The worst kind of terror is the kind the impacts your whole world, leaving you feeling exposed and helpless. The kind that comes out of nowhere, especially when you thought you had escaped it. The kind that is real and leaves you with nowhere to hide. Terror is the talk of the season as AMC’s original anthology series The Terror returned on August 13th to rave reviews. This season focuses on World War II and the forced internment of Japanese-American citizens following rising tensions and suspicions caused by the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Before this bombing and ensuing chaos, a dark cloud has come over the small Japanese community of terminal city, a small island off the coast of Los Angeles. The first episode opens with a local woman, Masayo, walking in eerie, jerking movements along a foggy pier before falling to her knees and ending her life in a gruesome way. Odd occurrences in the community follow in short order, which the local people attribute to angry and restless spirits. The terror is palpable. The audience is just scared as the characters in the show, especially with the knowledge of a beautiful young woman working in a local brothel who seems to be dead and alive at the same time, a knowledge the show’s characters to do not have.
In spite of all the scary moments packed into the first episode, the scariest part was toward the end. One night, during the darkest moments, an alarm sounds and a group of dark-clothed figures bearing weapons sweep in to the Japanese community and attack! They bang on all the doors, round up the families, and separate them. Some are even whisked away, their destination unknown to their loved ones.
The perpetrators of this horrible act were not aliens, demons, or witches. They were the U.S. Army. They were forcing Japanese-American citizens out of their homes and into buses, taking them away to internment camps.
This was the most terrifying portion of the show
The Terror does a great job building suspense and creating a cloud of genuine horror that has been missing in the genre. In my opinion, good horror is one you cannot escape from. You know something is out there, you just don’t know where it is or when it coming next. The Terror creates that for both the audience and the characters. One thing I noticed was the juxtaposition of supernatural horror and real life terror. At the same time characters were afraid of angry spirits and vengeful ghosts invading their community, they had to fear hateful and oppressive racists doing the same exact thing.
Although many believe that the horror genre is dying, I would argue that it is being revived and with new and interesting concepts. A common theme I’ve noticed in both horror televisions shows, such as American Horror Story and both seasons of The Terror, and in movies such as Get Out and Hereditary, what is considered scary expands beyond just an evil monster or demon. For a long time, horror films were an escape. Being afraid of Freddy and Jason made the viewer forget about the things in their real life that caused them fear and anxiety. All of those feelings were pushed towards an hour long movie and were all gone when it was over. But over time, that got both old and unrealistic. Being afraid of Freddy and Jason, ghosts and ghouls, evil clowns and dolls, is easy. They only exist in the realm of the movie or show and the monsters are gone when the credits roll. Newer shows and movies go beyond that. They make concepts such as family secrets, infidelity, racism, and oppression into physical horror. The horrific thing looming around the corner isn’t just a ghost, witch, or demon. It’s a spouse such as in American Horror Story. It’s heartbreak, such as in Midsommar. It’s your family, like in Hereditary. It’s racism, like in Get Out. And it’s decades-old oppression and hate hidden behind national security, with no other purpose besides tearing families apart, like in modern day Ameri- I mean this season of The Terror.
The Terror airs on AMC each Monday at 9 p.m. EST.
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