#Though if they’re comparing her to creepshow then it’s probably so much more than that oh my gosh

[the-nameless-wacky-inventor]

When I tell you my jaw DROPPED

[channeleven]

American Nightmares Review

I used to be a big fan of Ralphthemoviemaker, still am, but it’s not as big as it was then. From the influence he has over his fans, to him unironically enjoying modern Marvel movies, seriously Thor Ragnarok is hot garbage. One of the videos I saw by him was his coverage of independent talk show Scorch PFG TV. I decided to do my own research on the guy and located his IMDb page, and it had a listing for a horror anthology film.

Now, I love horror anthology films, though preferably the B-grade ones, as those have more character. in general, horror anthologies have the opportunity to go any way, as they’re really just a collection of self-contained stories most of the time, you never know what you'd get with them. I loved Terror Tract, Tales from the Hood, Creepshow 2, Campfire Tales, Tales from the Crypt, I also like most old religious thrillers, b-movies and Sonic games from Adventure to Unleashed, so take my musings with a grain of salt.

I told myself, if this movie were to ever pop up on YouTube, I would check it out and do a review of it. And here we are today. I mentioned this movie in my review of Campfire Stories, and I think it’s appropriate this would be next on the chopping block.

Background

This movie is an enigma. It has nothing much beyond an IMDb page. The film was helmed by two directors, Rusty Cundieff and Darin Scott. Both had previously worked on films like Tales from the Hood, which I actually enjoyed. The sequels? Not so much. Because of the socio-political themes of Rusty’s prior films, something I immediately picked up on in Tales from the Hood, I can expect the same here, but my issue is not that they’re present, but because of how its carried out without much nuance. Stuff like The Twilight Zone worked great because of subtlety. Hint hint.

It's fair to assume this was produced on a very low budget, probably because it was. The film was produced by Patriot Pictures, a low profile company specializing in low end genre films, and it was released by Moonstone Entertainment in 2018, with Quiver giving it a wider release in 2021. Looking at the cast, this seems to be a who's who of washed up actors looking for any form of publicity. The film stars Danny Trejo, of Breaking Wind fame and Jay Mohr. Not ringing any bells? He stared in Action and appeared in an episode of Night Visions, and both of those are objectively good TV shows, don't get it twisted. Vivica A. Fox is also in this, bless the soul of her career. Also this was one of the final roles of Clarence Williams III, who starred in Tales from the Hood hence his involvement at all.

The Film

You can check out the movie on Tubi, and a YouTube upload will be included too: https://tubitv.com/movies/544844/tales-from-the-crib-american-nightmares

This is a horror anthology film, featuring Danny Trejo hacking into the computers of some millennials to tell them some stories. Right off the bat, we got some neat star power, James Duvatl, Vivica At F-Zero-X, Noel G, wait who? Yeah, they think 1337 is the way to go.

The opening crawl is hammy at best. The anthologies I've mentioned before, even those beyond, establish a certain vibe or atmosphere. This just suggests they know what they're doing is low budget and destined to be on a rack at your local Dollar Tree. Best way to compare this intro is to that of Noon Blue Apples, or New World Order. It throws in a lot of imagery, but it is relevant to the theme of obsession over conspiracy theory, there was a method to its on-the-nose nature. Whereas this, it’s your alphabet soup of social causes and topics that spell out the lack of subtlety we’d be in for. Hell even Tales from the Quadead Zone had a better intro, and even less of a budget.

After the last shot shows people that really love Christianity, we get the age all classic cliche of making computer hacking look more exciting than it actually is. Naturally they scour for porn. I could rage about women's rights, or I could just consider this to be a constant cliche. Said cliche is mercifully ended, as Danny Trejo hacks their computers, likely wanting to become the next Joss Wheadon and cover shit up through activism. I may be half right on half of what I said. I'd question if hacking is similar to TV interference, but I don't want to know.

Anyway, without any delay, we have our first story, and an issue I wanna bring up. There's a lack of a flow between the segments and the framework. In other films like Tales from the Hood, Crypt, Quadead Zone, Campfire Tales, and Terror Tract, the story is brought up after something related to it is before. Here, the stories are just told as they are, coming without any prior prompt. I dunno, it just breaks the flow some.

Mates

Unfortunately due to a lack of detailed plot information, I'd have to guess most of these stories as I go along.

