I've really been craving horror lately. I googled and asked for stuff that would hit the same spots as The Thing, Mouth of madness, Fall of the house of Usher or Midnight mass. All horror that's grabbed my attention so hard it wrecked my posture.
I did some goggling and several reviews said this show would hit some of the same notes as The Thing. And they were right.
While the first episode does not have any obvious supernatural/cosmic horror stuff, it does set the scene. The Terror and Erebes are ships seeing a route through the arctic, which on it's own is already a tense situation. A lot of people did not come back from those expeditions. And while it's set in a different time than The Thing. The Terror is set in 1840s, and The thing is in the winter of 1982(same year the movie came out) the feel of people trapped in ice is very similar. One line really encapsulate the setting,
**"This place wants us dead." **
The propeller of one of the ships gets damaged, and were treated to a view of 1850's diving gear. A crew member dives down to get ice out of the propeller and sees something below the water and rightfully panics. It might be the bloated corpse of a dead sailor who fell over board, or something else. The reaction is 100% justified, and the poor guy was likely freezing already. The phrasing of calling him a pilgrim to the icy depths is just perfect.
Here's what he saw
Dead body or monster, either way I'd be wanting out to.
The other hint of something other than just the environment trying very hard to kill everyone is a mysterious illness. There's reference to other sailors who died, with scurvy being blamed(and everyone has to suck on dried lemons every day to prevent it) for those deaths. The young sailor started coughing up blood, then had spasms and a fever, then some delightful hallucinations.
The final few scenes that really struck me deal with the dead sailor. While he was feverish and knew he was dying the doctor Goodsir was incredibly compassionate. The sailor though, had one dying wish, to not have an autopsy. It would have been easy for Dr.Goodsir to lie and just be like, yes of course. But he doesn't, he says he won't unless he has to.
And he does. And how the show handles it is perfect. While the doctor is doing the autopshy, the men are outside cutting and blowing up the ice and the way it transposes those two sequences is perfect. IT drives out the harsh conditions both inside and outside the ship. The crack of the ribs being juxtaposed by the crack of ice was genius.
The final scene that drives home just how much death there's already been, is the burial of the dead sailor. They only bury him because the guy in charge says to, and when the sailors drop him into the hole, and the coffin slips leading to the lid being knocked open most of the sailors just shrug and would bury him that way. One won't. At first I expected it to be about seeing if he could steal anything off the corpse or something, but no, he was just a good lad.
In short, go for Broke, sets up a lot of creepy stuff, lots of tension with me being very sure most, if not all these sailors are not going to survive.
Rating: 90/100
Originally posted through scrobble.life/tv.
!LADY
