10 Slots for the Best Horror I've Seen in the Past Year
[8 of 10]
The TV Horror Slot
And it's a tie!!!
CHANNEL ZERO: NO-END HOUSE
"God! I keep... waiting for one of you to understand how magnificent this
place is!
"All the gifts that it
can give you! Because memory is a disease!
“And then this house is
the cure! How can you not see that?!”
One
of the most amazing things about Channel
Zero’s sophomore season is that, though it still fundamentally feels like a Channel Zero story (in so much as the Channel Zero logo doesn’t look out of place in the opening credits),
it does so despite the fact that it has a different kind of horror at its core,
compared to the horror of Candle Cove.
With
its central themes of memory and loss and instinct and co-dependency, No-End House is also surprisingly
moving, balancing out the horror with genuine emotion, thanks in no small part
to a commendable cast, which includes the excellent John Carroll Lynch.
CHANNEL ZERO:
BUTCHER'S BLOCK
BUTCHER'S BLOCK
“... this is the city I come home to.
With both No-End House and Butcher’s
Block making the cut this year, it has become pointedly apparent that Channel Zero is where the best
of current television horror can be found.
“When I walk here, I’m in two worlds at the same time. The one you see,
and the one I remember.”
“You were so scared of losing your mind and then you just gave it away…”
With the insidious spectre of mental illness and the
desolation of sacrifice zones some of its preoccupations, Butcher’s Block is “… particularly inspired by Argento films, by Candyman,
by Nicolas Roeg films” (in the words of Channel
Zero’s creator and showrunner, Nick Antosca).
Directed by Arkasha Stevenson (who brought Lynch to
the, ahem, table), Butcher’s Block
makes it three for three for Channel Zero,
and, once again, the ante is upped for its next season, The Dream Door, directed by E.L. Katz, no stranger to these parts
due to Cheap Thrills.*
With reversals, a motley crew of protagonists, and
a steady, occasionally hallucinatory build to a Grand Guignol climax, Antosca,
Stevenson, and company have brought us a “… particularly bizarre flavor” of
horror in Butcher’s Block.
Oh, and did I forget to mention?
Rutger flippin’ Hauer is in this one!
“You know, if you don’t eat enough protein, the body just starts to eat
itself. Yeah, I read that in a Reader’s
Digest.
“You just get so hungry, your heart will just up and eat
itself! And then it moves on to your brain, and then it goes down to your
spine, and suddenly, you’re just dead!
“Happens to vegetarians all the time.”
(Channel Zero: No-End House OS courtesy
of impawards.com; Channel
Zero: Butcher’s Block OS courtesy of dreadcentral.com.)
*Katz also directed “A is for Amateur” for ¡Qué horror! 2015 title, ABCs of Death 2, and was an associate producer on Adam Wingard’s A Horrible Way To Die, one of the Serial
Killer Thriller runners-up on the 2012 rundown.
He was also co-producer on the non-¡Qué horror! title, The Aggression Scale, so, yeah… Katz has been ‘round these parts a lot, even when he wasn’t fronting a film.
Here’s
hoping he comes back for The Dream Door…
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