Episode three of John Carpenter’s Suburban Screams shares a name with one of my favorite horror novels, The House Next Door by Ann Rivers Siddon. As someone who is a sucker for haunted house stories, this was easily my favorite episode so far.
The story
This episode is about a man named Dr. Torrence. He grew up in a small town in California, called Jamul. A close-knit community where no one locked their doors.
And they continue not to, even after Torrence’s childhood friend goes missing along with her whole family.
Years later, a new family moves in. The family seems nice, and they have a daughter named Lisa. Nothing seems out of place until the father starts torturing animals in the family home. Then, we’re invited to question whether he’s always been this monster, or whether the house infected him with madness and fury.
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The same house that seems to have swallowed up a family not so long ago.
What worked
If we’re to look at this episode as a pure horror story, then it’s fantastic. There are some good jump scares that never feel out of place. There are some truly frightening moments when we’re sure our narrator is going to get caught.
Many great horror tropes were on display here. I loved the family portrait with the cut-up faces. I loved the way the power flickers through the house. And while I hate the thought of hurting innocent animals, I’ll be the first to say that it’s an effective way to convey that a man is losing his mind and becoming twisted.
There was a tight structure to this story. It was well done.
What didn’t work
Here’s the thing though. True events don’t usually have a tight structure, do they? Maybe we can look back with hindsight and see a path. But it’s rarely laid out so perfectly.
I honestly think this episode, and the whole series, would have been better if it claimed to be inspired by true events, rather than claiming flat out that each story is true. That claim carries a lot of weight. And it’s not a weight that this episode was able to pick up.
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A good example of this is the names of our two survivors. Dr. Torrance coincidentally has the same last name as the main character from The Shining. His best friend from school is named Mike Myers. It’s just a little too on the nose, you know? I think I’d like to see their high school yearbook for proof.
Finally, I’d like to talk about that first scene. The one in which little Torrance goes into the haunted house next door and meets a ghost with a bowler hat. A ghost that we do not see again for the rest of the episode. What was the point of this scene? Are we really to believe that this happened? Or was it just a clumsy, heavy-handed attempt to set the mood of the house? To say things we could have assumed? This was poorly done, and the episode would have been stronger without that scene.
Is it true?
This one isn’t as cut and dry as the episodes we’ve talked about so far. I will say that the story itself seems very improbable. This episode felt like a Goosebumps book, from start to finish. And real events don’t generally come together in such a specific, well-polished way. Real life doesn’t usually fit into an inciting action, rising tension, climax, and conclusion. And that first scene, with Torrence meeting the unnamed ghost man pretty clearly did not happen.
I also did some research and could not find any information about two families vanishing in the mid-eighties in the same house.
However, I will say that Dr. Torrence appears to be truly upset over the story he’s telling. Now, he could just be a good actor. But the quality of the rest of the acting leads me to think that isn’t the case. To him, at the very least, this story is very much real. His pain feels real, and I don’t want to dismiss that.
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Then, there’s something interesting I found while researching for this review. When I looked up deaths in the small town of Jamul, California, I didn’t find anything about the Kennedy family. But I did find an eerily similar case, about a family who was shot and killed in their home.
I cannot verify that this happened in the same house, as the exact address is not revealed in either case. But it is at least plausible. And houses have long memories of horrible acts. So, while again I think this episode had more fluff and fiction than fact, I think there is a kernel of dark, rotting, truth.
To a lot of fans, this is the film that killed the franchise. It says a lot that the next installment is yet another retcon. Halloween VI: The Curse of Michael Myers attempts to explain Michael’s unrelenting evil, which lead to mixed opinions from longtime fans. There are two cuts of the film, theatrical vs producer’s. For a lot of people, the latter is the only one worth mentioning. Aiming to be as accurate as possible, I will be talking about the producer’s cut. Let’s begin!
Plot
We start Halloween VI with a six-year time jump from part five. Jamie is now barefoot and recently pregnant, running away from Michael as he wants her baby. While she manages to hide the little one away, Michael finally gets his hunger satiated by killing her. The moment is one of the most brutal ways in the franchise up until that point. Rest in peace, Jamie, you held your ground for as long as you could, the sequels were just too relentless.
The movie then cuts to a whole different scene going on. We have a new family living in the Myers house and their youngest child is hearing voices telling him to kill his loved ones. Tommy Lloyd is watching the family, played by none other than Paul Rudd in his first-ever theatrical role. Tommy still carries trauma from the events all those years ago when Laurie Strode was babysitting him. So when he finds Jamie’s baby, his part in the story becomes even more essential.
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Dr Loomis also stars in what was Donald Pleasance’s final role before his passing. He and Tommy try to stop Michael once and for all before the cycle can repeat itself. As it turns out, Michael is a victim of a druid cult which makes him want to kill his family members every Halloween. Thorn, the cult in question, thinks they can control Michael and make him do their bidding. This results in catastrophe and Michael goes berzerk and kills all the cult members. Once again, it’s one of the most gruesome montages for the franchise up until that point.
