Hulu’s first installment in the horror anthology game delivers a modern, quirky addition to the slasher genre.
“Great costume.”
Anthology storytelling has turned into a relatively safe environment for horror. There’s something about the isolated nature and “reset” function of anthology television that caters to horror better than any other genre. Hell, an entire cast can be eliminated in a way that’s impossible in serialized television, which allows anthology horror to really feature a unique element of surprise. At the same time, this disconnected nature can make anthology horror feel “disposable” to some degree and there are plenty of films and series that squander the potential. It’s still early in, but Hulu’s Into the Dark feels like a more focused Tales From the Crypt and it definitely benefits from the fact that it comes from the horror juggernauts at Blumhouse Television.
There are many different frameworks that are applied to anthology horror, but a direction that feels consistently safe is using holidays as a structure. Films like Holidays have explored this “season horror” angle before to great effect, but Into the Dark truly invests in the idea. The show’s twelve-episode season frames each episode around a different month’s respective holiday. Unsurprisingly, the series kicks off with October and Halloween with its premiere, “The Body”.
One of the most impressive things about “The Body” is that it has a very strong premise to fall back on where a hitman has to dispose of a body on Halloween night. At one point a character says, “Halloween is the closest that people get to admitting that we’re defined by death,” and that’s largely the defining theme of this unusual character study. “The Body” wisely begins with Wilkes’ hit already completed and he’s just left with the disposal aspect of his job. This seems simple enough, especially since it’s Halloween and the public are largely oblivious to unusual behavior, but this expert assassin still has his work cut out for him tonight. He finds himself unexpectedly tagging along to a Halloween party for cover, but it also gets Wilkes mingling with a bunch of contrasting personalities.
This party presents a plausible situation where Wilkes can just leave the corpse of his victim in the middle of the festivities and because it’s Halloween no one even gives it a second glance. It’s great. He literally has blood and evidence on his face all night and isn’t even a little worried about it. Wilkes (Tom Bateman) is quite the character and he’s like if Zack Morris and Patrick Bateman had a lovechild. He’s a bitter hitman who waxes philosophical about the human condition. This is hardly a new idea, but the episode’s self-aware script handles it well. Wilkes even gets called a “British Patrick Bateman” at point.
Furthermore, Wilkes indulges in veiled conversations about how murdering has gotten easier through the years while he maintains a moral superiority over the rest of the party. He conflates his real-life issues into costume simplifications. Wilkes muses that “people think that killing is the hard part…” and that the difficulty for him lies in figuring out the cover stories for how his victims died. It shows that Wilkes is more cerebral than violent. That being said, he’s also pretty damn callous, aggressive, and couldn’t care less about the value of human life.
Wilkes is presented as quite an exaggerated personality that Bateman plays with a certain restrained glee. The character’s cocky and dripping in arrogant toxic masculinity. The script is full of character gems, like the Sardinian casu marzu scene, which is cheese that’s rotted inside out from the stomach acid of maggots. It feels like an excerpt out of a Hannibal episode as opulence tangos with disgust, which is basically the atmosphere that “The Body” wants their audience to get lost in. It’s all about juxtaposing different types of people against each other on a night where no one is as they seem.
During Wilkes’ destructive journey he encounters Maggie (Rebecca Rittenhouse) and an unexpected, “normal” romance blossoms between them through the evening. “The Body” wants its audience to worry if Maggie will be safe or if she’ll become Wilkes’ next victim and a lot of the episode gets by on the tension that this creates. The audience wonders how much Wilkes can take as his deadline ticks closer and if and when he’s going to snap. There’s a strange, reluctant chemistry between the two of them. The dynamic between Wilkes and Maggie definitely opens up a larger discussion on gender roles, which is a big part of the episode, but it’s handled well.
In addition to Maggie, there’s also Jack, the boisterous host of this Halloween party (Ray Santiago of former Ash vs. the Evil Dead fame), and this cast of misfits are actually likable, entertaining characters, which is crucial. All of these “normal” people work really well in contrast to Wilkes, who operates with Terminator-like precision. Maggie, Jack, and company all make a number of stupid, realistic mistakes that keep the story interesting, but aren’t insulting to the characters. There are cute asides on non-sequiturs like how homelessness is a complex issue that also really work and add depth to this cast. Another scene where they have to dispose of a body with acid—something they’re woefully unqualified to do—is another highlight of the film’s sensibilities.
As professional as Wilkes is, his night still gets a little out of hand, not that it slows him down much. There’s a moment where he calmly goes off the rails at the Halloween party that gets pretty broad, but it’s at least consistent with the character and brings up a larger conversation about morality, the purpose of life, egotism versus insanity, and David Attenborough. “The Body” is also smart enough to make its points and move on before it gets a little too derivative and indulgent. There’s a message that this episode wants to get across and it makes it very clearly.
“The Body” often exceeds exceptions because it doesn’t go in the typical direction that seems obvious. This is still a story about a hit man carrying out a job and getting away with murder, but it’s also very much about a shy individual waking up and figuring out that they want to take control in their life by murdering people. The story moves along very naturally, it continues to change and evolve, and it feels long enough to justify what’s going on. Never does the script run out of steam and it’s satisfying to see a 90-minute project of this nature actually necessitate such a runtime. It allows this film to play into many different sub-genres and remain unpredictable and varied. It’s worth noting that “The Body” is based on a short film of the same name, but this full-length installment allows the idea to flourish.
“The Body” boasts a strong story, but the episode also succeeds on a technical level. There’s very slick camerawork throughout the episode that moves with the same confidence as Wilkes. The episode makes a point to begin with a long, unbroken tracking shot that takes in the full effect of Wilkes’ carnage as ornate music swells in the background. “The Body” makes an effort to feel Hitchcockian in the way in which it subtly reveals plot and character details about this professional murderer. The installment additionally develops a personality through creative details, like how the audience never learns the identity of Wilkes’ victim, even though it seems to be huge news (we know that it’s at least not Elijah Wood).
“The Body” ultimately takes a brutal turn and contains a rather dour final act, but one that it earns. That being said, justice is still served. The episode features plenty of deaths, but they’re used more to punctuate actions and for effect, rather than to generate actual scares. The entry gets particularly gruesome towards the end and executes one of the worst deaths involving embalming fluid that you’ll ever see. Director Paul Davis (who writes the script along with Paul Fisher) does an impressive job with the material and it seems like a smart approach for Into the Dark would be to use the series as a launching pad for budding talent in the horror genre rather than a showcase of what the pros can do.
“The Body” marks an encouraging start to this series, but hopefully Into the Dark will still go to even more ambitious, dangerous places with its stories. As it stands, Into the Dark is good fun and a whole season’s worth of stories that are comparable in quality to “The Body” would be a great boon for the horror genre.
If nothing else, this will introduce many to the grossness of casu marzu, because really.
See you all in November!
Hulu’s “Into the Dark: The Body” drops on October 5th.
