‘The Returned’ and ‘Ash vs Evil Dead’ Join ‘The Walking Dead’ in Offering High-Quality Horror

Halloween falls on a Saturday this year, which is traditionally the least-watched night on television. Maybe this is appropriate. In 2015, television can be many things for the holiday: shocking, horrifying, gooey-sweet, over-commercialized, and downright gross. But the only thing he still suffers from is fear. Don’t believe me? Take a moment to think: What was the last regular TV show that was actually scary? I don’t mean for it to be creepy in bits and pieces, like one of Leatherface’s victims. I mean a scary show from top to bottom, from beginning to end. And I mean a show other than, say, parents.

This isn’t a criticism so much as it is a fact of life. Movies, with their set running times, are particularly good at maintaining the mood. When you sit down to watch a horror movie, you’re basically agreeing to be on the edge of the movie for 90 to 120 minutes. Television, by its nature, requires a variety of tones and pitches. Viewers simply cannot be asked to hold their breath for eight, 10, or even 22 hours a season. Try it and they will die even before your offer. Instead, television has traditionally had to play on the fringes of horror, building an entire series out of bits and pieces that are often underrated by television. Fangoria Crowd: Slow and painful accumulation; The rigid, yeoman-like investigation; The long, sad conclusion. (Or as is the case with Smarmy Fox Scream Queensthe idea that sarcasm can cut deeper than a knife.) The scary movie is a haunted house tour. The scary TV show is a haunted time share. There should be at least occasional tricks towards amenities like comfort and humor because, let’s be honest, you’re going to be there for a while.

If anyone wanted to decode horror on TV, I’d expect it to be a paid service like HBO or Netflix, with their unlimited makeup budgets and freedom to target audiences with the precision of a serial killer. But the two series most successful at challenging the supremacy of scary cinema both hail from basic cable’s satanic Jigsaws. foreign currency American Horror Storystill Kill ratings In its fifth incarnation, it’s probably the closest television has ever come to the film’s exclusivity and ongoing insanity. Part of this is down to the show’s creative cast and unquenchable thirst. But let’s be honest: the most noteworthy aspect AHS Not the bearded lady, but the length of every season. By limiting each cycle to 13 hours and one story, the show’s dissonant tone can ring like a symphony. One does not watch AHS As much as one Commit To her.

AMC The walking dead It is even more noteworthy. Not only is the TV far and away Most popular offer Among the highly desirable 18-34 age group, he single-handedly refuted almost every one of the ideas in my opening paragraph. Most serialized dramas create a world and, over time, spread out within it, adding characters, nuances, and layers. The walking dead He has a guillotine where the engine of the story should be. She has no interest in saving the world or curing the zombie outbreak. Instead, it creates a base camp in the crushing moment at which most dystopian films end, a plunge into grief, violence, and loss. “Everything’s Bad,” isn’t a traditional place to start broadcast television, but, then again, The walking dead Not a traditional series His impressive aptitude in areas often considered secondary – sound design, visual effects, editing and acting – helps sustain it, even when the plot decidedly veers into a kind of sadistic nihilism. And in a perverse way, the dismal consistency of The walking dead – No matter what happens, someone gets bitten every week – which is exactly what saves it as a TV show. At this point, the constant and gruesome suffering has become as dependable as a laugh track.

This Sunday Controversial episode In fact it has been further entrenched The walking deadConnection to the rest of the TV. in Jon Snow era, beloved shows have far transcended the confines of their time periods. Fandom is a full-contact sport that takes place around the clock, regardless of the seasons. This is showrunner Scott M. Gimple It was to qualify The big death — and thus the undoing of its dramatic narrative just minutes after it went live — was further proof that the art of winking games no longer works in a world where everyone plays at such a high level. on The walking dead, Humans may just be an oversized friend to the zombie masses. But in reality, these characters are intimate characters, welcomed into our homes every week. The modern viewer can and should chastise them. But he must remember to respect them.

Despite this mistake, my main takeaway from “Thank You” was admiration. Nevertheless There are still a lot of lice To choose about The walking deadI absolutely admire the show’s ability to harness difficult and flammable emotions like anguish, tension, and despair and confine them to the confines of a weekly series. The panicked, almost numb fugue state Nicholas fell into when surrounded by an impossible horde of zombies was infectious. I’m not saying I can relate to the choice he made in that moment, but gosh, who can blame him? Over and over again, I find the sheer magnitude of this season of The walking dead Very disturbing; Death has long been present but rarely so formidable or seemingly inevitable. This ruthlessness represents a sea change for television, especially for Sunday evening television, which has long been the warm stove of the nation’s viewing week. It’s the pivot that helped The walking dead It became the most outrageous TV show in more than a literal sense; It destroys emotions now, not just guts.

