BRAND NEW CHERRY FLAVOR Season 1 (August 2021)

BRAND NEW CHERRY FLAVOR Season 1
(August 2021)

“Imagine... that you're inside him.

“You feel it?

“Now, break something.”

If I tilted my head juuuuust so and squinted a bit, I could mistake Brand New Cherry Flavor for the fifth season of Channel Zero we were robbed of when SyFy chose to pack things up with The Dream Door.

And that’s largely because it’s a reunion of Nick Antosca (the principal creative force behind Channel Zero), Arkasha Stevenson (director of Season 3, Butcher’s Block), and Lenore Zion (co-producer on The Dream Door).

Sure, it’s based on the Todd Grimson novel of the same name, but it truly does feel of a piece with the dread (and sorely missed) brilliance of Channel Zero.

And for that, we really must tip our hat to Netflix and its assorted algorithms, which may or may not have had a hand in streaming Brand New Cherry Flavor into our lives.

“The road curves, but the destination doesn’t change.”

We join Rosa Salazar’s aspiring filmmaker Lisa Natasha Nova in the “Early 90s On The Way to Los Angeles” (or so the supered words in the yellow font reminiscent of Lynch’s Lost Highway tell us).

She’s on her way to LA to meet producer Lou Burke (Eric Lange), whose box office blockbuster streak has run dry of late, but who may still hold the door open for her Hollywood entry.

Things take an unfortunate turn though, forcing her to deal with Catherine Keener’s eccentrically creepy Boro, a decision that serves as the main narrative drive for the strange, enticing concoction that is Brand New Cherry Flavor.

“So when you put a curse on someone, you really commit, huh?”

“What’s the point of doing something halfway? At least that’s what my Dad used to say.”

“That’s nice. Best I ever got out of my Dad was, ‘Don’t change the channel, f*ckface.’”

While I was passingly familiar with Todd Grimson (I had a copy of Stainless back in the day), Brand New Cherry Flavor was one of those titles that had eluded me.

Which, in retrospect, is good, since that allowed me to come into the adaptation with fresh eyes and a distinct lack of baggage, at least as far as Grimson and the original source material goes.

I still had high hopes given the Channel Zero reunion going on with the Antosca-Stevenson-Zion trifecta…

This ¡Qué horror! recommendation should be proof enough though that they did not disappoint, and my horrorhead taste buds definitely got a welcome, tingling rush from this Brand New Cherry Flavor…

You really, most definitely, should get a taste too…

“Now, it’s not gonna be easy. It may get a little f*cked up. But the good news is, it’ll only get as f*cked up as you are.”

When I look out my window,

Many sights to see…

And when I look in my window,

So many different people to be…

Then it’s strange…

So strange…

--Donovan

   “Season of the Witch”

Parting Shot:

Though there are a bunch of other notable needle drops over the course of the 8 episode count (including the one above), I’d like to mention these two, both over the end credits roll: The Creatures’ cover of The Trogg’s “Wild Thing,” and Concrete Blonde’s “Tomorrow, Wendy.”

(Brand New Cherry Flavor OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

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Another twofer!

THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE

(October 2018)

“How can a house, just a collection of bricks, wood, and glass, have that much power over people?"

Just as he did on ¡Qué horror! 2017 title Ouija: Origin of Evil, Mike Flanagan masterfully navigates the seas of traditional horror cinema in his self-described “remix” of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House.

This time out, unlike the original novel’s researchers and investigators, we see the Crain family move into Hill House, with the express aim of flipping it (or, fixing and flipping it, to be more precise).

The house, of course, uninterested in being renovated and then sold on to some other family foolish enough to open its door and walk down its shadowy halls, has other ideas…

“This house… it’s a strange house.

“I’ve worked here a long time, and all I can tell you is that it’s just as stupid and hungry as anything else.

“We don’t stay after dark, Horace and I. And my child is not allowed to step foot in this place. Not once.”

“For me, the most important thing is if you remove the supernatural entirely, the story and the character need to be just as compelling. The supernatural stuff is the easy stuff. But all of that stuff is really boring to me if it’s not grounded in some kind of really relatable honest human experience.”

-- Mike Flanagan

“This house… it’s full of precious, precious things… and they don’t all belong to you…”

Skillfully utilizing the narrative elegance of non-linear storytelling, Flanagan and company track the family’s ordeals and progressive unraveling, both in Hill House, and decades after, in a tale which is by turns chilling and heart-wrenching.

If this were a different kind of story, the Crain siblings would have taken all the lessons learned from their harrowing stay at Hill House, and ended up becoming a group of ghost-busting paranormal investigators.

