Connect with us

Comics

Why NBC’s ‘Hannibal’ Is The Best TV Show of 2014

Published

on

Hannibal is an oddity. Everything about it spells disaster. It’s a previously tackled idea that was made into an academy award winning film. The Silence of the Lambs is a masterwork, due mostly to the incredible performance of Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter.

Somehow Hannibal is much more than the sum of its parts. It’s a masterpiece that elevates the television horror genre to a brand new level and is simply the best television show of 2014.

For the uninitiated Hannibal follows Will Graham, a gifted criminal profiler who has the unique ability to sympathize with his suspects. He embodies the crime he’s trying to solve, and doing so deeply affects his psyche. So much so they he visits Dr. Hannibal Lecter in an attempt to keep his grip on sanity.

Will is continually pushed to the absolute limit, and by the end of season one, Hannibal has convinced him that he’s an infamous killer – The Chesapeake Ripper. So season one ends with an inversion of the famous image – it’s not Hannibal behind bars with the horrible face mask, but our beloved hero.

When Hannibal returned to the small screen in 2014 it was a decidedly different and even darker show. The season begins with a horribly violent fight scene between Hannibal and FBI Director Jack Crawford. When we last saw them, they were friends. Yet, here they are in a brilliantly shot battle trying to murder one another.

‘Hannibal’ – Cinematographer | James Hawkinson from Meredith King on Vimeo.

When this scene ends, it leaves an insane tone for the rest of the season. We flashback weeks to Will behind bars, and everyone, including Jack is against him. He’s being treated like a maniac, and in a way he has to act like one to get what he wants.

It’s hard for me not to go into painstaking detail of just why this works so well. So I’ll talk about it in broad strokes. It’s not very often that a show heads into its second season with such a different direction. The show is largely structured the same, but it comes to define its characters in entirely new ways. Not the smartest choice when your show is barely alive in the ratings.

Yet, through making the show about a powerplay between equally intelligent sociopaths, Hannibal forgoes humanity for the sake of brutality. It shows the deeply sinister side to human nature, and better yet it approaches this sinister side like a beautiful art form.

Showrunner Bryan Fuller makes an incredible statement with each episode of the series. Murdering people is an art form, people take pride in what they’re good at, and some people really excell at murdering other people. Fuller takes the eccentricities embodied in someone’s art pursuits and pushes them to the fullest extent. The beginning of season two had the killer who stitched people into a grain silo. He killed people of varying skin tones to complete his masterwork, and there was simply nothing quite like that tracking shot that pulled out of the silo by the end of “Sakizuke.”

Hannibal-3

It’s the masterful attention to detail in moments like these that make Hannibal an absolute marvel to watch. Visually there is nothing quite like it on television. Breaking Bad was perhaps the closest equivalent but now Hannibal reigns supreme. The art direction and shot composition is unparalleled. Whether it’s the wide angle time lapse shots that are used on most exteriors or the tighter close up nature of the brutal violence, the cinematographer, James Hawkinson’s work is beyond awe-inspiring.

With a rotating cast of directors and the increasing demands from a studio, it’s sometimes difficult for a television show to be a visual feast. Instead, practicality and time efficient shots are often what makes it to the small screen. But, Hannibal is calculated and meticulous.

Memories from Hannibal Season 2 from Christopher Byrne on Vimeo.

This video should show you everything you need to know about what it’s like to watch this beautiful orgy of death and violence. But, one thing should feel a little off. It’s celebratory, and while the video is a lovely reminder of the visual power of Hawkinson’s attention to detail, it does nothing to highlight the score.

Brian Reitzall’s score straddles a beautiful line between ambient horror and terrifying bombastic splendor. No two moments are alike. He’s able to wrap you in the warm embrace of Will’s isolated life through a couple piano keys melodic repeating in front of a minimalist string assortment.

But within the beauty he can create horrid creeping terror unlike any other composer I can think of. Strangely off key notes pound into the score, building a dangling assortment of sounds that wrap around you and create a soundscape that shows you the ugly side of Hannibal’s world. There is something about it that is ineffable, a magic that comes when combined with the insane visuals of the show.

Apart from all that, the characterization is deep and provocative. The relationship between Will and Hannibal is oddly sexual in nature. Their interest in one another can’t be denied. But it’s never really pushed to a provocative place. Instead small elements of interest seem vaguely sexual. There is nothing physical about the attraction but a provocation that can only be reached when you’ve met your match.

There is a certain surrealist element to Hannibal that channels your deepest fears and projects them onto otherworldly visions of creature who are alien and threatening. Often Will descends into a hallucinatory state that pushes him to see the Stag-Man. A horrid creature who’s leathery black skin absorbs all the light around it. Just when things are going well, the stag-man rears his ugly head and reminds us that nothing is what it seems in this show.

CKF66H5

In the insane finale of season two “Mizumono,” Will and Hannibal share a moment of sober reflection before Hannibal cuts into his abdomen. They were close, dangerously close, and throughout the game they play in season two each of them were vulnerable, perhaps more so than they’ve ever been to anyone in order to gain the upper hand. When finally confronted with the bleak reality that one of them must die, David Slade lingers on the shot, making it an apology rather than an act of betrayal.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t take a moment to talk about Mads Mikkelsen as Hannibal Lecter. It can’t be easy to take on a role that defined another man’s career. But, somehow Mads makes you forget all about that character as he channels something equally sinister but distinctly different. He’s a smart calculated man, he’s not caught yet, so his manipulation is much more overt. Not only that, but he carries an extreme sense of patience. He carefully manipulates everyone around him.

Hugh Dancy never would have come to mind as someone who can handle a troubled role like Will Graham, but he gives Mads a run for his money. As he is equally manipulative, but far more troubled. He’s the opposite side of the coin, so paranoid and delusion that he could be caught for something he didn’t commit so he’s careful, he’s calculated, and he lacks empathy. It makes both of this characters wildly unpredictable and weirdly similar.

Hannibal cups Wills neck. He holds him close as he bleeds out, and he allows his embrace to guide Will into death. Yet, somehow the more sinister side erupts from him and like a jilted lover he slices Abigail’s throat just to see Will as she dies in front of him.

This brutality feels like a volcanic eruption. It mirrors the final act of a horror movie in many ways because it’s the unrelenting force of the killer on the loose that changes everyone’s lives for the worse. By the end of season two everything is torn down, the game of cat and mouse is over and our characters are fully exposed. Yet, when they stand naked in the chaos, there are only more questions than answers.

hannibal 13

Somehow though, Hannibal will still come back a different and perhaps better version of itself when it returns in late spring. Now, with everything out on the table it has to take us somewhere new, and familiar. There is still plenty of source material left to draw on, and Bryan Fuller has made it clear he’s going to draw on it all, but he has yet to stop surprising us.

I often struggle to define Hannibal I hear myself saying, it’s Dexter only darker or it’s Breaking Bad if selling meth was equal to the psychological horror of criminal profiling. Admittedly that last one needs some work, but the real way to define Hannibal is the most meticulously crafted piece of horror television we’ve ever seen. It’s easily the best horror show of 2014, and not only that, but it was the best show on television of 2014, it’s a dark masterpiece.

 

 

 

 

 

Comics

[Review] Graphic Novel ‘Tender’ Is Brilliant Feminist Body Horror That Will Make You Squirm & Scream

Published

on

Tender Beth Hetland Graphic Novel

Beth Hetland’s debut graphic novel, ‘Tender,’ is a modern tale of love, validation, and self-destruction by way of brutal body horror with a feminist edge.

“I’ve wanted this more than anything.”