On Saturday night, while most kids are home counting their candy, two unexpected and spooky series will be on display, each seeking to keep the lantern lights on until November. Although SundanceTV’s The returnees Back for season 2 – I loved the first one – that it Stars Ash vs. Evil Dead This is actually the most famous of the couple. That’s because it picks up a loose story that first began in 1978, when two frustrated Midwestern dramatic idiots, Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell, shot a gory short film called Inside the forest. From this scattered snippet came a cult empire: a trilogy Favorite moviesIn addition to a collection of video games, comic books and Unlimited opportunities For cosplay. The only connective tissue between it all: Raimi’s unique tongue-in-cheek, ax-in-hand aesthetic and Campbell’s performance as Ashley “Ash” Williams, a one-handed man with the power of spirit summoning. Necronomicon. When ghouls come to visit, Ash is generally there to dispatch them with a barrage of lines and shotgun shells. With no more mountains to climb on the big screen (A Cinematic reboot It faded away in 2013) and nothing more Spider-Man Dances For the choreography, the two took their trademark saw to the only frontier left to them: the small screen.

That’s the thing Ash vs. Evil Dead: it’s good. Better yet, it’s fun in a goofy, infectious way, which is quite the opposite The walking deadFrowning face. You don’t need to be familiar with the series’ history or sense of humor before listening to it. I’d say the opening montage of 57-year-old Campbell trying to squeeze a belt is a pretty good introduction, as is the scene in which a Michigan detective (Jill Marie Jones) is attacked by a twisted-necked poltergeist and his head eventually explodes with the force and speed of the liquid. Which is equivalent to the strength of one of Gallagher’s mature spirits. Watermelon. What’s great about Ash vs. Evil Dead Isn’t it that he doesn’t take himself too seriously – even though he doesn’t at all. He picks and chooses his details very carefully Should To take seriously. So Campbell — whose Iberico di Pilota is still a B-movie thing — thinks as much about Ash’s Chaplinesque chatter as he does about showing off his swinging chainsaw. And Raimi, who directed the first hour and co-wrote or produced the remaining nine, imbues each high-flying, leaping demon with gravitas and wit. With its severed limbs and references to Shabbos dinners, this is not your father’s horror show. He’s your idiot uncle. Thank God for that.

On the complete other end of the spectrum is The returnees. if Ash vs. Evil Dead It is an artery oozing with exhilarating blood, and the French series is in itself a rigor of death. In the first season, the residents of a remote mountain town are left undone when their deceased relatives suddenly come back to life, seemingly unharmed and frozen at their age when they expired. So: A teenage girl is suddenly reconnected with her teenage twin, a young mother visits her fiancé who committed suicide while she was pregnant, and a bar owner who happily buried his murderous brother years ago must find a way to accept him back into life. His orbit. It’s certainly a bold premise, and a show would have rejected less pressure to provide answers. But beauty The returnees It was the uncomfortable way in which she asked her weighty questions, the way in which she allowed her impossible dream of a hypothesis to congeal, subtly and slowly, into a bitter nightmare.

In the second season, The returnees It remains as confusing and elliptical as ever. Few performances are so starkly beautiful. Its ghostly gray flair and harsh metallic light suggest the work of an impressionistic T-1000. The music, again composed by Scottish noise poets Mogwai, is subtle and devastating. The flood cleansed the city, and the dead set up their own community in the mountains. The imminent arrival of Adele’s (Clotilde Hesme) baby — who last season was conceived by the deceased Simone (Pierre Perrier) — is what drives the plot, but the truth is that the plot seems almost secondary to such a bizarre scene. actually, The returnees It doesn’t scare so much as it haunts. In a display like this, the living slowly drop their masks to reveal the scarred monsters lurking beneath. The supernatural is really just a mirror of the terrifying possibilities of human nature. It is this psychological dismemberment, not the bloodier, more literal kind, that television has historically excelled at. This is because when the movie is over, you can quickly exit the cinema and go back to the safe, quiet home. On television, the scariest scenes are always coming From the inside the home.