Evil is a supernatural drama created by Michelle King and Robert King; this review will cover 177 Minutes. The central cast includes Katja Herbers, Mike Colter, Aasif Mandvi, Michael Emerson, and Christine Lahti. It originally aired under CBS before moving to Paramount+. As of this review, it’s available through Netflix and Paramount+ and its add-ons.

David (Mike Colter), Kristen (Katja Herbers), and Ben (Aasif Mandvi) assess a miracle. A woman pronounced dead for three hours came back to life in the morgue, leaving room for a massive lawsuit. Ben faces a problem he can’t explain, while David faces old demons. Kristen comforts her children while unraveling why a demon haunts her nightmare.

What I Like about Evil: 177 Minutes

The moment of the miracle is particularly troubling, as the suspect of the miracle wakes up right before her autopsy. It creates an interesting dilemma that doesn’t take much to empathize with and evokes a haunting horror.

177 Minutes also maintains that ambiguity between the real and supernatural, leaving just enough room for the characters to find justifications for their bias without minimizing the true evil rooted within.

While this episode remains dominantly Kristen’s, David and Ben get a fair deal of characterization and focus. Specifically, their stories explore the weaknesses of their characters, planting the seed for further development while showing how the group functions as a whole.

Leland (Michael Emerson) remains an enthralling antagonist, providing a campy but threatening element to the show that matches the tone perfectly. He often haunts a scene because he easily pokes at weaknesses, making us wonder if there isn’t some devilish influence.

Another performance to give credit to is that of Kurt Fuller’s Dr. Kurt Boggs. As Kristen’s therapist and professional peer, the two characters provide another layer to refute the more mystical elements of Evil.

177 Minutes addresses further evils that don’t provide the direct punch the first episode delivers. However, it does add a larger understanding of what the series hopes to explore, interweaving familiar evil with supernatural horror.

Tired Tropes or Triggers

One character’s journey involves drug use. The complexity of this doesn’t yet suggest addiction in the traditional sense, but it is shown and used as a crutch for the character involved.

This episode dives into racism, specifically tied to the healthcare industry. A later episode will dive further into this dynamic, but it’s a relevant point of 177 Minutes’s plot.

The bureaucracy of the Catholic church will remain a recurring plot point for Evil, considering the show follows Catholic assessors. Another more specific point to bring up is the malpractice and bureaucracy of the medical sector.

There are a few meta jokes revolving around a horror series, which might undermine the show for some. This show provides a dark comedic tone to alleviate some tension, but this feels less like a campier approach.

What I Dislike about Evil: 177 Minutes

As mentioned, a future episode will deal with medical malpractice and discrimination in the healthcare industry with a far more weighty and critical analysis. 177 Minutes feels like it tests the water of what Evil can talk about, potentially providing the groundwork for such plotlines. However, that doesn’t benefit this episode.

There’s a harder lean towards a procedural show, which fits Evil, but ties less to the overarching plot. For an otherwise tight series, this feels slightly underwhelming. However, this is a product of an overall tight, efficient, and effective show instead of a general issue of the episode.

Final Thoughts

Evil: 177 Minutes opens the door for more systemic conversations, focusing on ever-prevalent evil in our real world. While it’s a strong episode that lays out the foundation of future plot points, it’s more of a procedural than future entries.
(3 / 5)

Witches of East End is not a well-known show. At least, I hadn’t heard about it until I stumbled upon it while researching this series. Now that I’ve experienced it, I’m not sure why it wasn’t more popular. And with a 7.5 rating on IMDB, it’s clear that those who saw the show agree.

Just the facts

Launching in 2013 and running for just two seasons, Witches of East End is the story of the Beauchamp family. Wendy, Joanna, Freya and Ingrid are witches. Joanna, the mother of Freya and Ingrid, has kept this from them for their lives.

Or, at least their current lives.

But the enemies of their past lives catch up with them as Freya prepares to get married. Soon the girls have to learn how to use their powers before they are killed.

And stay dead.