So this one starts of with a woman and her deadbeat boyfriend. We get some serious whiplash at the start, cutting between the woman at a bar and her talking with her friend somewhere else. I have no idea what this is building up to, all I wanna do is tell her that being single won't be the end of the world. You really wanna be tied down in a relationship that probably won't last? Think about it.

The main woman, Shanika? Runs the risk of getting driven off of Twitter for her love of straight relationships, and gets a package, not one attached to a man but a box, not attached to a woman but, wait it's an envelope, which isn't a euphemism.

It looks like this story is gonna go into the evils of internet dating, or she would set up her own demise with the creation of an ideal man. If it were up to me, I'd say the twist is her definition of a perfect man is the asshole who got this started in the first place.

So far the quality of this... is at 240p, so I can't complain about the quality, and I had a good joke comparing this to something by Charles Band. Check out Kill Joy and you'll see what I mean, and for a great movie recommendation.

And soon, Shanika meets long, tan and unsure of who he's looking for. Credit where it's due, this dating scene doesn't seem too forced. I mean you gotta force yourself in these situations so it's always gonna seem forced. I mean it's less forced than the sex scene. I'm just saying, if you make The Room's sex scene look more natural, then this is unnatural. I blew it.

At this point I'm still speculating. Is her date like a vampire, who sucks out souls and energy from women through sex? Actually no, I spoke too soon. He is a robot, and the dating site she found sent him as part of a free trial. I mean I guess that makes sense, how else can the perfect date be crafted? I honestly didn't know what to expect. And that includes how her deadbeat old boyfriend was in on it, to teach her a lesson relating to perfection.

I assume he's gonna die soon. He is more hammy than a comedic actor trying to play an abusive father. Yes, that was a Tales from the Hood reference. For however shitty he is, I admire his patience, he allows Shanika to dig through her purse to find a credit card so she can activate the robot again and let him get killed. You don't find patient individuals that often anymore.

Oh wait he was getting the robot, apparently he's as patient as he is strong to lift human AI, also can't believe how hilarious he is. So yeah, he tries to strangle her, the robot saves her and that's essentially the end. He could lift him but he can't so much as punch him in the face. But wait, he shoots him, and the bullet... hits the shooter in the chest? Death by convenience, go figure.

Though I understand the broader implications of having AI in our lives, something you can control can make life easier. Marriage is always a gamble.

Anyway, back to the hackers, almost abruptly, maybe Danny's just shooting the shit with those willing to listen to him? Our next tale, point blank, deals with judiciary concerns. If this is a story about Brett Kavanaugh I'm gonna be pissed, it’s a groaner no matter where you lean politically.

The Prosecutor

Oh gee, white judges cracking down on black defendants, how is this gonna go down? This was years before June the fifteenth at least when things really went down, and look, of course I don’t favor prosecution based on race, I just don’t like it if its portrayed in the most straightforward way possible because you can make immediate guesses to what happens, and know who is gonna die at the end.

So, is the crook innocent? Is the prosecutor who's running for governor racist? Did he kill the people the crook is accused of killing? Is this gonna be where I find Scorch because he’s credited as an inmate on this.

I'm probably more concerned this is gonna be a rehash of a story from Tales from the Hood, where a black gangster is put into a prison system which is actually an attempt at redemption which he blows. Rusty, Just because you directed both movies doesn't mean you should copy them. But wait, he didn't, the real killer was found, and the prosecutor, Mooreland, doesn't want to change the verdict. So he's gonna die, this is clearly a message about our corrupt legal system, and showing me how inconsistent the movie is with its accents, southern or not southern, that is the question.

Apparently this segment is big on family. Either this is a metaphor or setting up the end twist, or maybe Mooreland is a huge Fast and the Furious fan. Nah, it’s meant to establish a dilemma and character quirk.

With the crook escaping from prison and a sudden power outage, I feel like poetic justice is about to happen. After a scene of the crook reading the bible and praying to God, I mean before, he breaks into the house and shoots at Mooreland. Is this a nightmare? A stab at religious hypocrisy? Did he actually kill his family? Did Mooreland have a hand in killing the crook's family? There’re some pretty obvious routes to take, especially since this movie takes an incredibly straightforward route.