Tommy and Kara are left to face Michael on their own which they manage to do with some corrosive liquid and good luck. However, nothing stays dead in this franchise as it’s soon revealed Michael somehow escaped and this time Dr Loomis might not be so lucky…
Overall thoughts
I would say for me personally Halloween VI definitely ranks somewhere near the bottom. The whole point of Michael is that there is no rhyme or reason to his killings and this film tries to go against that. I am glad the mistake was rectified by the upcoming installment. There were still some good things about it, such as Paul Rudd’s acting that reveals some raw talent as far as I’m concerned, as well as some direction choices and musical score. However, I also think it absolutely deserves all the criticism that it gets.
We’ve reached the final episode of American Horror Stories, season three. After the ups and downs of the season, I didn’t know what to expect. I felt that we were due a big finish, Killer Queens. But I feared we were in for a big letdown.
As it turns out, The Thing Under The Bed was neither.
The story
We begin our story with a little girl named Mary, who is scared of something under her bed. She sneaks out of her room, only to be caught by her father and sent back to sleep. And of course, there is something horrible waiting for her under her bed.
This scene cuts away to a woman named Jillian. She has strange dreams, including one about Mary. But her husband, Mark, doesn’t want to hear about it. He’s only interested in a little lovemaking because he wants a baby. Jillian doesn’t, which makes total sense because she’s already married to one. But her irritation with her childish husband goes away when he goes away. And by goes away, I mean he’s sloppily devoured by something vicious under their bed.
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What worked
In short, this episode just worked. The acting was professional and believable. The cinematography and lighting work were wonderful, adding spooky effects and startling moments without impairing visibility.
Best of all, the story was solid. There were no plotholes to be found. Our main character, Jillian, was relatable and sympathetic.
This was maybe my favorite part of the story. I thought Jillian was a remarkably sympathetic character. She was dealt a hand she never asked for, having her husband slaughtered in their bedroom. I don’t think she missed him, so much as she was afraid of the legal ramifications of being caught with literal blood on her hands.
Then, when it would have been safest for her to just lay low and save up for a good defense attorney, she instead goes into unlikely hero mode. She does her best to save people, putting herself in legal and physical danger. It’s hard not to root for her.
It’s also a little hard not to root for the antagonist, too. I don’t want to ruin the twist for you, so I’m going to tread lightly here. But it’s great when you have an antagonist who might be off their rocker, but also maybe has a point.
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What didn’t work
I can only really think of one complaint with this episode. And that is how frequently one character says the word Chickadee. And if you’ve seen the episode, you know what I am talking about.
I get it, he has a pet name for his daughter. It’s adorable. It’s meant to convey that the two of them have a healthy loving relationship and I get it. We all get it. Blind monks get it. But the fact remains that no parent on Earth calls their kid by their pet name every single time they speak an individual sentence to them. It was just too damn much.
All in all, this was a good episode. It was a classic story, turned on its head, told by professionals from start to finish. And I hope that if there is another season, we see more stories like this one. But after the efforts put into this season at large, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the last we see of American Horror Stories.
If you’ve watched enough short-form horror anthology shows, you’ll notice that some stories are mainstays. Each show seems to put on the same sort of episodes, with the occasional surprising storyline that we’ve never (or at least rarely) seen before.
Leprechaun was an example of a repeated story—the story of a greedy thief whose punishment far outweighs the crime.
The story
We begin our story in 1841, with a drunk man leaving the bar one late night. He’s distracted by something glowing at the end of the well. When he reaches down for the glowing thing, he falls in. Moments later, he screams.
We then cut to the modern day. The well is still there, and now it’s surrounded by a dying town. In this town lives a young man named Colin. He’s married, his wife is pregnant, and he’s out of work. Like many of his friends.
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Desperate for cash, Colin and his friends decide to rob a bank. They put together an Equate version of Ocean’s Eleven, and break in one night. But, of course, they find that the gold is nothing more than bait. And the creature waiting for them is something they never expected.
What worked
The first thing I want to point out is how real this episode felt. At least to anyone currently living in the same small town they grew up in. These characters felt like guys I went to school with. Guys I would see at the bar.
I appreciated the real anger and frustration these characters are feeling. Especially Colin. He’s bitter, and maybe he has a right to be. He did exactly what he was supposed to do to succeed. He went to school and invested in his career, and yet now he’s out of work and struggling to support his family. I probably don’t need to tell you how that feels. Because of this, we can all kind of understand why he was tempted to rob a bank.
I also want to talk about the fact that this was, as I said, an often-explored story. That can be a bad thing, but it can also be a good thing. This story is told over and over because it’s a good story. A relatable story. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
What didn’t work
That being said, this version didn’t try to do much to break out of the mold.
Because we have seen this story so many times, most of us could tell the story themselves. I would have expected something new, or some twist. But, in the end, the story didn’t bring anything new to the discussion.
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Maybe because of this, the ending left a lot to be desired. Trapped in the basement of the bank, everyone just sort of stares at everyone else, until the thieves give up. And that’s it. The ending wasn’t scary, shocking, or funny. It was just sad, on multiple levels.
Overall, this was an okay story. It was entertaining, if not surprising. I would compare this episode to homemade macaroni and cheese. Everyone’s got their own version, they’re all pretty good, and none of them are exciting.
There’s just one episode left in this season of American Horror Stories. Let’s hope they’ve saved the best for last.
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