What Witches of East End got right

I will be honest, this portion is going to be pretty short.

One thing I appreciated was Ingrid’s fascination with witchcraft before she knew she was a witch. While she thought it was all make-believe, she was fascinated by it.

This feels very true to life. While being raised in a high-control and patriarchal religion, I was fascinated with witchcraft. Whether this fascination led to my conversion or there was always something calling to me is up for debate. But this fascination feels very familiar.

I also liked the moment in the first episode when Ingrid finds a fertility spell on the internet. Because, in this very modern world, most spells we witches learn are from the internet. Most of my witchy education came from creators on the internet. And there’s nothing wrong with that. If a spell is going to work for you, it’s going to work no matter how you learned it.

Finally, there was a frightening part of this episode that feels true. Not just as a witch, but as someone who lives near the Appalachian forests.

If you see someone who looks like you, run away. Get as far away as possible.

What they got wrong

While I enjoyed this show, I have to say that it was not witchy accurate. Starting with Ingrid’s assumption that the fertility spell she does for her friend, Barb, is white magic, not black magic.

That’s not a thing. There is no white magic or black magic, there’s just magic. Practitioners might disagree about using baneful magic, but that’s a personal decision. But the prospect of good bad magic is based on outdated puritanical opinions about right and wrong.

To put it bluntly, there is little to no witchcraft in this show that is recognizable. It is all fiction magic, based on the assumption that witches are mythical creatures that look like but are not humans.

And that’s fine. It’s not claiming to be anything else.

Frankly, just because a show is heavy on realistic witchcraft doesn’t mean it’s a good show. The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina had plenty of real witchcraft, and it was still a horrible show. So if you’re ready to enjoy this show for the pure fantasy/horror that it is, then you’ll have a good witchy time.

While Witches of East End didn’t have much to do with Modern witchcraft, it was still a fun watch. Purely from a storytelling standpoint, I highly recommend it.

(4 / 5)

By the way, if you like this you might enjoy my haunted apartment novella, Quiet Apocalypse. The main character is a modern witch, and I share some real magic in this fictional story of an unexpected end of the world.

Wow, you’re still with us… So, taking it from Part 1 and Part 2 of this saga, we’re still knuckle deep in finger spiders here at Haunted MTL! Because I made A LOT of unfulfilled requests for a spider out of fingers, I will continue this snarky little AI art series with NightCafe and Canva through the month of September…

Images: Overall design aesthetic of fashion / design advertising spread in muted tones with four AI art rendered images of spiders, built spiders, and spiders on hands, with any given number of legs on spiders and fingers on hands as you’d expect from AI interfacing at this time. Prompts used from top left to lower right include: fingers spider; fingers as spider; fingers as spider legs no hand; spider out of fingers.

Text reads: Creepy Crawlies Finger Spiders What You Get! This is all on you… You let the terrifying AI art generated finger spiders in the house and then let them crawl on you. When you turn into a spider, that’s all your own doing. Leave me out of it.

Images: Overall design aesthetic of fashion / design advertising spread in muted tones with four AI art rendered images of spiders, built spiders, and spiders on hands, with any given number of legs on spiders and fingers on hands as you’d expect from AI interfacing at this time. Prompts used from top left to lower right include: spider hand; fingers as spider legs; spider hand fingers; spider as fingers.

Text reads: Creepy Crawlies Finger Spiders Look I’m Sorry! I wish I could help. I really really do. Keep scrubbing at it even if your flesh falls off. It’s really your only hope now. You’ve been bitten and there’s not much to do for it now.

All of the AI art images used in this series were generated on Thursday, June 13, 2024. If you want to see more freaky spiderness in art here on Haunted MTL, check out Bitten and Soul Catcher. More AI art graphic narratives from Jennifer Weigel have explored Little Red Riding Hood and Into the Deep Woods. Oh, and the Tiny Brain Computers exploration. To see more such devolutions into AI generated art, check out the Will the Real Jennifer Weigel Please Stand Up? blog.