I'm not in suspense, or interested, I'm not even 30 minutes into the film. So it cuts back to the crook in the cell. Was this a revenge fantasy? Was this actually why he was on death row? Did he use telepathic means to conduct the murders? No, poetic justice. The crook kills Mooreland's family, and he is framed for it.

Okay, how? Did the crook break out of prison? Did he make a pact with a demon? Those would’ve made more sense, but no, Mooreland is arrested and executed, I take more offense to reducing a legitimate issue to a ill-thought out horror tale that can vindicate the average Dhar Mann video.

What's next? Wait, a confederate flag? Nevermind.

White Flight

A white family moves out of a neighborhood with black residents, they suffer in the end that’s about it. Read on for the long version.

Let me reaffirm this, while going on a tangent. My problem with most movies like these is predictability, they carry these messages out with no nuance. It’s a bit like that movie Karen, remember that shit? Where they took a meme and reduced it to a bare basic degree. People focus so much on representation alone that they do not pay any mind to the quality, it is shit like this that blurs the line between representation and good writing, and half the time it’s just used for the sake of it rather than doing a meaningful portrayal. They made Betty DeVille a lesbian in the Rugrats reboot because she looked the part, I bet, they gave Barney a stereotypical haircut and dye to indicate a trans identity, and don’t get me started on the wet fart that was High Guardian Spice, I think some already know.

Now what the hell am I talking about? A show or movie can deliver a message about modern issues, but this is a show or movie, and a compelling story is needed to tie it all together, and more importantly avoid making it too on the nose, otherwise it feels less like they want to give it any meaning and just appeal to people who would accept it no matter what. There’s portraying racism, then there’s reducing it to incredibly basic elements.

Either that or I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, but unlike Turning Red, this is a low budget poorly written horror anthology through and through, and there’s more meaning to my inane ramblings than what this movie has to offer on portraying real world issues, which this is what it’s about, a collection of stories mostly themed around social issues.

We will now return you to your regularly scheduled crap.

We see a man walk up to a house. This man apparently has telepathy, because he could knock on a door even though he's nowhere near it before jump cutting to the front of it. We meet our dead meat Thomas, and shock of all shocks, its exaggerated to the point of being stereotypical.

Oh and he's a racist cop too, all he needs to do is be ultra-conservative and he’d have everything. By the way that was a joke, I’m not political I just wanted to seize an opportunity.

So, Stromas McWallaceByrdMetzgerPerezWaters gets a package, and it's a means of sending them to an all white area, a literal fucking dimensional transporter. As if our sense of disbelief can’t be any more limited. I mean I can accept it if the movie was good, Tales from the Hood had paranormal occurrences which suit the horror element, in case anyone says so, but everyone has limits.

And now for a strange trivia factoid about this movie. Another familiar actor from Tales from the Hood appears in this, Duane Whitaker. He played a corrupt cop in the first story of that movie and was notably the first to die, spoiler, he has better luck here. Wings Hauser is a no-show though, and I bring him up because he has appeared in multiple b-movies.

The racists get sent to a dimension where minorities don’t exist, and adding to some cartoonish cringe, they even have an over the top sign to that effect. So, what do you think the twist is gonna be? Will the transporter make them black in the eyes of everyone, doing the Watermelon Man twist? Well, it seems so. After an alarm is sounded, a police car door is slowly opened and a man is seen drinking in a diner. These are apparently important enough to show, but wait, they are, the sequencing is just total ass.

Okay quick delaying the inevitable, we know they're gonna get hassled.

But what is the actual twist? The people in this town aren't racist, they just didn't want people with black hair. It's stupid, but you know what? I'll take it. I didn't see it coming, and it kinda fits with the discussion on racism, and there is a lynching... a baby lynching, and he gets arrested. This is sorta like the end of the first segment in The Twilight Zone movie, but at least the actor in this got to live to see another day, or maybe a little longer. However, the way they phrased their tagline, it causes the twist to feel forced. Is this because people with black hair don’t have a term like blondes or brunettes to go for a stronger twist?

So, they set this up like a very basic racism revenge plot, but threw in a twist, no matter how stupid it was, which still fits the allegory they were going for. This has the most palatable twist I've seen in the movie just far, and I still have a ways to go.

After that, we get insight that the millenials spammed nudes of a girl who owed one of them money on social media, and I assume they're gonna die, and this is looking to make Feardotcom look like a great movie, it’s already free to watch.

So I did a little looking around, and I either have only four or five stories to go.

The Samaritan

I noticed a theme around clowns for the first few seconds, let's see where this goes. And that’s another thing about the lack of a proper flow, random things happen with no proper transition, I mean... best you see it for yourself to hopefully get what I mean.

After close to a minute of establishing shots, a man and a woman hold up a sick man for... ransom? Rent payment? Is he a hitman? Does he work for tips? This next scene has him offered to dress like a clown. I'm lost, I'll be right back.

So apparently the woman with the money collector is a prostitute with a pimp, and dressing as a clown is a sexual favor, where the payer is actually a murderer, turns out to be one anyway. 

After finding her pimp asleep with his eyes open, she attempts to escape. I'll give it this, I like the mannerisms of the psycho in this. Could make for a b-grade Joker if anything. Somehow, upon giving a ghost her crucifix, both girls kill the clown. There was no socio political slant, though the clown actor once played John Wilkes Booth in The Ridiculous 6. This was actually a nice little diversion, I’ll give it that.

Okay, seven minutes to the hour mark, no use quitting now.

Hate Radio

Believe it or not, it's not what you think. It's not about racism, it's about everything including racism. Alec Baldwin's long lost twin brother, or Hugh Bluff, is our lead in this. Hugh Bluff? Why not Hugh Jastle? It's every right wing stereotype stuffed into one. This would've been a perfect time to have Scorch do his best Alex Jones impression, but I guess Rusty is a huge Opie and Anthony fan.

It's an AM radio show, meaning this movie would be right down Cinema Snob's alley.

Okay, with the over the top nature presented here they're not going after moderates at least. I can understand there are plenty of dickbags out there that function like this, but the issue here is a lack of a balance. We're equal, not one above another. Otherwise we're gonna see a white Martin Luther King Jr. one of these days, you want that on your conscious? A continuous debate that would inspire more hatred than anyone's comfortable with?

Look, I don't agree with anything he's saying, I promise. If you want to see a good story with a hateful radio show host, check out the Tales from the Darkside episode Devil's Advocate, or the Night Visions episode Dead Air.

He gets a call from New Mexico, and rather than the caller voicing his grievances with Woodrow Wilson, well you can guess.

Best case they're going for a show don't tell approach, or maybe it is tell because they just keep stretching this out. Again, I don't agree with a word coming out of this guy's mouth, or the callers for that matter, but it did do one thing for me, it made me appreciate commercial breaks.

Things are straightforward after that, butthen... Make America Great Again.... okay, just a statement, not gonna complain about that, just them including an image of Donald Trump for good measure because they think we’re idiots who’ve been living under a rock. I just take offense to the people thinking I’m stupid for not picking up on subtext.

Hey guys, he's a Republican, he's bad. We assume you don't know that because we have no respect for your intelligence. Take our side you dummies, otherwise you're as bad as this potato sack we keep parading around.

The deal with this is that this man is turned into a woman, also evil portrait. It worked better in Tales from the Hood with a racist man inhabiting a plantation and him getting attacked by living voodoo dolls, he deserved what came to him and it makes sense in the grand scheme of things.

He turns into the woman in the portrait and out of awareness for how bad the effect would look, covers any parts that would need to be seen to properly display the change. Also a bad wig worse than Kate Mara’s on Fant4astic. This movie has a fascination with dragging scenes out, at least right here. It seems most of the budget was put toward that fake penis that fell out.

Though it may be racist to do so, I'd have to question Cundieff and Scott on their closeted sexist beliefs. They gave Hugh giant breasts, with clear clevage. Hell I'd even go as far as to consider this a touch transphobic because of how exaggerated it is.

Or maybe I’m just trying to one up these guys.

If I say I'm glad it's over, it's because this dragged on for so long I got the sum of it well before it ended. I was able to pick up everything in that overlong tirade at the start, so I have an idea how this ends. She claims that women deserve to be killed by serial killers, or something similar, and the same thing happens to her. And I guess the killer is one of the callers from before, somehow I was able to piece that together, I'm smarter than this movie gives me credit for it seems.

So what's the moral of this story? Just transition to a female actor if you're gonna make a TG look half-assed. Also don't leave discussions on sexism in the hands of someone who thinks lowly of their audience's intelligence.

