes to make to the border. The next three were absolutely terrifying as our heroes had to drive just fast enough to get the border but not be caught speeding by the deputy behind them. They make it across the border. They start cheering. Then they see a new line of police cars. And the only reason they are saved from the fate of so many others is because they run across a bunch of monsters that don’t care what color you are before they kill you.
It doesn’t entirely shock me that one of the executive producers of this series is Jordan Peele, who’s turned being black in America into its own kind of horror. I’m not familiar with Misha Green’s previous work for television Underground, a series about the Underground Railroad that was deified by the critics until it was canceled because the network it wasn’t on didn’t want to pay for original programming any more. Lovecraft Country will scare the living bejesus out of anybody who watches it, because the ghosts and monsters and flesh-eaters are actually escapist fare for the far more frightening Jim Crow scenarios that play out time and again virtually every five minutes on this show. I dare you to watch the scene where Letitia breaks the windows of the cars that have been trying to drive her out of her neighborhood, then throws the bat on the ground, and kneels with her hands behind her back, and not feel like you’re going to be sick to your stomach.
Have I made Lovecraft Country sound unwatchable? Then you’re probably not its target audience. Even if you’re not, it’s hard not to be awed by the power of the writing and the performance, particularly the African-American actresses led by Smollett playing characters I guarantee you haven’t seen in a TV show in a very long time. There are family dynamics and a secret birthright and evil people everywhere. This is a triumph for horror.
My only complaint – and it’s a minor one – is the incogriguity with so much of the music. I’m not sure why we needed to hear ‘Movin on Up’ in the opening of the second episode followed by music from the twenties and the sixties often in the same episode. But maybe there’s a point to that. That there’s a certain kind of music that’s common to any era.
My score: 4.75 stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment