Editorials
Invoking the Ghosts of the Past in “The Terror: Infamy”
Set almost a full century after the inaugural season of AMC’s The Terror, which infused Captain Sir John Franklin’s historic lost expedition to the Arctic in 1845-1848 with horror and dread, new season The Terror: Infamy seeks to heighten the horrors of World War II. More specifically, the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII. A grim moment in history made even more horrific by the addition of something supernatural and deadly haunting the Japanese-American community.
The Terror: Infamy begins in 1941, where it introduces the core characters currently inhabiting Terminal Island, a largely man-made island in Los Angeles. At that time, it was home to a Japanese-American community of around 3,500, in an area known as East San Pedro, or Fish Island. Their way of life changed dramatically on December 7, 1941, when Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service causing mass casualties, over a thousand injuries, and many battleships lost. The day after the attack, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared war on the Empire of Japan.
As for the Japanese-American citizens of Terminal Island, all of the adult males were incarcerated by the FBI on February 9, 1942. Executive Order 9066 signed by the president on February 19 resulted in 112,000 men, women, and children being evicted from their homes on the West Coast and sent to internment camps across the country. Including the community on Terminal Island.
For the key players of The Terror: Infamy, a mysterious evil takes root in their neighborhood before the attack on Pearl Harbor shattered their way of life. They face daily discrimination and racially motivated fears from the living, and being hunted by something supernatural or undead from within. Who are they?
Eiji Inoue as Hideo, Alex Shimizu as Toshiro Furuya, George Takei as Nobuhiro Yamato, Miki Ishikawa as Amy Yoshida, Lee Shorten as Walt Yoshida, James Saito as Wilson Yoshida, Hira Ambrosino as Fumiko Yoshida, Naoko Mori as Asako Nakayama, Shingo Usami as Henry Nakayama- The Terror _ Season 2 – Photo Credit: Ed Araquel/AMC
Chester Nakayama (Derek Mio) – The lead protagonist, Chester is an ambitious 22-year-old with dreams of becoming a photographer for Life magazine. Caught between his familial obligations and his desire to leave the island, Chester’s life is changed dramatically in the first episode and it permanently alters his course.
Luz Ojeda (Cristina Rodio) – A Mexican American who attends Los Angeles Community College as a nursing student, where she met Chester. She lives with her brother and widowed father, who wants her to be a nun. Her friendship with Chester is an act of rebellion, but it profoundly changes her life as well.
Henry Nakayama (Shingo Usami) – Chester’s father, a fisherman by trade. He came to America to provide a better life for his family and suffered hardships along the way. He’s also one of the few in his community to own a car.
Asako Nakayama (Naoko Mori) – Chester’s mother, married to Henry by way of arranged marriage. She’s deeply traditional and superstitious, but is often the glue that holds the family together during tense times.
Nobuhiro Yamato (George Takei) – The community’s 80-year-old elder statesman. Nobuhiro was one of the first Japanese-Americans to move to the island as a fisherman, and holds stories and memories of old traditions that may prove vital to aiding his friends against the mysterious evil lurking within the community.
Amy (Miki Ishikawa) – The daughter of the Yoshidas, the close family friends of the Nakayamas. Like Chester, she relates more as American than Japanese, but she’ll find this tested as the injustices pile up.
Yuko Tanabe (Kiki Sukezane) – A mysterious woman that Chester first meets in a brothel. Not much is known about Yuko, but she might hold the key to unlocking the strange events.
The grim history of WWII and Japanese supernatural horror collide in The Terror: Infamy, which premieres tonight on AMC.
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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