The Healer

Is this gonna be about religion? Evangelics? Faith healers. Yeah.

So the plot of this is that a faith healer uses fake holy water for his miracles, and he is a fraud. It's obvious, and making me hanker for Moses Gunn in that episode of Tales from the Crypt. At this point I'm surprised they have an African American as a villain, I mean to be fair the first segment did. I'm forgetting already.

Clarence Williams III comes out of nowhere and knocks out the pastor, who's name is Bishop Love. Apparently Fazion doesn't talk much about his conniving brother. Anyhow, this is about the kidnapper's daughter dying, owed to the faith she put in Bishop's false faith.

Also the kidnapper knows voodoo now, plaguing Bishop with imperfections fraudulently dealt with.

Okay, think we have one more, right after the wraparound. Things go all occult real fast. I consider Jesus to be my lord and savior, but at the same time I'm so desensitized to basic horror this just doesn't phase me.

Thy Will Be Done

...if it ever starts. They linger on a summoning scene. Wait, is this the final segment? No, that would've been a neat little twist.

I assume this story is about pregnancy or something related? Yes it is, she gets kidnapped by an anti-abortion cult, and I’m just gonna guess what happens? She wants to abort the child fearing evil will come of it, they don’t want to, evil comes of it, and this is a pro-abortion segment.

It very well is, and it was there I just called it quits. I don’t know what the hell happens at the very end, but I don’t care, maybe those millennials die at the end, I don’t know, it’s probably gonna be incredibly predictable and a waste of time.

Final Thoughts

This has to be the worst horror anthology movie I ever had to watch, regardless of where one leans politically. As a horror anthology it doesn’t work because it’s simply not scary. Hell, even compared to most cheesy b movies things are just so cartoonishly over the top that it would make Battlefield Earth look dignified.

And when this movie incorporates real world issues that are relevant to today’s standards, that just makes it worse. I’m more mad these issues are not approached with the seriousness they deserve, and sensible people should feel the same. This means as a political thing it doesn’t work because rather than engaging the audience or confronting issues they resort to over the top tales that come off as a mockery of issues rather than anything legitimate. The only thing this works as is satire, but even that is weakened by most segments.

Fear of a Black Hat is considered to be Rusty Cundieff’s best film, and frankly, even though I do like Tales from the Hood, I’m beginning to feel like Cundieff is a one-trick-pony. Just previously Rusty and Darin Scott both directed Tales from the Hood 2, a terrible movie.

Bottom line, I don’t hate this movie because I disagree with the messages, I hate the movie because it handles them incredibly poorly, and coming from someone with a hearty appetite for trashy movies, this hurt, it really did.

And by the way, Scorch appeared as an in-mate in this movie, but without the signature crusty voice, lest Ralph’s fans decided to pull a fast one.

[amplesalty]

Halloween 2020 - Day 1 - The Stand (1994) - Episode 1 The Plague

Gee, an epic post-apocalyptic story about an out of control pandemic. Never heard that one before.

Much as we like to tie the Halloween season to the Christmas one by opening up with a festive horror movie, why not link back to the TV binging that provided some content to this blog earlier in the year by partaking in this mini series? We’re only covering part one here today as this is like four feature length episodes. In a worst case scenario, the rest will serve as backups that I can plug in if I’m having an off day so to help me from falling behind. But ideally they’ll go up once a week on the same day as a standard movie post. You manage to go back to actually doing 31 entries for the first time in donkeys years and it all goes to your head and you suddenly think you can do 34!

This has actually been on my list for quite a while now, we do love a good (or bad) Stephen King adaptation around here and I have a distinct memory of seeing this on TV when I was a kid. I’m guessing it must have played over a few nights over here at some point or maybe over a bank holiday or something? Not that I really remember much in the way of details, just the cornfields and a creepy face which we’ll get on to.

It’s something that’s stuck with me over all these years, I actually got a copy of the book at one point in what must have been the early to mid 2000’s. Still have it actually, I dug it out for the sake of this entry. Seems it’s a version from 1980 from it’s first run as a paperback in the UK. Seems to have a page or two missing near the start in amongst all the copywright business but otherwise it’s in okay shape.

Even has some writing on the first page that I can only make out in parts, one section seems to read ‘an old man beats a mule’. Or perhaps, more pertinently to this story, a mute...

Cover seems a bit dull and non descript compared to the various other ones that have come out over the years. There’s something interesting to this original version with the two figures fighting, very much a literal take on the good versus evil nature of the story with one figure dressed in light colours and the other dark. The dark figure is wielding a scythe which is obviously closely associated with the Grim Reaper. Seems to have some form of beak sticking out of its hood too and the robes and shoes seem to be almost harlequin or jester type clothes?

I wasn’t really expecting much going into it, especially based on the 1990 mini-series of It. I think because of the nature of It being partly set in the 60’s, as well the contemporary portion which just looks very 80’s, gives it this image in my head of being very dated. Outside of a few actors like Tim Curry, John Ritter and Seth Green, there’s not really any notable stars in it either and even though, Green’s notably arguably came much later on. The Stand though? This thing has some names, even if the bigger ones are just small cameos. Amongst the main cast you’ve got Gary Sinise, Molly Ringwald and Rob Lowe. Obviously Ringwald isn’t a massive star or anything and is only really known for that string of John Hughes movies in the 80’s but around this time was peak Sinise. He’s not long removed from starring in Of Mice and Men (...and men....and men...) and would have roles in Forrest Gump, Apollo 13 and Ransom in the following years. Plus that big stretch in CSI:NY in the 00’s. But then you’ve got people like Ed Harris and Kathy Bates showing up, albeit briefly but these guys have some clout. I mean, Bates had just won the Academy Award a few years prior for her role in Misery so maybe she felt compelled to do more work under the King umbrella. Even the more minor roles seem like a roll call of ‘hey, it’s you!’ with Ken Jenkins (AKA Bob Kelso from Scrubs), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and the proprietor of Joe Bob’s Drive In, Joe Bob Briggs.

The landscape of TV feels very different today with actors much more willing to work in the field as it’s taken on much more artistic integrity. The greater availability of shows after they’ve aired, be it through DVR, home media or streaming, has enabled people to watch in far greater numbers. There was a time when the big break was deemed to be making it to Hollywood and starring in motion picture epics but it seems more and more that story tellers are moving away from the relatively cramped 2 hour-ish format of the silver screen to having their vision play out over a long form story and the big name actors are following suit. I feel like things would have been very different back in the early 90’s so to have these names attached.

Seems for a long time there were plans to turn this into a movie, it’s even referred to during a ‘making of’ feature on the blu-ray (pretty much the only feature on there I might add) as a ‘motion picture epic’ but this must have been done way into production so either they were confused or trying to mislead viewers for some reason? Apparently in the early 80’s the idea was for the success of Creepshow to finance production of The Stand but took until the early 90’s for everyone to finally settle on the miniseries.

Very much a big budget affair too for a TV Show, $6m per episode. And it’s needed given the scale of the story, taking place in all these different locations, the special effetcs and with so many characters involved with over 125 speaking roles across the series. It’s definitely a jump up from It, even though that had the two different time periods, it only had a budget of $12m across its two parts compared to the $24m here across four parts.

But to finally address the massive elephant in the room, this story centers around an outbreak of a strain of influenza seemingly created in some shadowy government facility. After something goes awry in the lab, a doomed insider pleads with the guy watching the main gate to seal the facility but he instead piss bolts for his nearby house and hurriedly bundles his wife and child into their car as they make their escape. Everyone else is not nearly as fortunate though as the camera pans the facility, lifeless corpses strewn throughout that have seemingly dropped dead in the middle of their everyday activities, there’s even one guy doubled over on a ping pong table. All of this is set to the sounds of BOC’s Don’t Fear the Reaper and culminates with the image of a crow picking at a doll dropped by the child in the rush out of the front gate. The crow features prominently on the front cover of the blu-ray I have, perched atop of a skull. Though, I know they’re going for the whole post-apocalyptic vibe but what about the superflu is causing the road to burn up and crack like that? The bird also shows up a fair bit throughout the episode, I was going to talk about it being a raven and how such birds are linked with ill omen and death but it’s a crow apparently. Who knew? Not me, I’m no ornithologist. It also seems to be very closely linked with a mysterious figure that is alluded to throughout, a ‘dark man’ or monster.

