Reviews
[SXSW Review] Amazon Series “Them” Gets Off to Solid Start with Intensity and Relentless Terror
The logline for the latest Amazon Original series reads similar to HBO’s Lovecraft Country. Both center around a family attempting to navigate unwelcoming white spaces in the ‘50s, and both lean heavily into genre storytelling. Of Them’s first two episodes premiered at SXSW, it becomes clear that the inaugural season eschews horror-fantasy in favor of intense psychological horror that aims to induce visceral dread without any reprieve. Whether it can sustain that throughout all ten episodes remains to be seen, but so far, Them gets off to a solid start that thrives on relentless terror.
Them refers to the Emory family, an unwanted blight on Palmer Drive in Compton, California, in 1953. Before they even make it to sunny California for a fresh start, this family engenders itself so profoundly to the viewer thanks to a harrowing, disturbing prologue set in the South. The full details should reveal themselves much later in the season when audiences have been mentally prepared. This alarming event cuts to former teacher Lucky (Deborah Ayorinde) waking in the car from a nightmare, with her husband Henry (Ashley Thomas) at the wheel, and their two daughters, Ruby (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Gracie (Melody Hurd), in the backseat. Their arrival is met with hostilities from their neighbors, led by manipulative housewife Betty Wendell (Alison Pill). For the Emory family, danger comes from everywhere, inside and outside of the home.
The series makes it clear from the start that what will transpire over this season happens within a short 10-day period and doesn’t waste a second plunging straight into a pressure cooker with no release valve. Created by Little Marvin, Them adds new, harrowing context to the familiar dark suburbia setting in horror. The unyielding tactics to goad the Emory family into abandoning their new home would be enough to chip away at anyone’s mental health. But Lucky and Henry endured significant traumas before, thanks to distressing details of their lives in North Carolina dispersed in careful measure. Marvin seamlessly blends in suburban decay in the form of supernatural elements, too, to create an onslaught for his characters with no room to catch their breath before the next crisis strikes.
The first two episodes are directed by Nelson Cragg (Homeland, Breaking Bad), a two-time Emmy-nominated cinematographer, and he uses his skills to his fullest advantage here. He makes heavy use of split diopter shots, canted tilts, and unique POV shots to strike that juxtaposition between sunny, idyllic suburbia and its underlying evil. Cragg’s direction is matched by the stellar production design; the pastel-washed hues of the bright suburban street paints a drastically different picture from the bold, vibrantly patterned interiors of the Emory home. It’s a distinctly different world than the rural North Carolina home they left behind and perhaps an even more strikingly different one than the bustling Los Angeles. All of which to say that the worldbuilding is lived-in and rich.
So far, Them introduces an instantly winsome family you desperately wish to see through what promises to be a terror-filled and nightmarish ten days. Heartbreak lies ahead, and so, too, does a lot of horrors if the eerie basement scenes or a bubbling grave are any indications. In just two episodes, Ayorinde and Thomas already showcased an impressive range, bringing incredible emotional depth to their characters. Pill’s villainous Betty also has layers, but the series luckily doesn’t attempt to humanize her.
Marvin’s series is off to an auspicious start. That this season, dubbed “Covenant,” is to be a self-contained story as part of a planned anthology series bodes well, as it means that there’s a clear narrative focus designed for the Emory family that should bring closure by episode ten. Them’s brilliant pacing and mystery building hooks you from the first scene. If it can maintain that nail-biting momentum, it has the potential to outclass its contemporaries with terror-inducing ease.
Them releases on Amazon Prime Video on April 9, 2021.
Franchise callbacks and connective tissue between films are aplenty in Sébastien Vaniček’s Evil Dead Burn, including a sense of humor. Yet the laughs feel oddly placed in the most dour entry yet, with its sobering allegory for domestic abuse. Ambitious swings and inspired sequences unleash thrilling carnage that satisfy, but it all unravels by its clumsy final showdown.
Alice (Souheila Yacoub) is already a survivor before the arrival of Deadites. She’s suffered domestic abuse and violence at the hands of her husband, Will Price (George Pullar), and finally sees reprieve when the lakeside Deadite that bookended Evil Dead Rise causes his death. It’s a calculated move by the undead; they’re in search of a certain Kandarian dagger that happens to be a Price family heirloom. So, Alice’s grieving with her in-laws becomes a bloodbath as she’s forced to confront literal and metaphorical demons, courtesy of the Necronomicon.
Vaniček, who co-wrote the script with Florent Bernard, presents a rather rotten family tree before any demonic activity. Will is, after all, his parents’ son, and mom and dad are a nasty piece of work. Erroll Shand manages to top his skin-crawling villain from Mārama as Price patriarch Edgar, a volatile vision of toxicity and control. His wife, Susan (Tandi Wright), reveals herself to be even more vile, doling out cruel barbs that indicate she’s quite comfortable with her husband and eldest son’s penchant for violence.
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree; flickers of ignorance and bigotry occasionally cut through Grandma’s (Maude Davey) dementia-addled mind. The exception to this family’s rot is with timid youngest son Joseph (Hunter Doohan) and his girlfriend Thya (Luciane Buchanan), though he’s too browbeaten to protect anyone from the Prices’ wrath. His cowardice is revealed to be a different form of toxicity, though, a byproduct of the kind of fruit this family tree bears. Which is to say that Evil Dead Burn may be the first in the franchise to operate on such a palpable degree of hate. It’s hard to feel fear when you actively despise the majority of these characters and root for their demise.
The good news is that Vaniček delivers on that front. Adhering to the formula, the family members perish one by one in inventive ways. Including the poor family pup, though his Deadite form doesn’t contribute much to the chaos. It’s the ingenious set pieces and demonic sequences that stand out in Evil Dead Burn, calling Vaniček’s nerve-fraying Infested to mind. An early sequence involving a moving car, one that sees multiple bodies fighting for life or death and utilizing whatever weapon they can, is worth the ticket price alone. A later sequence that sees Alice crawling away as an all-out brawl breaks out around her in a long, continuous take also adds thrilling personality.
Evil Dead Burn sags dramatically between these sequences, though, forcing us to sit through more vitriol from vicious in-laws with only contact lenses and wounds to distinguish them from human or demon. The somber tone is matched by a flat gray palette evocative of ash, made more literal by the falling of snow. The cold, flat aesthetic also diminishes some of the horror’s visceral impact. It all builds to a rather dismal climax that introduces a shoddy CG monstrosity that makes Alice’s demons made of burnt flesh.
In a film series that has, thus far, maintained fierce commitment to practical effects, the clunky final boss of demons here winds up a huge disappointment. At least the filmmaker commits fully to the Burn part of the title, forgoing the blood-drenched finales of the previous two films to deliver something a bit fresher.
It’s so heavy-handed in its domestic violence theme that subtext is just text, which in turn clashes with the upbeat splatstick fan service bits. A mid-credit scene aims to bring the laughs, but the post-credit scene is so egregious in its fan service that it reads desperate and feels shoehorned in just to remind fans how much we love this particular character.
Vaniček most certainly understands the assignment when it comes to delivering gruesome freakouts and brutal carnage. It’s everything else around it that largely frustrates. Yacoub is a winsome final girl who’s already been battered before the events of the film, then we’re forced to watch the rest of the family pile on in even worse ways.
It’s the type of bleak that’s at constant odds with the Evil Dead formula and callbacks, making for a tonally uneven vision of domestic abuse. It makes you miss when the ancient evil in this series didn’t need a trauma metaphor to terrorize. That’s what the demons are for.
Evil Dead Burn releases in theaters on July 10.
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