But in the story this “remix” chooses to tell--a story more grounded in real life and the vagaries of family--what we end up with are a bunch of scarred, f*cked up individuals, all dealing as best they can with the trauma of their childhoods.

And this, quite possibly, is the best aspect of this particular take on the original material: that the dots that connect the children they once were with the adults they eventually become, are so clearly delineated.

The characterizations--the result of a potent combination of the character arcs as mapped out in the narrative, and excellent performances by the cast--are just as solid as the creepy scares.

“You’ve been knocking on that door for years and years and years…

“We could hear you knocking louder all the time, and finally, here you are…”

“If we were going to be doing this as a long format, it had to be about the way every family is a haunted house, and everyone is wrestling with their ghosts from their own childhood and beyond--that echo through decades.”

-- Mike Flanagan

“I was right here. I didn’t go anywhere.

“I was right here… I was right here the whole time.

“None of you could see me.

“Nobody could see me.”

Directing the entire season of 10 episodes, Flanagan brings both an exquisite cinematic eye to the proceedings*, and a fundamental understanding of the full range of his cast’s capabilities.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t note that amongst an already formidable collection of actors and actresses**, the paired casting of Timothy Hutton and Henry Thomas are the cherry-so-red-it’s-very-nearly-black on top of this ghostly, sinister sundae, a sickly, sweetly rotten treat sprinkled liberally with mold and familial dysfunction.

“There’s nothing wrong with going at night. It’s just a carcass in the woods.

“It’s just a carcass in the woods.

“It’s just a carcass… in the woods.”

* Aided by long-time collaborator, cinematographer Michael Fimognari.

** Shout outs to Annabeth Gish and Dr. Lawrence Jacoby himself, Russ Tamblyn, who may just be overlooked with all the other high-caliber thespianics going on around them.

Parting Shot: Though I have seen Jan de Bont’s The Haunting, I’ve never read the original Shirley Jackson novel (I really should finally get around to it), nor seen the 1963 Robert Wise film adaptation (which Flanagan seems respectfully in awe of).
As it turns out, Tamblyn also appeared in Wise's version, as the "Luke" character. In Flanagan's "remix," Tamblyn plays Dr. Montague, repurposing the name of the lead investigator in Jackson's original novel. (In Wise's adaptation, that character becomes Dr. Markway.)
Remix, indeed.

“Our family is like an unfinished meal to that house…"

And, on a bittersweet note, what, at the moment, seems to be the final ¡Qué horror! appearance of Channel Zero (which nonetheless makes ¡Qué horror! history by breaking Hannibal's record as the only multi-season TV show to have all its seasons make a place for themselves in the ¡Qué horror! main rundowns; Channel Zero did it four times... and wasn't a single serialized narrative).

Congratulations, Channel Zero.
And sniff. R.I.P.

CHANNEL ZERO:
THE DREAM DOOR

(October 2018)

“Roses are... lazy. And dishonest.”

“‘Dishonest’?”

“Mmm! Pretty flower! And then a minute later, you’re bleeding!”

Well, hell-loooooo, Pretzel Jack!

Turning to Cronenberg*** for some conceptual inspiration, Channel Zero does an awesome quasi-slasher impression with the E.L. Katz-helmed The Dream Door, where an imaginary childhood friend and protector becomes something far more sinister in adulthood.

Channel Zero delivers a fourth winning season by giving us yet another “flavor” of horror (to borrow Channel Zero creator Nick Antosca’s term).

Just as Butcher’s Block was different from No-End House, which was, in turn, different from Candle Cove, so is The Dream Door different from any of the previous seasons.

Gorier and slightly more savage than its predecessors, it’s a tale that delves into the potentially brutal pain of complete honesty in a relationship, a story about love and secrets and distrust, and the intersection where all three collide… with a super-creepy contortionist clown…

“You know, it’s funny. In Jungian psychology, doors are kind of a thing.

“This whole deal with your basement, is… it’s fascinating.

*** As well as Lynch, particularly for a brief, yet unsettlingly poignant bit past the halfway mark.

(The Haunting of Hill House OS’ & Channel Zero: The Dream Door OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2019

Candidate #4

CHANNEL ZERO:
THE DREAM DOOR

(October 2018)

“Roses are... lazy. And dishonest.”

“‘Dishonest’?”

“Mmm! Pretty flower! And then a minute later, you’re bleeding!”

Well, hell-loooooo, Pretzel Jack!