When the original carrier of the disease makes his way into Arnette, Texas, and crashes into the gas station that Sinise’s character Stu Redman is working at, his dying words are of his efforts to escape from a dark man that was chasing him and that no one can out run him. Maybe in that moment you’d think this is just a state of delirium and he’s speaking oddly poetically about trying to outrun Death himself but as the show goes on, more and more people speak of this dark man, almost as if everyone in the grip of this disease comes to share this vision.

And speaking of visions, we can’t forget Mother Abigail and her cornfields. Both Lowe and Sinise’s characters are whisked away in their dreams to the middle of nowhere where a centurion on her porch warns of them of an ominous future. Think Mama Murphy from Fallout 4 only with much less chem addiction. The only thing Mama Abigail needs is her bread. What is it with King and fields anyway? You’ve got In the Tall Grass, plus the corn fields here and in Children of the Corn. There’s probably more I’m forgetting too. It’s either cornfields, writers in distress or killer ‘whatever I can see in front of me whilst I’m pitching this story’ with this guy.

In a way though it’s good that the show takes this supernatural turn because otherwise this would be a little too on the nose to be watching in this current climate. It’s very eerie to see such similar events play out on screen, starting with the widespread rumours and misinformation. It starts out innocently enough with talk of this so called superflu being downplayed, covered up by the government as an anthrax attack or outbreak of swineflu. I remember back to those more innocent times at the start of the year when COVID was naively dismissed as little more than another flavour of the month disease like the swineflu, sars or ebola that would be here today and gone tomorrow. But then you’ve got things like the sense of paranoia suddenly surrounding a simple cough or sneeze, talks of quarantines, social distancing, the implementation of masks (which one reporter describes as not being able to stop a flu germ with a hangover) to the more disturbing scene of lethal force being used against a TV news crew who refuse to surrender footage they’ve shot of army troops disposing of bodies. Granted, we never got anywhere near that level, I think the worst we had was that guy from CNN getting arrested or that Aussie reporter being pushed over.

They even managed to mirror how universal a pandemic like this is, from the common man to the height of celebrity. One of the characters we’re introduced to is a singer who, whilst he seems to be one of the few lucky to have some immunity, still sees his mother succumb to the virus. Just like we saw with the likes of BoJo or Tom Hanks, it really is a great leveller and, as a wise man once said, ‘You might be a King or a little street sweeper but sooner or later you dance with the Reaper!’. I guess we can take solice that we haven’t quite had the societal collapse that this show manages to pull off in less than a week, with Times Square on fire and a guy running around shooting people like he’s in Falling Down. That’s not to say we wont get there, we seem to be hovering more around general civil disobedience right now with the growing frustration of lockdown and PPE spilling out into protests.

It makes for compelling viewing to see how quickly things break down from simply a man having the sniffles to people being rounded up from their homes and ushered into army vehicles. There’s a lot to take in as the show has to establish the events taking place and introducing it’s multitude of characters so there’s not really much room to breathe. Hopefully episode 2 can relax a little now and give the cast some time to grow. There’s still some standout performances though such as Redman’s growing frustration at being cooped up in a test facility, lashing out at the doctors and nurses coming in in their hazmat suits, prodding and poking him. It would have been nice to see more scenes with him and Dr. Dietz. They have one argument where they nearly come to blows before having a big showdown by the end, with the Doc being one of the last staff members left alive, seemingly crazed by their inability to find any answers in Redman’s tests and he threatens to take his frustrations out on Redman by shooting him. He might be immune to the virus but I bet he’s not immune to a bullet. Dietz starts out with this complete lack of empathy, almost to the point of having a rather cheery deposition considering the circumstances, as he finds some fascination in the speed at which the virus causes death. But he becomes more and more short tempered and threatening as the days wear on and it would have been good to see a more gradual descent.

The aforementioned Ed Harris plays General Starkey overseeing the initial bioweapon project and the fallout of it’s outbreak, perhaps overseeing to a fault as it becomes pretty clear from his ever increasing five o’clock shadow, dishevelled clothing and massive bags under his eyes that he’s slept very sparingly since the initial breach in containment. I think for the entire time we see him, his screen never changes from a shot of one of the cooks at the base of the initial outbreak slumped over, face down in the meal he was preparing. It makes a bit of a change to go from the quite verbal exchanges of Redman and Dietz to Starkey’s physical appearance and facial expressions putting across his mood.