Men so often dominate the body horror subgenre, which makes it so rare and insightful whenever women tackle this space. This makes Beth Hetland’s Tender such a refreshing change of pace. It’s earnest, honest, and impossibly exposed. Tender takes the body horror subgenre and brilliantly and subversively mixes it together with a narrative that’s steeped in the societal expectations that women face on a daily basis, whether it comes to empowerment, family, or sexuality. It single-handedly beats other 2023 and ‘24 feminine horror texts like American Horror Story: Delicate, Sick, Lisa Frankenstein, and Immaculate at their own game.

Hetland’s Tender is American Psycho meets Rosemary’s Baby meets Swallow. It’s also absolutely not for the faint of heart.

Right from the jump, Tender grabs hold of its audience and doesn’t let go. Carolanne’s quest for romantic fulfillment, validation, and a grander purpose is easy to empathize with and an effective framework for this woeful saga. Carolanne’s wounds cut so deep simply because they’re so incredibly commonplace. Everybody wants to feel wanted.

Tender is full of beautiful, gross, expressive artwork that makes the reader squirm in their seat and itch. Hetland’s drawings are simultaneously minimalist and comprehensively layered. They’re  reminiscent of Charles Burns’ Black Hole, in the best way possible. There’s consistently inspired and striking use of spot coloring that elevates Hetland’s story whenever it’s incorporated, invading Tender’s muted world.

Hetland employs effective, economical storytelling that makes clever use of panels and scene construction so that Tender can breeze through exposition and get to the story’s gooey, aching heart. There’s an excellent page that depicts Carolanne’s menial domestic tasks where the repetitive panels grow increasingly smaller to illustrate the formulaic rut that her life has become. It’s magical. Tender is full of creative devices like this that further let the reader into Carolanne’s mind without ever getting clunky or explicit on the matter. The graphic novel is bookended with a simple moment that shifts from sweet to suffocating.

Tender gives the audience a proper sense of who Carolanne is right away. Hetland adeptly defines her protagonist so that readers are immediately on her side, praying that she gets her “happily ever after,” and makes it out of this sick story alive…And then they’re rapidly wishing for the opposite and utterly aghast over this chameleon. There’s also some creative experimentation with non-linear storytelling that gets to the root of Carolanne and continually recontextualizes who she is and what she wants out of life so that the audience is kept on guard.

Tender casually transforms from a picture-perfect rom-com, right down to the visual style, into a haunting horror story. There’s such a natural quality to how Tender presents the melancholy manner in which a relationship — and life — can decay. Once the horror elements hit, they hit hard, like a jackhammer, and don’t relent. It’s hard not to wince and grimace through Tender’s terrifying images. They’re reminiscent of the nightmarish dadaist visuals from The Ring’s cursed videotape, distilled to blunt comic panels that the reader is forced to confront and digest, rather than something that simply flickers through their mind and is gone a moment later. Tender makes its audience marinate in its mania and incubates its horror as if it’s a gestating fetus in their womb.

Tender tells a powerful, emotional, disturbing story, but its secret weapon may be its sublime pacing. Hetland paces Tender in such an exceptional manner, so that it takes its time, sneaks up on the reader, and gets under their skin until they’re dreading where the story will go next. Tender pushes the audience right up to the edge so that they’re practically begging that Carolanne won’t do the things that she does, yet the other shoe always drops in the most devastating manner. Audiences will read Tender with clenched fists that make it a struggle to turn each page, although they won’t be able to stop. Tender isn’t a short story, at more than 160 pages, but readers will want to take their time and relish each page so that this macabre story lasts for as long as possible before it cascades to its tragic conclusion. 

Tender is an accomplished and uncomfortable debut graphic novel from Hetland that reveals a strong, unflinching voice that’s the perfect fit for horror. Tender indulges in heightened flights of fancy and toes the line with the supernatural. However, Tender is so successful at what it does because it’s so grounded in reality and presents a horror story that’s all too common in society. It’s a heartbreaking meditation on loneliness and codependency that’s one of 2024’s must-read horror graphic novels.

‘Tender,’ by Beth Hetland and published by Fantagraphics, is now available.

4 out of 5 skulls

Tender graphic novel review

Continue Reading