Turning to Cronenberg* for some conceptual inspiration, Channel Zero does an awesome quasi-slasher impression with the E.L. Katz-helmed The Dream Door, where an imaginary childhood friend and protector becomes something far more sinister in adulthood.

Channel Zero delivers a fourth winning season by giving us yet another “flavor” of horror (to borrow Channel Zero creator Nick Antosca’s term).

Just as Butcher’s Block was different from No-End House, which was, in turn, different from Candle Cove, so is The Dream Door different from any of the previous seasons.

Gorier and slightly more savage than its predecessors, it’s a tale that delves into the potentially brutal pain of complete honesty in a relationship, a story about love and secrets and distrust, and the intersection where all three collide… with a super-creepy contortionist clown…

“You know, it’s funny. In Jungian psychology, doors are kind of a thing.

“This whole deal with your basement, is… it’s fascinating.

* As well as Lynch, particularly for a brief, yet unsettlingly poignant bit past the halfway mark.

(Channel Zero: The Dream Door OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

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And it's a tie!!!

CHANNEL ZERO: NO-END HOUSE

(September 2017)

"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

(February 2018)

“... this is the city I come home to.

“When I walk here, I’m in two worlds at the same time. The one you see, and the one I remember.”

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.

“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…

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2018

Candidate #11

CHANNEL ZERO:
BUTCHER'S BLOCK

(February 2018)

“... this is the city I come home to.

“When I walk here, I’m in two worlds at the same time. The one you see, and the one I remember.”

No, you haven’t experienced a time slip.

There are indeed two seasons of a TV show that have staked out Candidate slots in the same year, a ¡Qué horror! first!

With Butcher’s Block, it has become pointedly apparent that Channel Zero is where the best of current television horror can be found.

“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: 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…

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2018

Candidate #1

CHANNEL ZERO: NO-END HOUSE

(September 2017)

"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.

Probably the only drawback here is, the bar is now subsequently so much higher for the third season, Butcher’s Block (airing next year), which counts among its cast, It Follows’ Olivia Luccardi, Teen Wolf’s Holland Roden, and the one and only Rutger Hauer.

(Channel Zero: No-End House OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

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The second tie of the year...

THE EXORCIST Season 1
(September 2016)

After the terribly disappointing Damien--the A&E TV take on The Omen--I honestly didn’t have high hopes for Fox’s The Exorcist.

Let’s face it, The Exorcist is a much more towering presence in horror cinema than The Omen, so it stood to reason that a television version of it would have a much higher degree of difficulty.

But wouldn’t you know it, Jeremy Slater (who developed The Exorcist for the small screen) actually pulled an infernally feisty rabbit out of this particular hat, and gave us another notable reason to celebrate TV horror.

Not much more I can say without getting all spoiler-y, except maybe this: there are a whole bunch of callbacks to the original film peppered throughout the first season’s 10 episodes (you’ll know them when you see them), and there’s one apparently incredulous Mulder Moment courtesy of Geena Davis’ Angela Rance in the Pilot, my suggestion for which is, “Just roll with it.”

So, yeah.

If you’re in the mood for some excellent TV horror, then the power of Christ compels you to check this out!

CHANNEL ZERO: CANDLE COVE

(October 2016)

"Do 'ya sense it?

"Something is coming.
"A strange vessel headed for the cove…”

What do you get when you take alumni from Twin Peaks (Harley Peyton) and Hannibal (Nick Antosca), and the son of noted director John Landis (Max), toss them into a wild, creatively horrific blender, then sprinkle the goo that’s left onto a heap of steaming Creepypasta?

You get the highly unsettling Channel Zero: Candle Cove.

This is the kind of TV horror we desperately need, the kind that never forgets that horror isn’t just about jump scares and on-screen gore; that it’s also about tone and atmosphere.

Craig William Macneill (who directed all six episodes) certainly understands this, and now, based on what I saw on Candle Cove, I feel the need to check out his feature, The Boy (the one with David Morse and Rainn Wilson).

This is the first time the post-BSG SyFy has come up with a winner of this caliber. (The fact that Channel Zero isn’t even science fiction, but a horror anthology,  is another conversation entirely.)

So looking forward to Season 2, based on “The No-End House.”

“A fire needs fuel.

“Power demands sacrifice.

“I made mine a long time ago.”

Parting Shot:
Both series have kicked off their sophomore seasons very promisingly.
With any luck, we'll see those seasons in next year's rundown...

(The Exorcist OS’ courtesy of impawards.com and dreadcentral.com; Channel Zero OS courtesy of impawards.com.)